The city of
Wittenberg contains a
Judensau from 1305, on the façade of the
Stadtkirche, the church where
Martin Luther preached. It portrays a rabbi who looks under the sow's tail, and other Jews drinking from its teats. An inscription reads "Rabini Schem HaMphoras", Latin (in German orthography) for "
Shem HaMephorash of the Rabbi", mocking the
Tetragram to be a pig. The sculpture is one of the last remaining examples in Germany of medieval "Jew baiting". In 1988, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the
Kristallnacht, debate sprung up about the monument, which resulted in the addition of a sculpture recognizing that during the
Holocaust six million Jews were murdered "under the
sign of the cross". In
Vom Schem Hamphoras (1543), Luther comments on the Judensau sculpture at Wittenberg, echoing the antisemitism of the image and locating the
Talmud in the sow's bowels: In July 2016, Dr. Richard Harvey, a
Messianic (Christian) theologian from the United Kingdom, initiated a petition on
Change.org to have the Wittenberg Judensau removed. In 2018, Michael Düllmann, a member of Berlin's Jewish community, sued to have the sculpture removed as defamatory. In February 2020, the district court of
Dessau and the Higher Regional Court in
Naumburg had rejected the claim, though petitioner vowed to appeal to higher courts. The Lutheran church and some historians, such as
Michael Wolffsohn, have also debated whether the sculpture should be removed for being antisemitic or whether doing so would whitewash the church's historical antisemitism. The legal debate continued for some time. In June 2022, a German federal court of appeal sided with the lower courts, ruling that while the sculpture itself is disparaging to Jews if viewed in isolation, "the legal system does not demand its removal", suggesting that other means (such as a memorial plaque explaining the history of the sculpture) are better suited to address the issue. ==Partial list==