The Neubronner family who homeschool their children in the “free” city of Bremen, were allowed to do so last year, only to be fined 4500 Euro (more than R45 000) this year for homeschooling. When the authorities did not find sufficient possessions in their home to be sold in execution of the fine, this week the bank accounts of the family’s small publishing business were frozen.

This has destroyed the means of economic survival of the family, reducing them to beggarhood. This not only endangers their ability to retain the family home, but has created “justification” for authorities to remove the children from the family.

The family was compelled to obtain a protective court order to prevent the removal of the children from their care – an action that the German authorities have taken in the case of other homeschooling families.

The Association for Homeschooling condemns these actions, which the German government justifies in its quest to prevent “parallel societies” and asserts that the German government is guilty of gross human rights abuses.

The Association also points out that the German state funds and supports the Deutsche Schule in Pretoria and similar German schools elsewhere in Africa, and even provides German homeschooling families in Africa with learning programmes. Clearly, the government of Germany is sustaining German “parallel societies” in Africa while oppressing homeschoolers in Germany under the pretext that homeschoolers (so they claim) are doing in Germany what Germany itself is in fact doing in African countries!