Right
honorable Herr President. Dear guests. Dear countrymen.
As
most here know, I was born in the DDR. As a child of Lausitz, I know and esteem
my Heimat. I spent the first years of
my life in a country which placed the political system above the wishes of the
people. We were surveilled and
browbeaten so as to further maintain the socialist ideology. I was 15 years old
at the end of the DDR. Practically over-night I could get to know the freedom
for which the people had yearned: The freedom to express my opinion and to be
allowed to associate with others.
Ladies
and gentlemen, today I can say: I am a child of German unity, born in Lausitz.
What then was the DDR? Many people of the old Federal Republic associate it
with an oppressed, walled-in people. Yet the DDR was more. It was also
solidarity and community – in the city and in the country, in private life as at
work. There was no luxury, yet therefore much readiness to help. I know for
many western Germans that tends to sound like a paradox. And, what is more, I
understand them. We were in the years of separation distinctively coined. It is
nevertheless clear to me that you too know the value of a society in which one
feels at home. Mitmenschlichkeit survived
primarily in private life: In the family, in the circle of friends, at the
workplace. It was heartfelt and honorable. It is just this Mitmenschlichkeit that is missed by many today.
Materially,
almost everything is better.Yet for long not all feel themselves to be better.
In fact, many people today feel themselves left alone with their cares and
needs. Loneliness has become a theme which earlier was not so with us. We
should ask ourselves why, after 30 years of unity, that is so.
Many
people feel themselves to be dependent and that is not without a reason. The
economic power of the east remained at barely 73 percent of the total German
average. And still today – after 30 years – the average income in eastern
Germany is around 20 percent less than in the west. Since taking our seats in
the Bundestag, we refer ever again to the poverty threatening all eastern
German pensioners. And we also say to you how we can in the future prevent such
pensions: We need a special, eastern economic zone so that finally after 30
years the standard of living in both parts of Germany may be equalized as is
guaranteed in the Basic Law.
Yet
what do you do, worthy ladies and gentlemen on the government bench? Why do you
not better use our strengths and capabilities? Do you remember the words of the
Germans in November 1989, “We are one people”? Besides, it is astonishing that
the Chancellor fails to be at such a debate.
Why
do you play with the people’s angst when you ascribe a rightist extremism to us
eastern Germans? Even a Federal President, who actually must know better,
speaks of “Dunkeldeutschland”. And
quite without embarrassment, you breathe new life into the old, divisive DDR
propaganda of anti-fascism. This propaganda then and today was and is an
instrument of the devil.
We
should remind ourselves how it felt when plurality of opinion was undesired and
thought prohibitions were the standard of political judgement. What I want to
say is: We should remind ourselves how it was when anyone who advocated an
opinion other than that of the government was declared an enemy of the state. “Never
again” should today be our credo as democrats.
Ladies
and gentlemen, each person will be stamped with the experiences which he has
undergone. I myself therefore understand the time of 30 years ago as the
terminal point of common negotiations. The BRD and the DDR had negotiated for
Germany. The unification of the two German states brought together our countrymen
from all points of the compass. It was a patriotic act.
From
precisely that my party also derives the power for its negotiations. We are the
first party in the German Bundestag to have originated in re-unified Germany.
We are free of the ideological ballast of the time prior to unification [Vorwendezeit]. We can therefore look
back with complete lack of bias on the events of that time. And that I can here
and today speak to you, I have alone to thank the courage of the people of the
east. They risked everything for freedom and fought for their country.
It
is therefore a heart’s desire to thank all these people here and today for
their courage. They had the great good fortune to make possible the
re-unification. I therefore request you all: Let us safeguard the gift of unity
with the power of reason which makes it possible for all people to be able to
lead a life of freedom, and thus a political life without exclusion and
stigmatization or indeed persecution – even when we do not share the opinion of
others.
Many
thanks.
[trans: tem]
