Anyone who destroys, damages or “commits abusive mischief” to a place of burial, burial or a public memorial for the dead will be punished with up to three years in prison or a fine in accordance with Section 168 Paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code. Animals are, of course, exempt from prosecution. And so it will hardly be possible to determine who exactly it was who dug up to 100 graves in a cemetery in Markt Nordhalben, Upper Franconia, on Monday night. Which at least sometimes amounts to damage, perhaps destruction and possibly even insulting nonsense.
Again New Press As can be seen, relatives caring for graves are less likely to seek responsibility from the suspected wild boars than from the Nordhalben town hall. This is not the first time that the animals have raged like this in the cemetery, so the problem is known. And yet no one has the money needed for adequate fencing, complains a community resident.
So ask the mayor: What can you do about the unwanted visitors? First, Michael Pöhnlein explains the circumstances: The cemetery is located in a forest, there is already a wildlife protection fence, and more are planned. But, says the mayor and hunting director: the pigs are “more intelligent than some four-legged friends” and they always find a way. Either they rolled down the fences with their two hundredweight fighting weight or they dug under them, so the only solution would be a solid wall or a so-called rod mesh fence with a foundation. Both of which are too expensive. “And we can’t turn our cemetery into Fort Knox,” he says.
Instead, Pöhnlein thinks more pragmatically: Visitors would have to close the gates to the cemetery in the evenings to at least not give the wild boars free entry – which are likely to come even more frequently in the future, as he predicts: The coniferous forests in the region are drying out and they are being pushed out of their habitat and approached the people, where they could eat abundantly and, moreover, not be hunted.
The mayor therefore gives the people of Nordhalben little hope when it comes to future wild boar protection. He also rules out the community assuming the costs of restoring the graves. After all, it is a “supernatural event”.