German Bundestag,
Plenarprotokoll 19/186, pp. 23357-23358.
Herr
President. Frau Chancellor. Ladies and gentlemen.
There is a
simple solution to reduce to zero the number of traffic fatalities. Abolish
traffic.
Ulli Nissen (SPD): A caustic
comparison!
As is known,
we do not do that, but we do consider: Which price – even for human life – do we
pay for which uses? Therefore, there is traffic although people die there.
People also die of illnesses – every day.
Jan Korte (Linke): There are traffic
laws.
That
unfortunately is so.
If we regard
the present Corona situation, two statements may be made. First. Yes, the
incidence of infection is no longer controllable. Second. There are nevertheless
comparatively few deaths.
Ulli Nissen (SPD): Every single one
is one too many!
Presently, a
low to medium two-figure number of people daily die of or with Covid-19. Many therefrom
infer that the virus is not especially dangerous. Actually, it is relatively so
that for most people it is not especially dangerous. I greet from this place
the Federal Minister for Health whose infection apparently takes a happily mild
course. Yet for some people – yes, that is right – the virus is highly
dangerous or indeed deadly.
This returns
us to the simile of traffic accidents. Their number has been reduced by means
of alcohol prohibitions, speed limits in municipalities and other means without
banning transportation. We now must transpose that to the Corona crisis.
Evidently are infected primarily active and younger people and thus such as
those who can well cope with an infection or sometimes indeed do not notice it.
These contemporaries need no protection and nothing must be forbidden to them.
We must instead define and protect the groups at risk. I have already once proposed
here special shopping times for seniors and the chronically ill.
Ladies and
gentlemen, there are besides also victims of whom no one speaks; namely, the
collateral victims of the anti-Corona preventative measures: Isolated elders,
depressives, the socially frail and, not last, our children. The quality of
school instruction declines due to lost hours, home instruction and the
continual wearing of masks,
Armin-Paulus Hampel (AfD):
Dramatically!
and that in a
country which possesses no other raw material like education.
Ladies and
gentlemen, Frau Chancellor, angst is a bad counselor. The daily bombardment of
infection numbers however shall obviously make people anxious because most see
nothing of Covid-19 in the everyday. Pardon me, but it is a question of type of
war propaganda
René Rospel (SPD): You know about that!
whereby it
happens we are lately governed by a type of war cabinet, the Corona cabinet. It
has decided upon the greatest limitation of freedom in the history of the
Republic
Armin-Paulus Hampel (AfD): Shamelessness!
in the name
of the citizens’ health. Herr Lauterbach, in an interview in the “Rheinische Post”, now even places at disposal the inviolability of a residence.
Carsten Schneider (SPD): False!
With
permission, ladies and gentlemen, are we by degrees losing our heads? Where in
the Basic Law is it written that the head of government together with the
Minister-presidents may reach such decisions over the heads of the parliament?
Carsten Schneider (SPD): We
certainly do not do that! We are still in discussion – or not?
“Sovereign is
he who decides over the exceptional state of affairs”, as it was said by Carl
Schmitt. May I remind you that the sovereign of this country is the German
people, represented by the Bundestag. And it is for this house alone to
determine the limitation of basic rights and no one else. Otherwise, we are
again in exactly the situation of Carl Schmitt.
We consider to
be immoderate and inappropriate the paralysis announced by Frau Merkel of
cultural activity, the restaurant trade, practically all of the citizens’ leisure
time. For the concert scene, to name one example, will today be sold
exclusively on-line tickets. Each visitor will be registered. According to the
information of the president of the German theater union, there is not a single
known case of Corona infection as a result of attendance at a performance in a
German theater, and even a normal visit to a restaurant observing AHA
regulations has produced no new hotspot.
I want to
expressly warn you, Frau Chancellor, of a second lockdown. We will not stand
for that [Das verkraften wir nicht].
We must consider which price we are ready to pay. This price is too high, and
primarily paying it are those who have done everything correctly: The operators
of small restaurants and hotels, even the classic, German Mittelstand which you are quite near to ruining.
We therefore
demand that the parliament again be completely appointed [eingesetzt] in its rights. The preventative measures against the
pandemic shall be decided here in this house and nowhere else. A Corona
dictatorship at revocation does not agree with our free, democratic fundamental
order.
Armin-Paulus Hampel (AfD): Quite right!
Our world is
altering itself in the direction of serfdom [Unfreiheit] in terrifying ways. A new hierarchy of values is being
set up, away from individual decision and towards a collective organization. Ladies
and gentlemen, we have in this country won freedom with too much hardship to
hand it over in the cloakroom of an emergency cabinet. A Corona dictatorship at
revocation is no solution. We must consider, and at what price, that people are
dying.
“Life is not
the highest good”, said Schiller in the “Die
Braut von Messina”. He was right. The highest good is freedom. Freedom in
dignity, the Herr Bundestag-president would add.
Götz Frömming (AfD): The dignity of human
beings!
I am grateful,
ladies and gentlemen.
[trans: tem]
