When the farmer Rafenauer beats up the boy Arthur in Ludwig Thomas’ “Lasbubengeschichten”, he thinks he got one of the miserable rascals who always steal his apples. But he hasn’t, these are Ludwig and Lenz, who, in contrast to the elegant holiday guest, don’t let themselves be caught.
And that was the end of it for a long time, the topic. Anyone who stole the fruit from the neighbor’s garden couldn’t get caught. This is theft, not a trivial offense, but that obviously doesn’t deter every potential robber.
Fruit growers have been complaining for a long time, for example on Lake Constance, that people walking past pick a pear or a handful of plums from the tree as a matter of course. Can’t be that bad, that little bit. With one apple per holidaymaker, however, there are quickly a few million.
And if you have a fruit tree in a remote meadow, you may be familiar with the unpleasant surprise when only the last three mirabelle plums are still hanging on the tree, even though the harvest is about to begin.
Brazen thieves were also out and about near Heilsbronn. They are said to have stolen 100 kilograms of potatoes from the field and selected the largest and most beautiful ones, as the police specifically noted. Times are getting rougher, groceries more expensive, but that’s no reason to simply steal food from the field or from the tree.
So-called mouth robbery no longer exists, this form of theft that sounds quite harmless because it somehow sounds like hungry mouths. The corresponding paragraph was abolished as early as 1975, now it doesn’t matter from a purely legal point of view whether someone steals a peach from a tree or puts a pair of trousers in a boutique, theft is theft. And that also applies when the branch hangs over the fence.
If your heart aches now because all the beautiful fruit that could be used to cook such fine jam is withering away, pay attention to the yellow ribbon. This allows owners to mark those trees that they do not harvest themselves and thus release them to the general public. Then you don’t have to run away when the farmer comes across the meadow. Not everyone is as fast as Ludwig and Lenz.