Anti-Jewish Medieval Sculpture Can Stay on Church, Germany's Top Court Rules

Germany's top court has rejected an attempt to have an anti-Jewish relief sculpture removed from the facade of one of the country's most historically important churches.

The so-called "Jewish sow" sculpture on the church in Wittenberg, where the father of the Reformation Martin Luther once preached, can stay in place, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) ruled on Tuesday.

By adding a bronze baseplate and a nearby display with an explanatory text, the church had transformed the 13th-century sculpture into a "memorial," Germany's highest civil judges found.

Although anti-Semitic when seen in isolation, the additions by the church meant that an unbiased observer would see the sandstone sculpture as "a memorial for the purpose of commemorating and remembering the centuries-long discrimination and persecution of Jews up to the Shoah [Holocaust]," the BGH ruled. Therefore, the judges ruled, there was no legal obligation to remove it.

The relief depicts a large pig with two people sucking on her teats who can be identified as depictions of Jews by their pointed hats.
Another figure, considered to be a rabbi according to the court, raises the animal's tail and looks into its anus.

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Pigs are considered unclean in the Jewish faith, and the whole motif—found on many churches in Germany and in other places in Europe—associating Jews with pigs was designed in the Middle Ages to be deeply insulting.

The Jewish plaintiff who wanted the anti-Jewish depiction removed brought the case to the highest court after failing in the lower courts.
The Wittenberg City Church is considered the mother church of the Reformation, due to its connection with Martin Luther. Just a short walk away is the church where Luther is said to have pinned his famous 95 Theses.