The court ruled against relocating the Wittenberg Judensau and we have four weeks to appeal the decision. Please pray that the church will decide to remove the sculpture and place it in a museum without needing further legal action. 

Below is a translation via google of an opinion by a German newpaper - Suddeutsche Zeitung

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/wittenberg-judensau-relief-kirche-1.4460955

A pastor and a court are holding on to an anti-Semitic work on the outer wall of Luther's preaching church in Wittenberg. That is stunning

Comment by Ronen Steinke

In this country, the word "Judensau" is more than just an ugly insult. It's a whole art historical topos. The traditional "Judensau" portrayal - a fat bristle cattle with bearded rabbis sucking on their teats while Satan is watching contentedly - was a popular motif of Christian religious propaganda, even centuries before the NSDAP Gauleiter Julius Streicher published his anti-Semitic Hetzzeitung in Nuremberg The striker  founded.

Carved in stone reliefs of the "Judensau" found in the cathedral churches of Magdeburg, Regensburg, Freising - all cities that displaced their Jewish population in the Middle Ages - and also at the Wittenberg town church, in which Martin Luther preached and from which the message of the Reformation went around the world. There, the "Judensau" on the southeastern wall was attached to the outside, in about four meters height in a large format of about one meter by 1.20 meters. You know that so well, because the nasty image is still there today.

It is questionable about whom one should be more amazed. There is the church that insists, yes in recent days, even before the District Court of Dessau has fought for the nasty image gets stuck. Many Protestants have already said goodbye since the days of Luther. Of rituals, of institutional misogyny, of anti-Semitic sermons. However, you do not want to change the "Judensau" because - as the clergyman Johannes Block has said - one prefers to preserve one's own "dark history"?

The "Judensau" is not a work of art
Already clear: if one were to clean up any old artwork in which discriminating stereotypes are presented later, even Shakespeare would be the one who in his "Merchant of Venice" is the classic anti-Semitic image of a Jew who is not only greedy for money but also greedy for blood disseminated; albeit in beautiful English. But the "Judensau" is not a work of art that would be open to interpretation or otherwise valuable. It's a statement as simple as a striker cartoon; only created to dehumanize people and to reveal contempt.

The right place would be a historical museum. Not a house wall, where the insult is displayed unchanged. Just as it makes a difference whether a park bench labeled "Forbidden to Jews" is shown in a museum - or just standing around in the city.

Or should one be more stunned by the state that lets the church go through this? A member of the Jewish community had complained. The "Judensau" was offensive, there was a claim for elimination according to Article 1004 of the Civil Code. The district court has now wound up in its verdict to say: Of course, the "Judensau" insulting. But the church does not mean it that way. It lacks it, since the relief is already so old, on the "explanatory will". There is nothing to do.

How forgiving. Especially since the Wittenberg "Judensau" has been restored in recent times, even to make their inscription readable again. Imagine, a mosque would issue such a nasty picture. Would the state also watch so unmoved?