The memorable end to an initiative

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The memorable end to an initiative
Motorbike friends Neuffen

motorcycles

The memorable end to an initiative

The memorable end to an initiative
Half of life

For 20 years the Motorradfreunde Neuffener Steige e.V. has been campaigning against a route closure. Now they have dissolved their association. Because all means have been exhausted? without success. Yet they have achieved a great deal.

Norbert Sorg

07/19/2007

There is one thing that you really cannot say: that the Esslingen District Office has not come up with anything. As early as 1985, the idea of ​​closing the Neuffener Steige, a former mountain race track up on the plateaus of the Swabian Alb, to motorcycles. Because their drivers would race their heads there. The authorities were then able to use almost any means to sabotage the protest against this prohibition. The officials proved that this professional group can sometimes be trusted to do anything, even a skill that no one would otherwise suspect: imagination.
This, in turn, is occasionally expressed in a pronounced love of nature. In order to protect a meadow on which the participants of the annual demonstration drive wanted to gather from the rigors of perforation by the main and side stands, the district office insisted on ecological protective measures. “We just carted up two trailers full of boards,” says Frank Maier, Secretary of the Motorradfreunde, “and the people then pushed the wood under their machines.” Because this edition did not have the destructive effect we had hoped for, we did always considering new harassment. “One day we should put up diversion signs in front of the demo. We did not receive any, however, because the district administration had given strict instructions to refuse us. What the people of Esslingen didn’t know, “says Michael Landkammer, the last chairman of the association, amused,” was that one of us had good connections to offices in the Ludwigsburg district. “
What animated the bureaucrats to take the next bourgeois prank. This time it was supposed to be a giant billboard, “something like the one you know from motorways,” recalls Heide Zander, the club’s cashier. “They knew exactly how expensive such a thing would be.” The monster was just in time for the demo, and by the way it hadn’t cost a penny. Thanks to the friendly support of the Stuttgart Airport Company, which of course still knows nothing of its solidarity with the opponents of the route closure. “Somehow,” says Frank, “it always pays off when you have many members with a wide variety of professions.” It was a good 140 in 1990, at the best of times.
20 years ago, in 1987, Heide, Frank and Michael were all involved in founding the Motorradfreunde Neuffener Stei-ge. They have been involved, organized and litigated for two decades. Without any concrete success. The trail remains closed for motorcycles on weekends and public holidays from May to October. “It was much more possible than you thought,” sums up Frank, “but overall nothing really worked.”
If motorcycle enthusiasts claim that they have no regrets, that they would do it exactly the same way today as they did then, then you take that away from them. For the most convincing reason in the world: because it makes them laugh. Not about their failure, more about how they failed. In court, for example. “It was actually never about our cause, the illegality of the route closure,” regrets Heide, a qualified lawyer by profession.
In the case of driving bans, the judiciary decides in an imperturbable manner. There are judges who invoke Article 3 of the Basic Law, the principle of equality, tend to reject sanctions only against motorcyclists. Meanwhile, the other faction opted for the integrity of human life, which should be protected, and sanctioned restrictions on motorcycles on accident-prone routes. It goes without saying that the motorcycle enthusiasts relied on the first variant, the principle of equality, while their opponents, the Esslingen District Office, the Stuttgart District Council and the State of Baden-Wurttemberg, caped their duty of care for the oh-so-endangered motorcyclists who are basically racing.
In the countless administrative acts and statements in court, the country always refers to statistics that are doubted by motorcycle enthusiasts. They are dubious, especially since accidents are only listed but never analyzed. It seems downright grotesque that figures that are now almost 25 years old are still used as a reason for the closure of the Neuffener Steige.
It seems almost as grotesque what the motorcycle friends experienced with their lawyers. At first they preferred lawyers who ride a motorcycle. The first of which made it particularly easy for the Federal Constitutional Court to formally dismiss an application. He had simply missed a deadline. The lawyer who was obliged to do so then had an enlightenment to the effect that there is greater wisdom than that of jurisprudence, namely that of the Eastern religions, and then, urging his job and the case of motorcycle enthusiasts, immersed himself deeply in them. The next legal representative felt so uncomfortable during an oral hearing that, as he later said, he “stood completely beside me”.
The motorcycle enthusiasts are not mad at their lawyers. It may well be that they did not act optimally at all times, but in the end they never had a real chance. In all of the decisions her argument that motorcyclists as a whole should not be punished for the misconduct of some black sheep was not once »seriously appreciated«. Even more: the arguments of the district office and the state, according to which one had to protect motorcyclists from themselves by prohibiting them from driving, were partly taken verbatim by the courts.
When all legal paths had been taken, the motorcycle enthusiasts had one more hope: politics. But the petition, which you wrote yourself and addressed to the state parliament in Stuttgart, did nothing? zero response. Frank and Heide are now 44, Michael 41 years old. In any case, your children think it’s a shame that the motorcycle friends are breaking up. They made friends there, and so did their parents, by the way. And they last longer than the club.

timeline

1985 By order of the Esslingen District Office, the Neuffener Steige is closed to motorcyclists on weekends and public holidays from May to October.

1987 The Motorradfreunde Neuffener Steige e.V. are founded. The aim of the association: withdrawal of the driving ban. One wants to achieve this through protest, education, legal means. At the end of April, the motorcycle friends organize the first protest drive and complain against the rejection of their objection to the blockade.

1988 1400 motorcyclists take part in the second demonstration run on the Neuffener Steige. The motorcycle friends offer joint trips and safety training.

1989 The Stuttgart Administrative Court rejects the action, the Mannheim Administrative Court rejects the appeal.

1990 Unsuccessful complaint against the non-admission of the appeal before the Federal Administrative Court, the Federal Constitutional Court is brought in, just as unsuccessful.

1993 New plaintiffs, second complaint: rejected by the Stuttgart Administrative Court, but the complaint before the Mannheim Administrative Court is also dismissed.

1994 2500 motorcyclists at the demo.

1996 demo with 3000 motorcyclists.

1997 Another lawsuit, the proceedings drag on.

2000 Oral hearing, negative outcome, the Administrative Court does not allow an appeal.

2001 The complaint before the Federal Constitutional Court is thrown out, a course before the European Court of Human Rights is discarded.

2004 Petition to the state parliament of Baden-Wurttemberg remains unresponsive.

2007 The association dissolves, its assets are used for charitable purposes. In the meantime, the Neuffener Steige is in a pathetic structural condition: it is absolutely impossible to race.

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