Attention

German Chancellor
Mr. Gerhard Schröder
Bundeskanzleramt
10557 Berlin
Germany

Subject: Enforced imposing of church tax on unemployed non-church members
Dr. Peter Nittmann, File no. L 13 AL 4869/02,
Landessozialgericht Baden-Württemberg


Dear Chancellor,

"If a servant annoys you, complain to his master". Since you are certain to meet your Minister of Justice in one of your next Cabinet meetings, we feel it best to address you directly in the matter of an outrageous act of injustice, that was made possible, only by the Concordat between Hitler and the Pope Pius XI, and is still valid law in your country.

Your coalition government make laws and you, as Chancellor, determine the "guidelines of politics". You also have the power to dismiss your Minister of Justice, and therefore, by addressing you personally, the passing on of responsibilities that is so popular in bureaucracies all over the world by using an ideologised Montesquieu, will be excluded.

In your country, unemployed non-church members have considerable sums of money deducted from their unemployment benefits as church tax, "Kirchensteuer".

This tax is levied with a single justification that analogous taxes are levied from employed church members, according to the Concordat between Hitler and Pius XI, which is said to be legally binding for you, as membership fees for privileged ("registrierter", "anerkannter") religious communities for said communities to dispose of autonomously.

While your country's press has, until recently, kept this fact secret, which has been in existence for many years, your judicial apparatus is now organising training, by the name of "berufliche Fortbildung", for the purpose of inducing judges that are confronted with this problem, to deny the damages imposed on unemployed non-church members in this way, which are made possible by reference to the privileges of certain religious communities, that have been in existence since 1933, by stating that the extra money levied by your state apparatus is not being used for the alleged purpose and that, their levying is therefore, not in breach of the German Constitution, which expressly forbids anyone to be harmed or disadvantaged in any way for not belonging to a religious group.

Since some of your courts involved in such cases – as far as we understand, in Hamburg, Hessen and Chemnitz – made decisions precisely to this effect, and thus declared the outrageous imposition of "Kirchensteuer" on unemployed non-church members to be unconstitutional, it is clear, that the aforementioned training, which is not known to the public and which your judicial apparatus is organising, is intended to coerce German judges to violate the German Constitution, in order to prevent those unemployed, who have been able to free themselves from the major religions from having a relative advantage over those who support these major religions voluntarily with their membership – with the possible consequences arising from former state agreements etc. – and that for the purpose of achieving a percentage of church members in the population as high as possible, which is as such, an extremely anti-constitutional aim on the part of your state in favour of privileged religious communities.

We respectfully ask you, Mr. Chancellor, please take steps to ensure that organised influencing of your judges to violate the Constitution are not allowed in future! In the name of democracy for all your people, irrespective of their circumstances, please ensure that your Constitution is honestly adhered to – as the lower courts from Hessen to Chemnitz have been doing – which also means that the money taken from those non-church members due to this indecent reference to "Kirchensteuer" must be returned, with the interest usually applied in your country, and, of course, must never be levied again – not even with the cynical justification that this money is misappropriated anyway.

Dear Chancellor,
   We also discovered that the media press in your country is spreading the rumour that you intend, in order to make sure the misappropriated "Kirchensteuer" levied on the unemployed non-church members continues to flow into the state coffers. Simply to abolish this mendacious name and replace it with another, while continuing to levy the same amount of tax on the unemployed, because your State, on account of its difficult financial situation, urgently needs the money – Yet, the same State voluntarily dispenses with real property and property acquisition tax on the extremely rich privileged religious communities.

While your government's budgeting policies are, of course, not entirely our business, we would still hope that we will see, in you and your government's future behaviour, that the media press has wrongly, and with your disapproval, set this rumour in motion!

In the name of democracy for all Germans, particularly those in unfortunate financial circumstances, we offer best wishes for a just, constitutional and successful term of government.


We remain,

Yours faithfully,

Peter Plane

P.S.
Dear Chancellor,
We will forward to you by Postal Services a copy of this letter.
V.S.S.