ABSTRACT
The German Constitutional Court’s ruling published in August 1995 that the so-called ‘Bavarian crucifix order’ was unconstitutional stimulated widespread public debate. The Federal Court thus drew precisely the opposite conclusions from the ‘tension between positive and negative religious freedom’ to those drawn by the Bavarian Court. The case of the Bavarian Crucifix Order illustrates the problematic relationship of a constitution both to normal politics and to the community in which it is embedded. Thus anyone objecting to the Kreuzesbefehl could point to the Bavarian Constitution itself as well as to those Articles of the Basic Law concerning religious freedom, the rights of parents in determining their children’s upbringing, and the protection of basic rights. Pupils are to be educated into the spirit of democracy, the love of their Bavarian homeland and of the German people and in accordance with reconciliation between peoples.
