German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/224, pp. 28489-28490.
Frau
President. Ladies and gentlemen. Dear guests in the gallery. Dear viewers.
Many times, a
glance in the past shows us the way in the future. Until the 20th Century, a
cultural unity existed within the European continent. We were the scientific,
cultural, political and economic center of the world.
Manuel Sarrazin (Greens): Who is “we”?
The unity of
the European culture shattered with the First World War and the October
Revolution in Russia. The Second World War brought the definite descent of
Europe.
Manuel Sarrazin (Greens): And then
you came!
In the year
1900, the portion of Europeans in the world population still lay at 25 percent,
today it contributes less than 10 percent and it continually sinks further.
In economics
and research we meanwhile have fallen far behind the United States and Asia.
And we have lost influence politically. In Europe, west of the former Iron
Curtain, a rapid decay of the European culture is to be lamented.
Nils Schmid (SPD): What?
Today’s
current affairs hour is a symptom of this downfall.
For eight
years we have an armed conflict in the middle of Europe which for many has
become the norm and with which we occupy ourselves again today only because it
threatens to escalate.The Federal government almost always has an unbalanced,
ideologically colored view of this world; Herr State Minister Roth has again
today delivered to us a very impressive example of that. The one-sided
reference to Russian troop movements in the title of the current affairs hour
drawn up by the coalition delegations is an example of that. From the
government and from the media there is
as good as nothing to be heard of the present NATO troop movements of around
30,000 soldiers.
We live today
in a climate of political correctness and of repressive tolerance. Your
tolerance, ladies and gentlemen, nevertheless ends immediately when others –
like us – do not follow your opinion.Today’s debate again proves this and,
before all things, your polemical heckling [Zwischenrufe]
proves this. What does not correspond to the decreed Zeitgeist in Germany will be ostracized, oppressed and attacked.
Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): You
sound like Heike Hänsel!
That pertains
to the relations with our own citizens exactly so as to those with our European
neighbors: The Poles, the Hungarians, the Russians.
Alexander Lambsdorff (FDP): Exactly!
Here will be
created quite purposeful caricatures out of which then arise images of enemies.
You then let it appear to be legitimate to compel others to your own will with
sanctions. And if that does not help, then in Germany it is believed necessary
to forbid and to externally display military strength.
Johann David Wadephul (CDU/CSU): Now you are speaking of Russia!
It was once
otherwise, and we of the AfD delegation are working so that it will again be
otherwise.
Europe was
once united in its national variety and not separated in its distinctions.
There was a positive curiosity about these distinctions; for all that, they
make up the richness of our continent. Europe was once more than a common
market and a military bridgehead of the U.S.A. It was a spiritual project [geistiger Entwurf] which united the
European peoples on a basis of their common heritage and development, founded
on the fundamentals of democracy first developed in Greece, Roman law, the
Renaissance and the Enlightenment which again, alas, are threatened to be lost,
and the Germans’ love of freedom. This love of freedom unites us with the
countries of eastern Europe which stand up for their independence against many
challenges, and now against a centralized European Union.
Johann David Wadephul (CDU/CSU):
Good to hear!
We want a
Europe of fatherlands and the reconstruction of the centralized Union into a
European economic community as it existed successfully for decades. The
problem: Besides the loss of the idea of the state is also to be decried the
increasing loss of the European idea. As a consequence, 30 years after the fall
of the Wall, the European space remains partitioned into two camps opposed to
one another.
Peter Beyer (CDU/CSU): Mein Gott!
It is
especially dramatic that this line of separation now runs through Ukraine. The
origins of Russia lie in Kiev. The peoples of both countries are closely bound
to one another by innumerable familial ties.
Alexander Gauland (AfD): Ja!
Here, what
belongs together is violently separated. We may in absolutely no case follow
the voices of those who now want to demolish the last bridges and to further
spin the spiral of military escalation.
Europe will
not again arise from the rubble of a third great war. We therefore urgently
require a new start in Europe with the inclusion of Russia. In the long term,
there will be security in Europe only with, and not against, Russia.
Many thanks.
Manuel Sarrazin (Greens): You have
said nothing of the Super League, Herr Hartwig. Hermann der Cherusker, he was a good
guy!
[trans: tem]
