It is already shaping up to be one of the most sensitive court cases of 2009, opening up a close-to-the-bone debate about the use in Germany of Nazi or wartime symbols.

The case is part of the world motor-sport boss Max Mosley’s campaign to set the record straight on a secretly filmed sadomasochistic sex session that – in video footage and still photographs shown in Germany as well as Britain – depicts him being beaten by women in uniform. The president of the FIA, the body that oversees Formula One racing, was awarded £60,000 by a High Court judge in summer for breach of privacy by the News of the World.

The hearing in Germany, pitting Mr Mosley against the mass-circulation Bild and its online offshoot, is to be held early next year and is already provoking discussion about the limits to privacy.

At the heart of the case against the News of the World – part of News Group Newspapers, whose sister company Times Newspapers Ltd publishes The Times – was the question of whether Mr Mosley’s session was a “Nazi orgy”, possibly justifying an intrusion into the intimate life of the FIA president, or whether it was just a conventional sadomasochistic encounter.

In the High Court, Mr Justice Eady ruled against a Nazi interpretation of the sex session.

Now it is Germany’s turn to consider the matter and whatever the verdict it seems set to open a can of worms.

“The English argument does not convince me at all,” said Jan Hegemann, the press law specialist who will be representing the Springer group newspapers.

“Mr Justice Eady went through the images, point by point. For example, SS uniforms were not worn – they were modern Luftwaffe uniforms, so they could not possibly have been Nazi.”

The High Court judgment went through a checklist: Mr Mosley was inspected for lice by one of the hired women, commands were barked out in German, prison uniforms were worn. Each scene was viewed by the British judge as part of sexual roleplay and therefore not as a mockery of Holocaust victims. But the German lawyers will try to challenge this view.

The case is likely to be spectacular not just because of the freedom of press and privacy issues but because it is likely to give renewed publicity to the shadowy world of Nazi insignia.

It is forbidden under German law to display the swastika, other Nazi emblems, to make the Hitler salute or to glorify the Third Reich in any form.

“We know in Germany about the methods used to circumvent the law, how one can play with Holocaust connotations, “ said Mr Hegemann. “Look at the way that rightist skinheads wear paratrooper boots – obviously they are modern, they’re not real wartime supplies, but we know what kind of message the skinhead is trying to convey.”

The court, said Mr Hegemann, thus has to consider the semantics of the Mosley images. For the Mosley camp though, what counts is that there was a grave invasion of privacy rights, which are well guarded in Germany.

“This is about somebody who was secretly filmed having sex in private,” said Tanja Irion, who is representing Mr Mosley in Germany. She is reported to be pressing for damages of €1.5 million (£1.4 million) from Bild and bild.de, €350,000 from the news agency dpa and a further sum from Die Zeit, the Hamburg weekly.

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