Family flees Germany to home-school in U.S.

MORRISTOWN, Tenn.

Home schooling is so important to Uwe Romeike that the classically trained pianist sold his beloved grand pianos in order to pay for his wife and five children to move from Germany to the Smoky Mountain foothills of Tennessee.

Mr. Romeike, wife Hannelore, and their children live in a modest duplex about 40 miles northeast of Knoxville while they seek political asylum. They say they were persecuted for their evangelical Christian beliefs and home schooling their children in Germany, where school attendance is compulsory.

When the Romeikes wouldn’t comply with repeated orders to send the children to school, police came to their home one October morning in 2006 and took the children, crying and upset, to school.

“We tried not to open the door, but [police] kept ringing the doorbell for 15 or 20 minutes,” Mr. Romeike said. “They called us by phone and spoke on the answering machine and said they would knock open the door if we didn’t open it. So I opened it.”

Mr. Romeike, like many conservative parents in the U.S., said he wanted to teach his own children because his children’s German school textbooks contained language and ideas that conflicted with his family’s values.

He had to pay fines equivalent to hundreds of dollars for his decision, and he’s afraid that if he returns to Germany, police will arrest him and government authorities will take away his children, who range in age from 11 to 3.

The Romeike asylum case is expected to go before an immigration judge in Memphis on Thursday, according to Michael Donnelly, an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association, which is representing the family.

Bernadette Meyler, a Cornell Law School professor who has studied differences in religious liberty between the U.S. and Europe, said she’s never heard of another case like this in the U.S.

Ana Santiago, a regional spokeswoman for U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the agency is barred from discussing specific political asylum cases and doesn’t keep track of the reasons asylum is granted.

Mr. Donnelly says the Romeikes saw more freedom to home-school in the U.S.

“Germany sticks out in the midst of Western Europe for having this harsh repression against parents,” Mr. Donnelly said. “They have this notion that home school creates this parallel society, and they deem that as dangerous.”

Lutz Gorgens, German consul general for the southeastern U.S., said he’s not familiar with the Romeikes’ specific situation, but thinks the claim of persecution is “far-fetched.” He defended Germany’s requirements for public education.

“For reasons deeply rooted in history and our belief that only schools properly can ensure the desired level of excellent education, we [Germans] go a little bit beyond that path which other countries have chosen,” Mr. Gorgens said.

Germany’s approach to home schooling differs starkly from the U.S. and other European countries. Home-school students have been growing by an estimated 8 percent annually in the U.S. and as of 2007 totaled about 1.5 million. Germany, with more than one-quarter the population of the U.S., has just an estimated 500 children taught at home.

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