German
Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/224, pp. 28499-28500.
Herr
President. Ladies and gentlemen.
Patriotism, that is love of fatherland, was for me invariably vomit. I knew not what to make of Germany and do not know to this day.
Robert Habeck,
of the Greens, a party which in all seriousness wants to install the Chancellor
in Germany.
Next citation:
“A specific German culture, besides the language, is simply not identifiable.”
Aydan Özoğuz,
SPD, former integration commissioner of the Federal government.
And a third:
We all have in view the images of how Chancellor Merkel, at a CDU election
party following the 2013 Bundestag election, indignantly disposed of a German
flag into a corner.
Three scenes, one finding: A country in which the highest political representatives manifest such a mentality suffers from a serious derangement of identity, ladies and gentlemen.
Matthias W. Birkwald (Linke): You surely know the history of the 20th Century, or?
While the
ruling class and its opinion makers at every opportunity vehemently vouch for
the identity of other peoples and cultures, for the identity of minorities in
their own country, there yawns where one’s own should be at most only a black
hole. And anyone who undertands positively the terms “Volk”, “Nation”, “kulturelle Identität” is in danger of
being defamed as a “Nazi”.
In 2017, the Greens write to the German Cultural Council. I cite:
We support that in these theses – of the Cultural Council – the term “Leitkultur” be avoided. Since in culture there may be no boundaries which in the name of an alleged “cultural identity” may determine who belongs thereto and who not.
Dear Greens,
are you not in a condition to grasp that cultural identity does not mean to be
identified only with oneself, to allow no critical self-reflection, no cultural
imports? Quite the contrary: Curiosity of the foreign, the ability to
assimilate it, to be one’s own harshest critic: This has always belonged to the
cultural identity of the Germans.
Yet open to
the world and tolerant, as we have always gladly wanted it, can nevertheless
only be he who knows where he stands, what are his heritage, his values and
traditions. To all others pertains the old saw: Who is open to all is not quite
solid.
When we are
perfectly clear on this, yet do not self-consciously represent and demand a Leitkultur informed by tradition, then
Germany becomes a container without quality which others will fill with their cultural
identities and customs. They will thereby become those values, ostensibly so
important to you, least of all to be observed. So much is clear.
We thus
urgently require a process of cultural self-affirmation [Selbstvergewisserung] in Germany. Therefore, the AfD delegation
demands a national action plan of cultural identity. The Federal government in
consultation with the States should get this underway. The reconstruction of devastated
buildings of cultural importance, according to the example of the Berlin
Stadtsschloss or the Dresden Frauenkirche, should be a central point in the
remembrance culture.
Because I already
hear you scream at this theme, I say again: We do not want to abolish
remembrance of the dark times of our history. They also belong there. But as
the Swiss writer Adolf Muschg already said 40 years ago with regards to the
Germans’ identity:
It is one thing…to subscribe to history’s receipt as an honest debtor. It is another to, at the same time, walk out on one’s own history.
Who can only
think back as far as 1933, or lately as far back as German colonial history,
lops off the deep historical realm from which we come and which the Briton Neil
McGregor has so impressively re-worked in his fantastic exposition, “Germany – Memories
of a Nation”. That, ladies and gentlemen, should also actually be possible as a
properly German contribution, and it should become the self-evident cultural
heritage [Bildungsgut] of all
Germans.
And especially
to counteract the deterioration of the language resulting from gendered speech,
easy speech and other distortions like those in the daily order, we in addition
demand a German academy for language and culture. With a seat in Berlin, it
should consist of independent personalities who have made themselves servants of
the German language and culture and who, following the example of the Académie
française, will be elected to a life term. We are also open to good ideas from
foreign countries when they also permit of being implemented with profit to us.
I come to conclusion. Ladies and gentlemen, with these motions [Drucksachen 19/28764, 28794] we are reacting to a leftist counter-revolution – of which colleague Renner has already spoken – which, with cancel culture, toppling of memorials and an ever more open disdain for the cultural contributions of the past, presently enters a heated phase. From Greens, Linke and SPD, we expect nothing other than the most vigorous rejection; for they are the political arm of this course of abolition of cultural Germany.
Vice-president Hans-Peter Friedrich: Herr colleague, come to an end.
CDU and FDP
on the other hand may today again have an opportunity to prove that they are
not yet completely toppled over onto the left side.
Good luck!
[trans: tem]
