"Judensau" in court - 

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The Wittenberger Schmähplastik is contested again. Would the wrapping help?

STEPHAN KOSCH

Photo: dpa / Hendrik Schmidt

The memorial by the sculptor Wieland Schmiedel at the foot of the church.

On January 21, the anti-Jewish abusive sculpture at the city church in Wittenberg will again be the subject of a trial before the Higher Regional Court in Naumburg. Regardless of the judgment to be expected, the number of voices calling for the relief to be left at Luther's preaching site is increasing. But the community in Wittenberg is against it and refers to the existing memorial at the foot of the church. As a compromise proposal, the covering is now in the room.

The evangelical town church of St. Marien in Wittenberg cannot be overestimated in its historical significance for Protestantism. According to legend, the 95 theses were nailed a few steps further to the door of the castle church. But here, in the city church, Martin Luther preached, for the first time the sacrament was distributed to the congregation in both forms, i.e. bread and wine. Here is the famous "Reformation Altar" from the Cranach workshop. If it were not a contradiction in terms, the Church would be a “holy place of the Reformation”, but it is without question an iconographic place of Lutheran theology.

But this also applies to their abysses. Because a relief called “Judensau” has been hanging on the outer facade since about 1305. It represents a pig, at the teat of which suck human children who are supposed to be identified as Jews by their pointed hats. A figure, also recognizable by his hat as a rabbi, lifts the sow's tail with her hand and looks into her anus. The relief was moved around 1570 in the course of the redesign of the church and given the words "Rabini Shem Ha Mphoras", a reference to the Jewish name of God "Ha-Shem Ha-Mephorash", but also to Luther's anti-Jewish scripture "Vom Schem Hamphoras and from the family of Christ ”from 1543. The relief is therefore not only part of the unfortunate tradition of“ Jewish sows ”, as can be found in about thirty churches in the German-speaking countries, but also an expression of anti-Judaism, which was characteristic of Luther and other reformers ,

Counterpoint set

In the vicinity of the anniversary celebrations for Luther's 500th birthday in 1983, the church and with it the relief were renovated. This caused discussions in the parish, recalls Gottfried Keller, who was one of the parish priests from 1985 to 1998. "The young community held the opinion that the relief must be removed, there were different points of view in the community," he says in an interview with zeitzeichen. At the end of the discussion it was clear: the relief remains hanging, but should no longer remain on the facade without comment.

Since 1988, a base plate, designed by the sculptor Wieland Schmiedel, has been placed in front of the church wall below the relief. It consists of tread plates that are supposed to cover something that cannot be displaced and that oozes from the joints that form a cross. All of this is framed by a text by the writer Jürgen Rennert: "God's real name, the reviled Schem Ha Mphoras, which the Jews held almost unspeakably sacred to before Christians, died under a cross sign in six million Jews."

Whether this means the swastika or the cross of the Christians, or both, remains open. Together with an explanatory Steele and a cedar, a memorial was created a good thirty years ago that takes a reflective and distant view of the ecclesiastical disgrace. The commitment of the parish, which had already established such a memorial in a hostile state in the late 1980s, is "not to be overestimated," says Hubertus Benecke, lawyer from Hof. Nevertheless, the overly ambiguous reminder is not enough for him. That is why he was one of the demonstrators in Wittenberg who repeatedly asked for the relief to be removed around the 2017 Reformation anniversary. And that's why he also represents Michael Düllmann in court. Düllmann is a member of the Jewish community in Berlin and sees the plastic as an insult that he does not want to accept. The town church congregation should take the plastic and bring it to the museum, he demanded before the regional court in Dessau-Roßlau. That dismissed the lawsuit in May last year, but allowed an appeal to the Higher Regional Court. The trial in Naumburg is scheduled for January 21. "The exit is completely open," says Düllmann's lawyer Benecke. The district court had ruled that "there is no insult in any case". Because "insulting in the sense of paragraph 185 of the Criminal Code requires the disclosure of one's own disregard, here by the defendant," it says in the written reasoning. So that an insult is an insult, it not only needs someone who is insulted, but also someone who insults. However, this could not be blamed on the parish. "The defendant himself did not produce the sandstone relief or applied it himself. The sandstone relief is part of a historic building that is a listed building, ”said the court. In addition, the relief is not "uncommented" on the wall of the city church.

Photo: epd / Norbert Neetz

According to Benecke, the court's appeal decision essentially provided two points of attack. On the one hand, the fact that it was a scandalous sculpture and thus, according to the case law of the Federal Constitutional Court, also a formal insult was not in dispute in the first instance. The parish also repeatedly emphasizes that it is a scorn sculpture. "Anything that is undisputed between the parties must not be commented on by the court in any other way or even taken into account in the decision," says Benecke.

Finally, the assertion that the parish had nothing to do with the "attachment" of the Judensau is "only half the truth" for Benecke. For example, the Judensau in Wittenberg can only be recognized as such because the parish has decided to undertake a comprehensive, even somewhat redesigning "renovation" of the abusive sculpture and has thus become quite active.

