The German Church State is stealing taxes from millions of unemployed non-church members by violating its constitution!

On the grounds of the Church Concordat, which was made between Hitler and the Vatican in 1933 and which is still valid today, Germany assumes a macabre leading role as a quasi-totalitarian, clerical cancerous ulcer in Europe. The pact between German Fascism and the major Christian Churches ensured the latter a multitude of privileges, ranging from the monopoly on indoctrination at schools and universities to the imposing of church tax by the German state, a phenomenon that is unique worldwide. On this basis, the German Church State has developed a particularly perfidious and shameful method which, as far as we know, has no equivalent in any other country with a bourgeois-democratic constitution and which has been unknown to the international public until now:

Every unemployed German who is not a member of a church is forced to pay church tax!

This atrocity, which is a mockery of the most elementary human rights – by this, of course, we mean those human rights that were fought for and attained at high cost by the French Revolution, not their current perversion in subservience to US imperialism – this atrocity, with which the right to religious freedom is being trodden on millions of times every day, is laid out in the German Social Security Code, regulated annually by guidelines from the Employment Ministry and affirmed repeatedly up to the present day by judgements passed by the highest German courts. Everyone in Germany who is unemployed who receives his first official statement from the Federal Labour Office concerning the amount of unemployment benefit he is to receive has this scandalous discrimination of unemployed non-church members pointed out to him in words that would not be out of place in George Orwell's "1984":

"Unemployment benefit is a tax-free wage replacement from which neither income tax nor church tax is deducted. The deduction of church tax is accounted for independently of any confessional leaning or membership since it is the case for the majority of employees."

In other words: an unemployed non-church member does not have to pay church tax, but he does have to pay church tax because most people do. A Christian missionary would comment on such a contradiction as follows: "Let he who can comprehend it comprehend it!" Such a rape of logic and the most basic principles of state law can only prosper in a state ruled by the Church.

The enforced imposing of church tax on unemployed non-church members is in breach of the following provisions of the German constitution (the "Basic Law") that are, according to Article 1 of the German Basic Law, "directly applicable law":

• Basic Law, Article 3, Section 1 and 3, which states that no-one may be "favoured or disadvantaged" on account of his political or religious views ("principle of equality")
• Basic Law, Article 4, Section 1: "The freedom of religion, conscience and political and religious leaning is inviolable"; and
• Basic Law, Article 33, which prescribes the state's fundamental obligation to neutrality.

The highest German courts – the Federal Court for Social Security and Related Matters and the Federal Constitutional Court – justify this constitutional violation, the enforced imposing of church tax, in terms of "administrational practicability" (what is more important – the time and effort expended by the state bureaucracy in order to adhere to the constitution, or the constitution itself?! At this juncture it is worth pointing out that the considerably more complicated setting up of tax classes according to marital status and number of children – through which the birth rate is forced upwards and the unemployment rates for women fiddled – is obviously "administrationally practicable"; furthermore, the state can dispense with its free extra service to the churches, i.e. the levying of its membership fees, just like it does with any other club or organisation, if it wants to claim that its separation of robbery and abuse creates undesirable "administrative effort") and point at the "fact" that the "overwhelming majority" of the working population pay church tax, i.e., as the courts claim, this is "usual". But this reference to the alleged majority case is firstly irrelevant in terms of the constitutional law and secondly incorrect.

First: the German Federal Constitutional Court, in its most recent leading decision on the enforced imposing of church tax in 1994 (file number 1 BvL 8/85) – and it gave itself nine years to come to this decision! – has let it be known without any room for misunderstanding that it intentionally intends to violate the constitution when it states, with reference to the principle of equality: "In particular, Article 3, Section 1 of the Basic Law does not demand that the legislative body actually carry out the differentiations that it is permitted to carry out". In other words: the conditions laid out in the constitution are of no importance whatsoever to the highest German Court; it is pretending that the constitution is merely a well-meant recommendation and not a binding regulation. This is a form of neo-totalitarian despotism that hallmarks an undemocratic state and, since Willy Brandt's politically motivated Berufsverbote (28.1.1972), is part of a sad and shameful tradition in Germany.

Second: it is not correct that the "overwhelming majority" of the working population in Germany pay church tax. A decision passed by the German Federal Court for Social Security and Related Matters on 8 November 2001 (file number B 11 AL 43/01 R) states that in 1999, 43% of the working population in Germany did not pay church tax. This information is extremely difficult to gain access to; it is kept quiet by the media and thus deliberately withheld from the general public. Although the German Constitutional Court requests pro forma that the legislative body "observe the further development" of that part of the population required to pay church tax, the German state is very reluctant in complying with this request – it only does so every three years – and keeps the results of its statistical surveys secret from the public. This cements the constitutional violation and the mass impoverishment unleashed by it.

