The country's highest court ordered conservative Bavaria on Thursday to remove crosses and crucifixes from classroom walls, saying they violate freedom of religion.
The unexpected decision upset officials in Bavaria, where ties between state and Catholic church have traditionally been close. State officials said they would try to alter their constitution or otherwise get around the ruling.Bavaria's educational bylaws instruct schools to hang a crucifix on each classroom wall to help "instill reverence for God." It is the only German state known to have such a rule.
"The mere presence of a cross doesn't force anyone to accept Christian beliefs," said Governor Edmund Stoiber. "It's a symbol of our Western culture and values."
The ruling had large potential ramifications because of the growing number of Turkish Muslims and other non-Christian children in German schools, whose presence is sometimes described as a threat to German culture by conservatives.
About 10 percent of the 850,000 students in elementary and secondary schools covered by Thursday's ruling are foreigners, about half of them non-Christians, said Peter Erhardt, spokesman for the Bavarian education department.
But the ruling came in a response to a complaint by a Christian couple, Ernst and Renate Seler of Fischbach, from a farming village of 1,000 people north of Munich.
Adherents of the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, a turn-of-the-century German mystic and humanist, the Selers began complaining in 1989 about a large crucifix hanging in the community school.
In their complaint, the couple charged that the constant "forced viewing" of the "abused, half-naked male body" representing Christ had traumatized their three teenage children.
"From the aesthetic point of view, if you aren't brought up Catholic it's simply repulsive," Renate Seler said.
The Constitutional Court agreed that a public school must reflect the state's neutral religious viewpoint.
"The presence of the cross in the schoolroom forces children to be confronted with the symbol and to `learn under the cross,' " the ruling said.
In a dissenting opinion, three of the eight justices said schools reflect the values of their communities in overwhelmingingly Catholic Bavaria. They said the crucifix did not exert unreasonable influence on non-Christians.