Mariana Harder-Kühnel
The
Command of the Air: Children's Rights in the Basic Law
German
Bundestag, June 6, 2019, Plenarprotokoll 19/104, pp. 12650-12651
[Mariana Harder-Kühnel is an Alternative
für Deutschland Bundestag member from the central German state of Hessen. She
is a lawyer and here responds to a legislative proposal concerning children's
rights. The expression "command of the air above the children's beds" was initially used nearly two decades ago by Olaf Scholz (SPD), the current German Finance Minister.]
Right
honorable Frau President. Right honorable ladies and gentlemen.
The
demand for “Children's Rights in the Basic Law” at first sounds richtig gut. For this reason, to the question
of whether they want children's rights in the Basic Law [Grundgesetz], many citizens understandably and reflexively respond
with agreement. Yet are not children already to a full extent holders of the
basic rights? Is the Grundgesetz incomplete?
Must children's rights be introduced? Or is it in truth about something
entirely other?
I
say to you that no alteration of the Grundgesetz
is required, since the Grundgesetz knows
no age limitation. Children like grown-ups are holders of the basic rights to
life, bodily integrity, freedom of opinion and religion, etc. This is also the
opinion of the Federal Constitutional Court. Every child is entitled to the
basic rights and will be comprehensively defended by the basic rights.
Montesquieu
said:
When it is not necessary to issue a law,
then it is necessary not to issue a law.
What
then is the true background of this populist demand?
Ladies
and gentlemen, what is concealed behind the draft legislation is an attack upon
the parents’ right of education. To the expression of leftist dreams of a state
command of the air above
the children's beds [Lufthoheit über den Kinderbetten], the AfD imparts a clear denial, ladies and gentlemen.
Since, according to Article 6, paragraph 2, of the Grundgesetz, “the care and education of children” are the “natural
right of parents” and for them the “foremost obligatory duty. The state
community watches over their activity”. The state’s function is purely that of
a watchman. The state must intervene should the parents fail, but may not
appropriate to itself the primacy of parental care.
Sven Lehmann (Bündnis90/Grünen):
Then who does that?
Children
have the right to education by their parents, and there is no one who can do
that better than they – no state, no day-care [Kita]. The parents, not the state, shall decide how to raise their
children and which values to impart to them; since it was indeed during the horrifying
experiences of the Nazi time that an over-reaching, totalitarian state
interfered in family life –
Katja Dörner (Bündnis90/Grünen): You
know altogether nothing of what
you are saying!
you are saying!
-
and which moved the fathers and mothers of the Grundgesetz to this strong emphasis on parents’ rights. That would
now be superceded in many situations by the introduction of children's rights, since
children's rights would in the future be defined as the state would have it. In
an emergency, it can, as children's advocate, enforce these against the
parents. That can begin with a kindergarten mandate –
Katja Dörner (Bündnis90/Grünen): We
likewise have that today!
-
and end with the removal of children from families of political ill-repute. We
had all that during socialism and fascism. That we never again want to have and
therefore the AfD takes its stand.
You
should know that until recently the CDU/CSU thought exactly the same. In 2017,
the family policy spokesman feared a weakening of parents’ rights – I cite
Marcus Weinberg -:
I am concerned that the explicit embedding [Verankerung] of children's rights in the
Grundgesetz sets children at a legal
distance to the parents…Since ultimately the state takes the part of advocate
of the child against the parents.
And
yet even here the CDU/CSU only a little later completed a change of course in
the direction of leftist ideology and tossed overboard this consideration in
the coalition contract.
Ingmar Jung (CDU/CSU): Simply
nothing was heard!
What
is to be retained is that we all want love, protection and care for the kids. It
is on precisely this ground that the AfD takes up a child-friendly society as
an aim of the state in the Grundgesetz.
However,
the purpose of the here proposed draft legislation of the Linke and Greens is
not an increase of rights for but ultimately the statist seizure of children.
It is thus indeed not about strengthening the rights of children. Once more:
Children already have all rights. It is about weakening the rights of parents.
It is about giving the state the potential to interfere in the education rights
of parents. We of the AfD are decisively opposed to that, since the command of
the air above the children's beds belongs not the the state. The command of the
air above the children's beds belongs to the parents.
Many
thanks.
[Translated
by Todd Martin]
