German court says anti-Semitic sculpture can stay on church

4 February 2020, 7:16 pm

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A German appeals court has 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,” or “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.

This carving on the facade of Martin Luther’s church in Wittenberg, Germany shows Jews suckling at a sow’s teat. (Toni L. Kamins/JTA)

Placed on the church about four meters (13 feet) 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.

Plaintiff Michael Duellmann 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, says he will appeal Tuesday’s decision to the Federal Court of Justice and is prepared to take the case outside Germany to the European Court of Human Rights, if necessary.

— AP