German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/234, pp.
30277-30278.
Right honorable Frau President. Right honorable colleagues.
Dear spectators in the hall and on YouTube.
Distinction and distress [Glanz und Elend] are nowhere so near one another as in the German
research policy; for despite all the warning cries, one thing is ever still the
case: We have in this country the world’s smartest thinkers. The scientific
performances of our researchers are brilliant and move at the top level.
When these abilities and our research success are
considered, it could be thought we are headed towards a brilliant future. Yet
that unfortunately in not the case. For our hard-earned research achievements
are frequently commercialized in other places, in foreign countries. It appears
as if we ever still had a strong push for knowledge and a formative culture of
preciseness, yet nevertheless lack the entrepreneurial spirit. In the Education
and Research Committee in this electoral period, we have often spoken of the
transfer of research results to future-oriented and marketable products; yet we
have not thus progressed. That principally lies in a central false conception
which is also inherent in all of the FDP’s motions submitted here today. And I
thereby indeed do mean the heresies of a kind of scientific planned economy
which all parties here, other than the AfD, are cultivating.
Let us look at which barrel-busters the old parties have
thus proposed and pushed: There is the Agency for Launch Innovations [Sprunginnovationen], highly valued by
the Federal government. This agency shall decide which research projects shall
be promoted and pushed to marketable products. There thus sits a body of ten
people who blithely toss out the window the money of our taxpayers, and indeed
100 million euros each year. You inquire of the consequences? Hitherto,
nothing. This agency can thus on good authority be designated as a true money
burning machine.
And otherwise? The FDP unconditionally wants its German
transfer community. What now is that again? The magenta socialists want to
create a super-bureaucratic authority which publishes and supervises a kind of
5-year-plan for the production of innovations.
Anna
Christmann (Greens): You have no idea!
And that is also the reason why I always call you magenta
socialists, dear colleagues: You – and in this legislative period, you have
sufficiently shown it – are socialists painted pink. More still: Instead of
promoting and without compromise carrying through scientific excellence, you
are still lapsing into the delusion of placing above all else gender justice
and higher quotas of diversity. If you wanted more spin-offs, these quotas do
not help. They only hinder.
Yet it is the same whether we here speak of spin-offs, of
the quality of scientific teaching, of declining standards in the area of education
in the schools, or of the unfortunately inconsequential long-term project for MINT [Math-Informatik-Naturwissenschaften-Technik] education. You all
talk, talk, talk, yet you achieve nothing. Whereby: That is now not quite fair;
since you in the meantime have managed to bury freedom of research in Germany
and, quite along with that, you have also flattened future-oriented research in
nuclear energy.
You fight with an absolute bitterness for quotas instead of
quality and it no longer strikes you how you thereby are ever more accelerating
the downfall of this country. You ignore what brings success in favor of
climate catastrophes and cheap speeches for ostensibly disadvantaged, daily
changing groups of victims.
Yet there is also another way. You want spin-offs and
entrepreneurial spirit? Then cease getting on the people’s nerves with your
unrealistic motions and initiatives! Stop the quotas madness and again make
room for authentic scientific brilliance! Then your longed-for top researchers
will no more emigrate to foreign countries.
Petra Sitte
(Linke): It is an impudence to insinuate that women cannot perform!
I have not asserted that. In Berlin, there was a mathematics
professor who was not accepted because he was a man; who now is a top
researcher in a foreign country.
Petra Sitte (Linke): Yes, yes!
That is the effect of your quotas and that we plainly do not
want.
Dismantle the bureaucratic hurdles and cease leading on and
pestering the research institutions; for you do not know better than our
scientists and researchers. Thus, all of you simply get out of the way of those
who are able and want to achieve something. All would thereby be aided.
At this place, I want to thank you as always for your
attention. – I nevertheless also want to let loose one very important matter:
Georg Thiel is for 106 days in custody on account of an unpaid broadcast
contribution. That is absolutely disproportionate. Therefore, let free Georg
Thiel, Herr Buhrow!
Thanks.
Oliver
Kaczmarek (SPD): Sad, sad!
[trans: tem]
