It’s about money between the Free State and its former top monument conservator, a lot of money. Egon Johannes Greipl was supposed to pay the Free State more than 730,000 euros in damages out of his own pocket. The administrative court in Regensburg sentenced him to do this in January 2019. Almost four years later, the amount to be paid has probably increased to more than 900,000 euros due to the interest stipulated in the judgment. But now the Free State is accommodating the former General Curator of the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments (BLfD). According to information from Süddeutsche Zeitung the responsible state office for finance (LfF) is ready to substantially reduce the compensation – to around 450,000 euros, as it is said in circles of Greipl supporters.
The LfF does not want to confirm this sum, “no details are given,” said a spokeswoman for the state office when asked. On the other hand, she confirms: “Despite the fiscal interests that must be taken into account, the Free State of Bavaria is willing to talk and is interested in reaching an amicable solution.” One can clearly read here that the state is willing to scale back its harshness against Greipl. Perhaps also because the verdict against the now 74-year-old has caused a great deal of incomprehension and unrest among top Bavarian officials. So far, no case is known in which a comparable breach of official duty has been punished in a similarly severe manner.
If you want to understand the unrest, you have to look at the background of the case. When Greipl took office in 1999, monument preservation was facing difficult times. From then on, the state austerity policy caused a massive shrinking of the budget and the elimination of many jobs. On the other hand, the monument authority was given the task of immediately checking and digitally recording all 160,000 architectural and archaeological monuments in Bavaria. For this mammoth task that lasted many years, Greipl needed many helpers who were employed by the BLfD through work contracts – and thus as freelance workers for which an employer does not have to pay social security contributions. The BLfD issued several service contracts to an employee one after the other. This employee found that this was no longer a work contract, but an employment contract subject to social security contributions. He sued up to the Federal Labor Court – and won. Instead of employment contracts, Greipl also issued work contracts afterwards, around 90 times. That’s why the Free State, which had to pay social security contributions for the work contracts, sued him – exactly those around 730,000 euros that Greipl was originally supposed to reimburse.
“It’s bitter when a period of service ends with such a professional, economic and personal disaster,” says Greipl. “I’ve worked practically my whole life for nothing.” Even if the amount he has to pay is cut in half, he cannot raise it alone. There is talk of impending financial ruin.
Greipl’s plight has mobilized many supporters. Above all, Hans Maier (CSU) is campaigning for him. Like many others, the former Bavarian Minister of Education considers the Free State’s actions to be unfair. He and his fellow campaigners therefore want to support the “highly committed, certainly not always comfortable, but without exception committed officials” with a donation, as it says in an appeal, to help settle the demands of the Free State. The donations are to be collected in a trust account that Maier will set up.
Greipl had failed with his appeal to the VGH
The successor negotiations between Greipl and the Free State got rolling with a petition that the former general conservator submitted to the state parliament in March 2022 – together with a list of signatures from his supporters. The right to petition the state parliament is enshrined in the Bavarian constitution and applies to all citizens. “On the occasion of the petitions to the Bavarian state parliament, the case was extensively examined and evaluated several times,” confirms the State Office for Finance with a view to the Greipl cause. “Negotiations with selected representatives of Prof. Dr. Greipl have been taking place since then”.
Shortly before the petition reached the state parliament, Greipl’s appeal against the damages judgment at the Bavarian Administrative Court (VGH) in Munich had failed. However, because the VGH found that the monument conservator did not act intentionally but “grossly negligently” and was threatened with ruin, according to the petition in civil service law there is the possibility that the Free State of Bavaria will defer the compensation or waive it completely. The petition also argued that Greipl had done the Free State a special service with the digital “monument atlas” that could not be overestimated. Citizens can use this atlas to access information, photos and GPS data of all monuments in the Free State online.
In view of Greipl’s services to the state, archaeologist Thomas Fischer, among others, accused the Ministry of Science of violating the spirit and letter of the Monument Protection Act by not granting “regular” budget funds during Greipl’s service. The state is demanding damages here with an almost absurd formulation, as if Greipl’s courageous action had caused damage. “The opposite was the case!” says Fischer. Hans Maier also argues that in view of the massive job cuts by the state government at the time, Greipl had no choice but to close the gap with work contracts. “Otherwise he would not have been able to fulfill the order given by the Free State of Bavaria to inspect and record all architectural and archaeological monuments in Bavaria.”