Animal Protectors Fight in Court

Against Mandatory Hunting

December 7, 2006

The first court case of its kind in Germany!

Landowners call for the suspension of hunting on their own land and hunting grounds

It is the first court case of its kind in Germany, and excitement ran high: How will the administrative court of Würzburg react? Impartial judges, well-educated and even more, well-paid, are now faced with the question of whether the ethical concerns of Original Christian farmers should be given serious consideration.

The plaintiffs enter the courtroom with their lawyer. The listener’s benches are filled to the last seat. Television cameras are running and journalists are taking their first notes. The judge’s bench is still empty. High suspense. The lawyer puts on his robe. The filming stops and the judges appear. The session opens.

No one knows that just a few minutes before, the plaintiffs’ lawyer received a secret, sensational piece of information. The presiding judge, Dr. Schäfer, is a hunter!

What a scandal! The presiding judge is a hunter!

This fact leads the lawyer to open the proceedings, not the presiding judge. He requests permission to pose an opening question: “Is one of the judges a hunter?” Displeasure is evidenced at the judges’ table. Whether this should concern the lawyer?, asks the presiding judge. The answer is prompt in coming: “Very much, your honor. The central issue of this legal dispute is an ethical evaluation of hunting. If one of you is a hunter, then he has already decided against the plaintiffs’ ethics and can no longer officiate as judge. If you refuse to answer this very understandable question, I will have to submit a challenge, alone out of concern for bias.”

The man at the judge’s table becomes uneasy. The lawyer asks that his question be included in the minutes. The judge evades him and dictates: “The plaintiffs’ lawyer asks whether the court is unbiased.” “No,” the attorney interrupts, “I asked if you are a hunter!” Now, another of the bench judges gets upset: “We are not taking word-for-word minutes here, Mr. Lawyer.” “Oh, but we should, Mr. Judge, I need to determine what goes into the minutes in this case, because I have made a formal challenge, which has to be recorded precisely, so please do have it written down!”

The presiding judge acquiesces and dictates the lawyer’s words. The air in the courtroom has grown heavy, as if on a hunting drive. This time, however, the hunter in the robes of a judge is the one given chase. The judges leave the room to confer. After a short while, they reappear and announce their decision: The challenge on grounds of concern for bias is rejected as an “abuse of law.” An indignant murmur goes through the rows of seats. An understandable and justified question is supposed to be an abuse of the law?!

Clearly, a court proceeding is exposing its shady side. Now, the lawyer follows up and directs his next statement to the presiding judge, “I know that you are a hunter, and for this reason, I challenge you on grounds of bias.” This scene turns into a tribunal – over a hunter in judge’s robes. The judges again leave the courtroom – somewhat more quickly – to confer and return a few minutes later to announce a new decision: This challenge, as well, is rejected on grounds of “abuse of law.” Only by using the label “abuse of law” was it possible to avoid a decision of purport regarding the two applications concerning bias.

Lawyer and plaintiffs leave the courtroom

This was too much – even for a lawyer who has already experienced many things in court. He asked that the session be interrupted so he could confer with his clients. It made no sense to continue negotiations with this court. Now it was also clear why the court had suggested to the plaintiffs that a decision be made without oral proceedings. They wanted the case off their hands as soon as possible, but the plaintiffs wanted a serious process, for which they had carefully prepared: an oral proceeding, as prescribed by the rules of court, in which legal questions are openly and thoroughly discussed, in the end, to be advised and decided upon by an honest court.

The judges wait for the plaintiffs’ decision. They enter the courtroom again. The session continues. The lawyer explains: After what we have experienced here, we can no longer consider this a serious proceeding. My clients and I will no longer participate in it. He packed his files and left with the plaintiffs that place where rule by law had dropped by the wayside.

The judges could now confer openly with the hunting authorities and, after two hours, do what they had been planning all along: reject the suit.

A wild pig that died an agonizing death lies before the courthouse

While the alibi-function in the courtroom was taking place, a dead wild pig could be seen before the courthouse. It had been wounded the day before with a shot in the gut, whereby it wandered around for 12 hours in the throes of death, until it finally found rest on the property of the plaintiffs and died. Of all places, the animal just happened to be wounded on the hunting grounds that are under the jurisdiction of Oswald Rumpel, head of the Würzburg hunting authority.

Once more, the agonizing death of an animal has demonstrated the cruelty of hunting. Only a third of the animals die immediately, while the rest flee shot and mutilated, dying an agonizing death. However, in their hunting magazines, hunters make no secret of the fact that what they do is a real passion for them, when they aim their guns at animals and pull the trigger. The so-called purpose of gamekeeping proves to be a superficial and long outdated window-dressing. Not seldom, it has more to do with the selective killing of particularly majestic animals, to acquire stag antlers and similar trophies. Furthermore, it is often no more than a shoot down in brutal hunting drives, in which regulation of the animal population doesn’t take place. Instead, the social structure of the herd is destroyed, leading to an explosive growth in the animal population.

Suspension of hunting is rejected – and two of three judges were hunters

It is not surprising that the presiding judge didn’t want to be asked if he belongs to the hunting guild. Meanwhile, we have come to know that it was not only him. A second hunter was sitting on the judges’ bench, as well. With three professional judges to decide in this constitutional process, the hunter majority in the judges’ conference room was ensured.

The easiest way out was chosen, so as not to have to seriously investigate the plaintiffs’ legal stand. From the start, their right to object to hunting based on ethical-religious grounds was denied to the plaintiffs. And why? Because the plaintiffs are not each personally an owner of the land area involved, having joined together in an association of legal capacity in the form of a GmbH & Co. KG. (A limited partnership with a limited liability company as general partner). They said that such an association could not plead their case on ideological and ethical grounds. Quite a flimsy argument, considering the fact that the plaintiffs joined forces through their common ideological-religious goals, to operate their agricultural property according to certain ethical principles, which, above all, include a clear rejection of killing animals.

A follow-up will take place – if necessary, all the way

to the European Court of Human Rights

Two of the three judges were hunters and tried to cut off the concerns of the hunting opponents with a hit in the shoulder. This shot left a bang that will presumably ring in the judge’s ears for some time. The public sat up and took notice – in Germany and abroad. This process will be carried further, if necessary to the European Court of Human Rights, which a year and a day ago, already certified French landowners the right to be against hunting on grounds of conscience. It will also be talked about here in Germany, where the highest courts have repeatedly confirmed the right of Moslem butchers to practice the Moslem ritual of slaughter based on freedom of conscience. If the constitution protects a butcher, who, for reasons of faith, wants to kill animals in a particularly cruel way, then it protects, all the more, the right of a farmer who doesn’t want to kill animals at all.

This is about a cultural transformation: Peace with nature and animals

In the end, word will get around in Bavaria, a land of shooting matches and papal receptions, where ministers and judges as hunters become a security risk for human beings, animals and the constitutional state. This is much more than just a case. It is about a cultural transformation.

Peace with nature, which we so desperately need, presupposes peace with animals. They are related to us, who preceded us in the history of the development of life. They do not want to be killed by us, but look up to us and want to make friends with us. Their life and ours flows from the same divine fountainhead of all life. We did not create it and, therefore, may not destroy it either. It is the same breath that flows through them and us, the breath of God.

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