The legal question is only one aspect, the social, cultural, church history and theological debate is another. The court also gave the church a hint on the way in the verdict. One should discuss socially whether a church “based on the belief in Jesus Christ, a Jew, does not run the risk of losing its credibility by sticking to the depiction of a 'Jew sow' at one of its most important churches. However, this discussion must be conducted in society and does not in itself justify the plaintiff's right to have the defendant removed. "

Acceptance required

And this discussion has not only started recently, but with increasing clarity. The number of voices, regardless of what the court judges, speaks for a decrease, is increasing. This includes that of the Federal Government's Anti-Semitism Commissioner, Felix Klein. In place of the relief, a notice board should be attached, from which it can be seen that "by removing the 'Judensau', the Evangelical Church is making a visible contribution to overcoming anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism," Klein told the editorial network Germany in October last year. In his opinion, the relief belongs “to the museum”. There it should be "provided with an explanatory text".

High-ranking representatives of the Evangelical Church also made similar statements. Annette Kurschus, deputy chairwoman of the EKD, president of the Westphalian state church, said in an interview with the ZDF lunchtime magazine on the Reformation Day: "We should actually ban everything that could promote anti-Semitism from the public". The praes of the EKD Synod Irmgard Schwaetzer said according to epd at a discussion event on the topic in May in Wittenberg that the added inscription was a "massive, all-changing intervention" and expresses "pure hatred of Jews". "We have to act again today about this newly added content," explained Schwaetzer.

The regional bishop of the Evangelical Church in Central Germany, Friedrich Kramer, spoke in an interview with zeitzeichen also for a decrease in the relief, which he had already proposed with a view to the 2017 Reformation anniversary. He expressly appreciates the monument in its current form and the parish, which "was the first in Europe to deal with such a relief in their church in a great artistic way". The monument in its current form is dialectical in the classic style of the 1980s and represents deep-rooted anti-Semitism in a good way. But this dialectic no longer works today, "things just stand side by side." In addition, there have been no complaints in recent decades or lawsuits given by Jews. "It is different now, and it cannot leave us cold."
In addition, the memorial leaves questions unanswered, do not consider the Lutheran aspect of abusive plastic. This is “an expression of a massive anti-Judaic sermon and not a cultural monument. Therefore, the sow should be removed, but not disappear into the museum, but become part of a further developed memorial in front of the church. The exact design would have to be defined in a longer process in which the artist, community and the Jewish community are involved. "It can be an exciting process."

But if the insult at the bottom of the memorial were to be placed at eye level, it would be "a creepy idea," says the former Wittenberg pastor Keller. In its current place, the shame is at a spatial distance from the observer, which corresponds to a historical distance. "If we brought the sow to the museum or at eye level to the viewer, this distance would be eliminated." Every new element would destroy the current memorial. In addition, such an inheritance is the responsibility of the church and not a museum.

"This is not a majority in the parish," says Johannes Block, who has been a pastor at the town church in Wittenberg since 2011, regarding a possible decrease in the relief. And the complaint, which calls for this, has reinforced this attitude among many community members. Because it puts the parish in a position as if it were the client or advocate of plastic. “We suffer from plastic just as much as the plaintiff,” says Block. The relief is a difficult part of an inheritance, but it must not be denied. “According to the Judeo-Christian understanding, there is no perfectly perfect story. But there is the power of forgiveness and reconciliation that turns evil into good. ”

However, Block also sees the need for "further development", because in its current form the memorial site looks back, the view is missing, towards reconciliation and togetherness. That is why Block in the community also promotes the further development of the memorial, which takes into account the presence of the Judeo-Christian relationship.

Veiling as a compromise?

The anti-Semitism commissioner of the EKD, Christian Staffa, also emphasized in an interview with zeitzeichen: "The debate about dealing with disgraceful plastic is also about something like the present of the past, not just the past." The question must be asked whether there is one Link between the "Judensau" at the church and the same swear word in the schoolyard. What should a memorial look like that also includes the reception history of such anti-Semitic works of art such as Judensau, pictures of "Ecclesia et synagoga" or depictions of Cranach on the law and the gospel?

The 1988 memorial was approved almost everywhere in critical circles at the time, Staffa says. In addition, it was an act of independence of the church against state deficit remembrance and the treatment of anti-Semitism in the GDR. But: "Both frames no longer exist." Therefore, the fact that the sculpture is not "suspended" leads to justified objections. "From a Jewish perspective, the disgrace, which today's Christian believes with the best intent to serve as an inevitable manifestation of their own anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic tradition of violence and therefore to purify the offender's offspring and prevent the romanticization of their history of violence, can be perceived as an insult and insult."

Staffa himself has become a "stay-voter" who is more in favor of hanging out. But if this fails due to the resistance of the parish, how could a "further development" of the memorial look like? Staffa's suggestion is reminiscent of the art of packaging artist Christo: the relief on the church could be covered, a copy placed at the foot of the church and provided with other artistic elements, thus leading to one or more "experimental" solutions that could be changed. This would prevent the fear of a possible "iconoclasm" that the city church experienced in the Reformation, but at the same time make frozen positions more flexible and change them.

Stephan Kosch

Stephan Kosch is the editor of "zeitzeichen" and observes intensively all topics of sustainable business.