It has been exactly six years (Oct. 2001) since Dr. Peter Nittmann, the publishing editor who at that time had become unemployed, lodged a complaint against the fact that the German state was deducting church tax from his meagre unemployment benefit, which was financed entirely from insurance contributions, although Dr. Nittmann had already left the church more than twenty years previously! His case made it known for the first time, both at home and abroad, that the German state, protected by a water-tight and obviously previously arranged media news blackout, on the basis of the concordat made with Hitler in 1933 and still valid to this day (!), was enforcing church tax on millions of unemployed non-church members in open violation of the constitution, a tax which it otherwise deducts from the members of the two major German churches (Catholic and Lutheran-Protestant), which are already immensely privileged and consequently phenomenally wealthy.
     The case of Dr. Nittmann led to thousands of enraged protests all over the world being sent to the German government and judiciary, from as far away as Nepal or Peru. The International Thomas Jefferson Colloquium at the Sorbonne (2002) condemned this tax theft from non-confessional unemployed in Germany, as did the delegates at the National Convention of American Atheists in Chicago (2003), the Australian Victorian Secular Society and three secularist congresses in Spain alone (Albacete 2003, Granada 2005, Talavera de la Reina 2006) and four national conferences of the French Free Thinkers' Association (Marseille 2003, Toulouse 2004, Lamoura 2006, Clermont-Ferrand 2007). The Italian Partito Radicale made an inquiry at the European Parliament in 2003 about the enforced German church tax, and the Raelian Association, which has a worldwide membership of 60,000, condemned this foray committed by the Hitler Concordat State at their World Congress in Rome (2004).
     The protest was successful: just as they had clandestinely introduced the law thirty years previously to the day, on 1.1.1975, the German government passed a law abolishing their unconstitutional enforced church tax at the expense of the weakest and poorest of German atheists and those of different faiths effective as of 1.1.2005!
     But: today there is still not one victim who has got a single cent back of the money they have had stolen from them – a sum which totals billions – including Dr. Nittmann. All the expensive suits filed by the victims have been smashed down by the German courts, including Dr. Nittmann's in no less than four instances, most recently before the Federal Constitutional Court (early 2005). The constitutional violation that took place has not been admitted once and no cent in compensation paid.

Exactly two years ago (Oct. 2005) Dr. Nittmann was the first – and so far only one – of the victims to file a suit against Germany at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The aim of the suit is to determine that Germany, through its enforced church tax at the expense of unemployed non-church members, has violated freedom of religion as guaranteed by the European Human Rights Convention (Art. 9 of the Convention), the right to equal treatment independently of confession (Art. 14 of the Convention) and the right to property (Art. 1 of the additional protocol of the Convention) and must return the stolen money to Dr. Nittmann (EUR 900 of enforced church tax in his case alone!). Along with the sixty-page application, carefully and fundamentally reasoned, Dr. Nittmann's lawyer submitted several files documenting comprehensively the worldwide protest against this spectacular violation of religious freedom by Germany two years ago in Strasbourg.
     The only result so far: a document issued by the court acknowledging the receipt of the suit.

The Church and the German government are now speculating on the enforced church tax they have squeezed out of unemployed non-church members in Germany for decades now just being slowly forgotten and left to earn interest in the robbers' bags while the courts, in the time-honoured manner, have continued to pass Dr. Nittmann's case on, year by year from court to court, and are now letting gather dust in a drawer until the public get tired and the international attention has faded.
     Because the Vatican and the German Chancellor's Office, as well as the key figures in Brussels, of course, who are continuing their drive to reclericalise the EU behind the scenes (see Article 52), certainly know what to think about the fundamental significance of Dr. Nittmann's suit in Strasbourg – which is why it is being kept strictly silent by the media: if Germany is convicted, then it will be once and for all no longer able to cover up its scandalous tax theft from unemployed non-church members, based on the Hitler concordat and which has been in operation for decades, and must submit to the victims' demands to be compensated.
     And the Church, with the EU bureaucracy bowing and scraping to it, currently needs nothing less than a leading decision of a European court against an enforced church tax levied on non-church members: because this is exactly what the Church wants to introduce all across the EU in the long term. Since its proportion of members has been dwindling for some time, its plan for the future is that everyone, whether they are atheists, Moslems, Jews, Raelians, Jehovah's Witnesses or philosophically amorphous non-religious, must pay money to them, in the manner of the Middle Ages, by means of an enforced church tax, independently of how this will then be disguised in terms of legality and propaganda – using exactly the same model successfully pushed through in Spain some time ago. The percentage that the Church has levied there from the tax revenue raised from all Spanish taxpayers, either directly or via its undercover organisations by the state, has just been quietly increased from 0.52% to 0.7%, a formidable amount. But once the principle of voluntary church membership or rather of voluntary contributions based on this principle, which was fought for in 1789, has been destroyed, it is only a question of a step-by-step policy till the post-modern tithe in good old-fashioned mediaeval style. And the Church, as we know, has an eye for the fundamental and a lot of staying power.
     So we should too.
     The attrition and delaying tactics of the government and court bureaucracies, which are submissive to the Church, must not be allowed to work. This is why we are asking you:
     Renew your protest to the European Court of Human Rights about the Dr. Nittmann case! Re-assert the demand that Germany be convicted for its evident and spectacular violation of the religious freedom guaranteed in the European Human Rights Convention on account of the enforced church tax levied on Dr. Nittmann and millions of other unemployed non-church members!

Please send your polite protest to the following address:

To the Registrar of the European Court of Human Rights
Council of Europe
F-67075 STRASBOURG CEDEX
FRANCE
File No. 36798/05 - NITTMANN ./. Deutschland (please make sure to include!)

Please send a copy of your protest letter to:

Bund gegen Anpassung
Postfach 254
D-79002 Freiburg
Germany
bund-gegen-anpassung@gmx.net