Since 1305, it has graced the facade of the Church of St. Mary of Wittenberg
Germany’s Supreme Court today dismissed the lawsuit demanding the removal of a “Judensau” from the church of Santa Maria de Wittenberg, the relief of an anti-Semitic sow that decorated the facade of the temple in which the reformer Martin Luther used to preach since the Middle Ages. . Dating from 1305, it is a plaque with a carved relief of a sow nursing Jewish children, while a rabbi lifts his tail to look at her. “Wittenberg sow” is an insult, but the Protestant faith community that houses the church has clearly distanced itself from its meaning, the judges ruled. By putting up a plaque explaining the origins of the “Judensau”, church officials have turned a “monument of shame” into a “warning monument,” the court stressed.
A Jewish plaintiff demanded removal of the relief from the facade of the church in Wittenberg and went to the Supreme Court after failing to honor in all lower instances. The case took on special relevance due to the fact that the Church of Santa María is considered the mother house of the Protestant Reformation, as Martin Luther (1483-1546), a notorious anti-Semite, preached there. The current religious community recognizes that the “Wittenberg sow” is “a very complex heritage, but also a historical document”. The president of the sixth chamber of the German Supreme Court, Judge Stephan Seiters, had emphasized during the hearing two weeks ago that the relief itself is “engraved in stone against anti-Semitism”.
However, its offensive nature and in violation of the law can be overcome not only by removing the image from the facade of the building, but also by “distancing from it and contextualizing its meaning”, the judges emphasized in their verdict. A clear explanation of the historical and religious significance, as placed on the facade of the church in the 1980s, should stand up to “the marginalization, hatred and slander” that the relief originally pursued. The Protestant parish lawyers emphasized that the plaque placed to explain the origin of the relief and denounce its offensive nature was agreed with the Jewish community of Wittenberg. He points out, among other things, that reliefs such as those in the church of Santa María were common in the Middle Ages and that there are still about 50 on the facades of as many churches throughout Germany.
The chairman of the Jewish Central Council in Germany, Josef Schuster, emphasized that it is always better to place plaques explaining the meaning of such reliefs than to remove them and thus ignore and forget them. Schuster pointed out that there are other positive examples in Regensburg Cathedral or the Collegiate Church of St. Peter in Bad Wimpfen. However, the highest representative of German Jews emphasized that both the Catholic and Protestant churches have a long anti-Semitic history, which is very difficult to recover.
Source: La Verdad
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