Söder’s Kreuzerlass has presented Bavaria’s administrative judge with a Herculean task. Now the judiciary is giving a cumbersome explanation as to why the crosses are allowed to remain hanging. There is a much more elegant solution.
So now it’s here, the Bavarian Administrative Court’s reasoning why the crosses in Bavaria’s office buildings should not be taken down – as required by the Bund für Geistfreiheit, among others. Markus Söder’s “Kreuzerlass” remains unaffected. And as far as can be seen, the judges have done their best to justify what is certainly not easy to justify (the justification was a bit long in coming).
The judges point out that the decree does not uphold the “objective-legal neutrality requirement of the state” – after all, the cross is to be seen as a “symbol of Christian-religious conviction and not just as an expression of Western culture shaped by Christianity”. In that respect, quite a Söder gossip.
However, the plaintiffs’ fundamental rights would not be violated by this. Because according to the decree, the crosses would be placed in the entrance area of the building, “i.e. in a transit area”. As a result, visitors are “only briefly confronted with such crosses”, which distinguishes the said authorities’ crosses “from crosses in classrooms”.
“Essentially Passive Symbol”
So far many may still go along. The fact that crosses placed in the entrance area of government offices are supposed to be “essentially passive symbols without a missionary or indoctrinating effect” can safely be qualified as a purely administrative-legal dogma. Which can already be read from the artifice wording “essentially”. Someone knows very well how slippery the foundation is on which the arguments are being based.
With so much rhetoric, one may ask oneself all the more why the Bayreuth solution in this matter is so little known. Confronted with the controversial Söder decree, they had the “Angel of Cultures” by artists Carmen Dietrich and Gregor Merten installed in the entrance area of the regional court (like in few other authorities in Bavaria).
Solomonic solution: The “Angel of Cultures” (on the right in the picture) by the artists Carmen Dietrich and Gregor Merten hangs in the entrance area of the Palace of Justice in Bayreuth.
(Photo: Carmen Dietrich and Gregor Merten)
Arranged in the ring, the symbols of the three Abrahamic religions – the Star of David for Judaism, the Cross for Christianity and the Crescent for Islam – together form the outline of an angel.
The symbol simply stands for “the religious and ideological neutrality of the judiciary” can be read on an explanatory board. What an elegant solution.