Fri 4 Jan 2008
Germany: Neubronner’s forced to leave
Posted by admin under Germany, Local News, The NEWS
Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends of freedom of education
Please read below the statement of our lawyer. We are leaving Germany for now, and our children and my husband Tilman have already given up their permanent residence in Gemany. I will maintain my permanent residence in Bremen because I am the bearer of our small publishing house. We are just preparing a German edition of John Holt’s "Teach your own", and the German version of “The Teenage Liberation Handbook” is in print. So the work has to go on.
Fortunately we have been invited to several places in Europe. That is why our new life will start with a very long journey to see all those places and meet supporting friends and families. Nevertheless, it is hard to leave everything behind, especially our tomcat (a neighbour will take care of him), our relatives and friends and choirs and music ensembles and sport teams, our house and garden - our town and our country.
We thank you for all your letters, mails and support, it is very much appreciated and helps a lot!
We do not give in.
Warm regards
Dagmar and Tilman Neubronner
Surprisingly, the German Federal Constitutional Court just granted the constitutional complaint of the Neubronner family. The family had sued against the refusion of legal aid for the proceedings in front of the administration court. The argument for refusing them legal aid had been justified with "prospect of success too small " This decision has been rescinded/overruled and declared unconstitutional.
At the same time, the Neubronner family decided to leave Germany and move abroad, because the federal minister of education continuously constituted new, higher penalties against them (summing up to more than 10.000 $ at least!) and threatened with not defined "further coercives" - but after trying to impound their household and their accounts, only jail and loss of custody are left. Several efforts of the Neubronner’s attorney (and of Neubronners themselves) to establish a direct communication to the authority have been rejected without any explanatory statement. The appellate proceedings in front of the upper administration court will be continued, especially after the positive decision of the Federal Constitutional Court. (Neubronners had sued their federal government for refusing their children the right to learn at home without going to a public school.)
The press is heartily welcome to meet the Neubronner family immediately before they leave Bremen:
Monday, 7th January 2008, 10 a.m.., in Bremen. Please contact me for accrediting westerholt@die-rechtsanwaelte.com
Kind regards, Matthias Westerholt
Attorney
Note: the German Federal Constitutional Court’s granting of the constitutional complaint of the Neubronner family only applies to the first of the processes or complaints filed, so the financial burden on the familiy is still massive.
Learning Freely News
January 5th, 2008 at 9:21
This is terrible. It is downright persecution. And at the same time it must be hard to leave your lives behind and leave for a country where they will leave you alone.
I wish you all the best.
January 5th, 2008 at 21:30
It’s embarrassing to have anything to do with the place (I live here, my son is half German). The reaction from the average German, never mind ‘the authorities’ is pathetic. Ze Law iz ze Law. Ve must obay ze law.
No wonder they all followed like bleating blind sheep when that nice Mr Hitler (not allowed to discuss this in Germany) had his bright idea of decimating the German intellectual population. It certainly worked. And it was Hitler and his merry band who were mainly responsible for this shoddy and nasty state of affairs.
It’s so depressing. The press - forget the press- more interested in cars and tits. TV is even worse. The government… well lets just hope they keep themselves busy in their own back yard. Certainly the last time they looked over the fence it was bad bad news all round.
I too am thinking of getting out of the country with my family, Holland sounds nice, before the Dept.of Mind Control gets wind of us and our views on state control freak education.
My partner lost custody of her two older children because the estranged father, who spent most of his schooldays bunking off because he hated it, informed the German Authorities that the mother was patently and plainly insane (medically) and psycologically unable to look after them, because… she was interested with homeschooling and alternatives in State run education, even, even, to the extent of taking them (we all went) to South Africa to get as far away from the repressed Nazi regime as she could.
Well he got her and the kids back to Germany for a visit, and yup, there they stayed.
It’s a miserable hell hole here, I just wish the international press would take a notice and perhaps,just perhaps, embarrassing the Authorities into looking at there wonderful National Socialist System in the way it should be. Like something nasty on your shoe.
But alas the international press seem more concerned with keeping that burning bush going, he does after all provide wonderful copy.
The Neubronner’s are lucky. At least they can get out. Many here in Germany just don’t have the choice.