Basic Law

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On May 23, 2024, our Basic Law will be 75 years old. By now everyone should have given their two cents. And so I'm using today to also formulate a few thoughts about our constitution. Unfortunately, I'm already stepping on some people's toes, not because I'm writing something about it, but because right at the beginning I refer to our Basic Law as a constitution. And yes, to forestall one or two critics, there are also lawyers in Germany who spend pages explaining why the Basic Law is not actually a constitution. I can only reply that there are idiots among lawyers, especially here in Germany. The only thing worse is the one or two press releases about the Basic Law that I have received in the last few days, which completely avoid the word constitution in their “adulation”. On the one hand, this is due to the election campaign, one or the other party does not want to mess it up with their own right-wing fringe, but with so many eulogists, this non-word choice certainly comes from the heart, because for us it is still a matter of state, to uphold the Basic Law, but people are already sanding it down wherever they can.

In 1949, just four years after the end of the war and in the face of the crimes of National Socialism, the authors of the Basic Law gave the new Germanrepublic a highly innovative constitution. This not only made federalism the basis of our society, but also anchored European unification as the cornerstone of all German politics - some citizens and lawyers already recognize this as their own commitment to a European federal state. Germany's self-image “as an equal member in a united Europe of serving world peace” is prefaced by the text in the preamble. — which more and more idiots are interpreting to mean that it is not in the Basic Law and is therefore irrelevant.

Without any ifs or buts, our Basic Law is permeated by the principles of the rule of law, as the securitization of human rights in the first 20 articles makes clear. Article 1 already makes the announcement unmistakable: “Human dignity is inviolable. Respecting and protecting them is the obligation of all state authorities.” — actually!

But our Basic Law has also been a “living document” from the very beginning, and so I have long since given up the habit of keeping a printed version of it. It's better if you know him Hyperlink to source and will always find the current version there if necessary. The Bundeswehr was written into the constitution very early on, but it was immediately counteracted - which can be seen as proof that not only the Bundeswehr but also a constitution is subject to the primacy of politics. Later, the desired European unification was made more concrete with Article 23 and the participation of the now united Germany in the European Union was specified.

Other things have found and continue to find their way into our constitution and the discussions about what is worth protecting in our constitution are now endless. Sometimes the whole thing takes on very bizarre forms. Which in turn only proves that people, entire societies and democracies are constantly changing.

However, it is with great concern that I see that our common values ​​of the Western world, Europe and Germany, which are still anchored in the Basic Law today, are being attacked by extreme parties, populist actors and now, unfortunately, also by the mainstream parties. They are not yet attacking our Basic Law in its entirety or even directly; they prefer to initially deny that it is a real constitution. Please take a look at the relevant press releases from our parties in the coming days and see for yourself which parties, organizations and associations are deliberately avoiding the word “constitution” in the context of 75 years of the German Basic Law!

Unfortunately, we are already a whole step further. In the wake of the Basic Law itself, we are talking less and less about human rights, but are already discussing whether or not the “basic rights” should only apply to German citizens and the direct neighbors who are currently liked.

Without question, we humans and our politics are constantly changing - life is simply change!

In view of this seventy-fifth anniversary, we should urgently ask ourselves whether, even today, we still live up to the ideas, concepts and demands of the founders of our constitution and our republic? But we would rather ask ourselves what perceived gender the founding fathers and mothers of our constitution had!

Only when we become aware of where we actually come from can we reasonably agree on where we want to go in the future.

I hope that democracy, federalism and Europe will still play a role in this!

[https://iiics.org/h/20240522054900]