Constitutional talk at Lanz
FDP veteran Baum: “It smells like war”
By Marko Schlichting
24.05.2024, 03:22
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Two elder statesmen will be guests on the ZDF talk show “Markus Lanz” on Thursday evening: Franz Müntefering and Gerhart Baum. The two former ministers will talk about the Basic Law and the problems facing democracy in Germany.
It is a special holiday: 75 years ago on Thursday, the Basic Law was passed in Germany. May 23, 1949 is considered the founding day of the Federal Republic of Germany. For the first time, a real democracy was established on German soil. But it is now facing its first real test. Right-wing parties are trying to undermine it, especially the AfD. The AfD has now even lost the trust of like-minded parties in the European Parliament. They have excluded the AfD from the right-wing ID group.
On Thursday evening, ZDF talk show host Markus Lanz will speak to two politicians who have helped shape this country. They are the former SPD chairman, Vice Chancellor and Minister of Labor Franz Müntefering and the former Interior Minister Gerhart Baum from the FDP. Both share one idea: they want to save democracy in Germany and they know how that could be done.
“The Basic Law did not come about alone,” recalls Baum, who was 16 years old when it was passed. “Before that, in 1948, came the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And that contains the key concept that guides us: human dignity.” In 1948, peoples linked their longing for peace with the protection of human dignity. “And that remains Article One of our constitution to this day.” Today, people’s dignity is at risk.
Democracy in danger
“We have a stable democracy. But it is being challenged by a danger that I have never experienced before: a party hostile to freedom in all parliaments, infiltrated into society.” Baum speaks of people who are turning away from our state. He calls them system-haters. Baum: “We are in a situation where we must make every effort to revitalize democracy.”
At the international level, it can also be observed that politicians are striving for a new world order: “These Putins and Xis and whatever they’re called, they don’t want to know anything about human dignity in the United Nations Charter. They don’t care.” Baum sees the world in a dangerous phase of post-war politics. The way people live together is changing, hatred and violence have broken out again. Baum: “It smells like war.”
The worst thing in Germany is the decline in trust of many people in politics and the parties that could solve the problems, says Baum. He seems to be not entirely wrong. Moderator Markus Lanz points to surveys according to which 22 percent of young voters could imagine voting for parties like the AfD. The survey on which this value is based is controversial, however, and the opinion research institute Forsa recently painted a differentiated picture of the AfD electorate in its own analysis.
Plea for solidarity
But this is where Franz Müntefering intervenes. “But we have the majority,” he says. “We have to say that, and we have to do it soon.” He is bothered by the lack of interest in the European elections. Müntefering: “We don’t have to argue with young people about it, theoretically and intellectually. Instead, we have to tell them: people are voting. People are voting whether there is a democratic Europe – or not. That’s the case with us too. We have to attack.”
In contrast to his colleague Gerhart Baum, Müntefering does not believe that democracy is in danger: “There are people who hate us, who want us, democracy as a whole, to go. And that is why it is important, also in the elections next year, if we all, the socialists and the liberals, the Greens, the Union and the Left, if they all stick together and say: join hands and get through. Then we will see who is right. And then in five years we will have peace again.” One person alone cannot do it, but a majority that supports democracy and at least votes can. In Europe too.
Baum also demands: “We must not only say in surveys that we are for democracy, but we must also do something for it. And I see people who want that. We must use the energy that is now being expressed in the demonstrations (for democracy and against the far-right).”