‘Sculpture depicting Jews as pigs’; A German court has rejected a request to remove an anti-Semitic monument
BERLIN: A German federal court has rejected a request by a Jewish petitioner to remove a monument insulting Jews from a church in Wittenberg, Germany.
The petitioner had approached the court alleging that the 700-year-old anti-Semitic sculpture was insulting to the Jews.
The church in Wittenberg is home to about twenty medieval monuments from various churches in Germany and Europe, which insult the Jews by calling them ‘Judensau or Jew Pig’.
The federal court upheld the lower court’s judgment regarding the monument erected at the town church in Wittenberg. The Federal Court of Justice issued its ruling on Tuesday.
The matter came to federal court judges after courts in the Saxony-Ann-Halt state in the eastern German province ruled in favor of plaintiff Michael Duelman in 2019 and 2020.
Michael Duelman argued in court that “the sculpture is defamatory and insulting to the Jews, and to this day the sculpture has had a profound effect.” He also suggested that the statue be moved to the nearby Luther House Museum.
In particular, the federal court found that the original statue was ‘mocking and defaming Judaism as a whole’, but added that the parish had resolved the legal situation by adding a monument explaining its historical background. The court added that this meant that the parish had distanced itself from the ‘defamatory and anti-Semitic message’ of the statue.
This is the reason why the court said to reject the application to remove the statue.
The sculpture is located at a height of 4 m above the ground level in the church.
Content Highlight: German federal court rejected a Jewish man’s bid to remove antisemitic relic from a church