A German appeals court on Tuesday rejected a Jewish man’s bid to force the removal of a 700-year-old anti-Semitic statue from a church where Martin Luther once preached.
The Judensau (“Jew pig”) sculpture on the Town Church in Wittenberg is one of more than 20 such relics from the Middle Ages that still adorn churches across Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
Plaintiff Michael Duellmann had argued that the sculpture was “a defamation of and insult to the Jewish people” that has “a terrible effect up to this day.”
Duellmann, who has suggested removing the relief from the church and putting it in the nearby Luther House museum, said he would appeal the decision to the German Federal Court of Justice and is prepared to take the case outside Germany to the European Court of Human Rights, if necessary.
Placed on the church about 4m above ground level, the sculpture depicts people identifiable as Jews suckling the teats of a sow while a rabbi lifts the animal’s tail.
In 1570, after the Protestant Reformation, an inscription referring to an anti-Jewish tract by Luther was added.
In 1988, a memorial was set into the ground below, referring to the persecution of Jews and the 6 million people who died during the Holocaust. In addition, a sign gives information about the sculpture in German and English.
After a court in Dessau rejected Duellmann’s case in May last year, he took it a higher state court in Naumburg.
That court said in its ruling on Tuesday that he had failed to prove the Town House sculpture must be taken down because “in its current context” it is not of “slanderous character” and did not violate the plaintiff’s rights.
The appeals court said that with the addition of the memorial and information sign, the statue is now “part of an ensemble which speaks for another objective” on the part of the parish.
“The presentation of a part of the building in its original condition that was originally meant to be insulting is not necessarily insulting,” the court said. “Rather, you can neutralize the original intent with commentary as to the historical context. This is the case with the Wittenberg sculpture.”
Duellmann said that while he was disappointed by the ruling, he was glad the case had sparked a debate within Germany’s Protestant Church.
He said he thinks the same discourse is needed in the Catholic Church and Jewish communities, in Germany and Israel.
“This whole discussion process has been moving ahead with this legal case, and that’s a good thing,” he said.
Town Church Pastor Johannes Block has said that the church also considers the sculpture unacceptably insulting, but argued that it “no longer speaks for itself as a solitary piece, but is embedded in a culture of remembrance” thanks to the 1988 memorial.
“We don’t want to hide or abolish history, but take the path of reconciliation with and through history,” Block said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in