Last Thursday the German police arrested Katharina Plett, a homeschooling mother of twelve. Yesterday her husband fled to Austria with the children. Homeschooling is illegal in Germany since Hitler banned it in 1938. The Plett family belongs to a homeschooling group of seven Baptist families in Paderborn. We wrote about their case last year.Homeschooling is a threat to the Welfare State in Germany.It might teach individualism,it might question the legitimacy of the State.Not everyone is for freedom.
Stefan Sedlaczek of the Catholic website kreuz.net heard about her arrest on Saturday. He reports today that a female plain-clothes police officer rang at Katharina Plett’s house on Thursday around 11:00 am. When she opened the door other police officers, who had hidden themselves, forced their way in. Mrs Plett was allowed to change, but a police officer followed her into her bedroom in case “she would arm herself and shoot us all.” The woman was able to inform her husband by mobile phone before the police brought her to Bielefeld.
The authorities later informed her husband that she has been imprisoned in Gelsenkirchen. Apparently she has been given a ten day prison sentence. When Sedlaczek rang the Gelsenkirchen prison authorities to get confirmation of Katharina Plett’s whereabouts, he was told that no information would be given. A written request for information has so far not been answered either. Unless we are mistaken, the German mainstream media have not written anything about this case yet.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
German Enforces Hitler's 1938 Ban on Homeschooling
The Brussels Journal reports: