German federal court rejects bid to remove antisemitic relic

By GEIR MOULSON
Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) — A German federal court has rejected a Jewish man’s bid to have a 700-year-old antisemitic statue removed from a church where Martin Luther once preached. The Federal Court of Justice on Tuesday upheld rulings by lower courts on the sculpture on the Town Church in Wittenberg — one of more than 20 such relics from the Middle Ages that still adorn churches in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. As in those rulings, judges pointed to the addition in the 1980s of a memorial at the site that showed the church had distanced itself from the sculpture. The plaintiff had argued that the sculpture was “a defamation of and insult to the Jewish people” that has “a terrible effect up to this day.” He plans to appeal.