Row over anti-Semitic sculpture on German church shifts to ECHR

By Marco Krefting, dpa I Sunday, August 25, 2024

 

SAXONY – A German man who has fought in court for years to have a 13th century anti-Semitic sculpture removed from the wall of a church plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) after several defeats in German courts.

Recently, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court rejected a request to consider the matter from Michael Düllmann, who converted to Judaism in 1978 and has been seeking to get rid of the anti-Jewish depiction.

The sandstone relief in the wall of an historically important church in the eastern city of Wittenberg is known as the Judensau (“Jewish Pig”) and shows two people depicted as Jews suckling on the teats of a sow while a figure believed to be a rabbi lifts the animal’s tail and looks into its anus.

The relief is particularly offensive as pigs are considered unclean in the Jewish faith. The church is sometimes referred to as the Mother Church of the Reformation because Martin Luther (1483-1546) preached there.

In 2022, Germany’s Federal Court of Justice ruled against Düllmann on final appeal and held that the relief could remain in the church.

The court decided that a plaque added around the relief and another outside the church which provide additional information about the depiction are sufficient to turn the “monument of shame” into a “memorial.”

Düllmann, 80, tried to appeal that ruling again on constitutional grounds, arguing that the Judensau sculpture should be removed “in view of the serious violation of personal rights associated with it, not only of the complainant, but of every Jew in Germany.”

A spokesman for the Constitutional Court told dpa on Saturday that judges at the court rejected Düllmann’s request without citing reasons.

In the event of an appeal to the ECHR in Strasbourg, France, Düllmann could invoke the prohibition against discrimination in the European Convention on Human Rights and the protection of personality rights, his lawyer explained in a letter obtained by dpa.

According to a spokesman, Düllmann has agreed with his lawyer that a lawsuit will be filed. According to the lawyer, there is time to file a case with the ECHR until shortly before Christmas.