Now – in 2002 – we can assume that about half of the German working population do not pay church tax (the exact number will only be disclosed, if at all, in 2005). This surprisingly high proportion of employed non-church members in the working population stems from the fact that 70-80% of the former GDR do not belong to a church (there, the unemployment rate is particularly high – at least 20%) and in the west of Germany, more and more people are leaving the church under the pressure of increasing poverty. Millions of people are affected by the anti-constitutional enforced imposing of church tax on unemployed non-church members, especially when one considers that not only unemployment benefit is affected but also unemployment aid (which is lower), early retirement and maintenance payments and even the short-time allowance and bad-weather compensation. Due to this tax robbery carried out on the poorest, and therefore most vulnerable part of the population, the German Church State rakes in billions annually. Violating the constitution pays – literally! The German state, which levies this church tax from unemployed non-church members, describes the tax as "fictitious" because it does not pass the billions on to the Church but, so it maintains, keeps it for itself. But it will hardly matter to the part of the population that has been robbed, both financially and legally, which of the two robbers keeps the loot or whether they divide it up amongst themselves.

In the meantime, a considerable number of unemployed people have filed suits against the enforced imposing of church tax – here, too, there are no precise figures. It is probably due to this circumstance that the German media mention this point casually and incompletely (of course, without mentioning either the fact of the constitutional violation or the aforementioned 43% unemployed non-church members) and that subordinated courts have determined that the enforced imposing of church tax is in violation of the constitution:

• The Hessen State Appellate Court for Social Security and Related Matters on 30.1.85 (file no. L-6/Ar 1441/83)
• The Hamburg Appellate Court for Social Security and Related Matters on 1.7.93 (file no. 13 Ar 817/92)
• The Chemnitz Appellate Court for Social Security and Related Matters on 10.7.97 (file no. S 6 Al 1277/94)

But these few rulings from lower courts have not had any consequences, since the highest courts stick doggedly to their constitutional violation (most recently the Federal Court for Social Security and Related Matters in a judgement passed by the 7^th Senate on 21 March 2002; file no. B 7 AL 18/01 R) and most of the courts follow this prescription from the highest judges. It must also be known that all the courts operate with delays and protractions of proceedings, which means that the proceedings last for several years, the plaintiffs fall into resignation and acquiesce in an unsatisfactory compromise ("settlement"). After all, the plaintiffs go about their proceedings without prior arrangements, i.e. uncoordinatedly, which means that the isolated, individual resistance to the slow-grinding milling machines of the German injustice system can be broken easily. A final point to add is that the German insurance companies have obviously been directed, by the state organs, to terminate legal protection insurance in the case of a suit against the enforced imposing of church tax. Every German court can be sure that its dismissal of cases will be approved by the highest judges and will be supported by the state organs and the media. As already explained in detail above, the Federal Constitutional Court has already coldly signalled its willingness to violate the constitution (principle of equality, Basic Law, Article 3 Section 1 and 3); in the same decision, it accepts, with blunt cynicism, the mass impoverishment caused by this constitutional violation when it states: "The legislative body is not bound by the constitution to regard the principle of standard of life". So it can be of no surprise that all judgments passed by courts in this context are a kick in the face for those affected by them – a blow against the principle of the rule of law, against logic and reason, and against human dignity.

There is one consequence to be drawn from all of this: it is absolutely crucial that the international democratic public helps to remedy this abuse. We hereby ask every individual, every organisation committed to freedom of speech and religion as most basic human rights to do the following:

• Protest against the enforced imposing of church tax on unemployed non-church members in Germany
• Demand that the German judiciary put an immediate end to this constitutional violation and adhere to Article 3, Section 1 and 3 and Article 4, Section 1 of the German Basic Law and abolish the enforced imposing of church tax on unemployed non-church members immediately!
• Human rights, not the Middle Ages – democracy instead of the Church State of Germany!

Among the multitude of suits filed that the public does not know about due to the politics of silencing and misinformation, there is one trial where your protest can have an effect, where it can, as a representative of all the cases in process, set a clear signal against the unconstitutional enforced imposing of church tax. The plaintiff, Dr. Peter Nittmann, who left the church 25 years ago, is without work after 17 years in his profession. He is currently being forced to pay around 96 euros per month, which makes a total of around 1725 euros for the total duration of his receiving unemployment benefit (1 ½ years). On 11.12.2001, Dr. Nittmann lodged a complaint with his local labour exchange, which was rejected as "unfounded" on 30.1.2002. Since 28.2.2002, a suit for repayment of the church tax has been pending at the first-instance administrative court for social security and related matters ("Sozialgericht") in Freiburg; only after letters of protest from abroad arrived, the delaying tactics were put to an end and a first date for the hearing was fixed (for 20 November 2002). The plaintiff is prepared, independently of cost and duration of the trial – his legal protection insurance, which he had with a major insurance company, was terminated, by a board decision (!), six months after the suit was filed – to take his suit as far as is necessary – right up to the European Court of Human Rights.