Christa Blanke
Christa Blanke-Weckbach, born September 18, 1948, in Giessen, Germany, is a Lutheran theologian and animal welfare activist. She founded the European animal protection group Animals’ Angels and led the Hessian government’s animal welfare advisory board from 1995 to 1998.
She grew up in Frankfurt and studied Protestant theology at Hamburg, Heidelberg, and Frankfurt from 1966 to 1972. She helped run a church project in Hamburg, worked as a curate in Edinburgh, and then became a vicar in Offenbach am Main. From 1978 to 1999 she and her family lived in Glauberg, where she practiced as a psychotherapist and helped with the local parish.
Blanke began animal protection work in the mid-1980s. In 1986 she led a church service outside the Hoechst chemical plant in Frankfurt to highlight animal suffering, with the message “Hoechst, have mercy!” In 1987 she held a service with animals on Frankfurt’s Römerberg and collected 13,000 signatures urging churches not to use eggs from battery cages. In 1988 she held the first animal service in Glauberg parish church, and she and her husband founded AKUT – Aktion Kirche und Tiere (Church and Animals) that year.
In 1998 she founded Animals’ Angels, which became internationally known for protecting animals during transport. She and her husband also wrote the book for the musical Jesus, One of Us. In 1995 she helped install the Arche Schöpfung sculpture at Glauberg parish church. In 2008 she started Germany’s first refuge for spent dairy cows. In 2011 she supported the Europe-wide 8hours Campaign, which collected 1.2 million signatures to limit travel time for animals transported for slaughter within the EU. In 2015 she launched Animal Memorial, a site that honors farm animals encountered by Animals’ Angels during their work.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 19:39 (CET).