Marc Jongen, April 24, 2024, University Policies

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/165, pp. 21235-21237. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

The Bologna process is, in the essentials, the attempt of an all-European unification, standardization and bureaucratization of higher education, thus the exact opposite of the variety and freedom which you always carry before you like a monstrance. 

Kai Gehring (Greens): You’ve already said that a thousand times! 

            Ria Schröder (FDP): That is nonsense!

In the past 25 years the variety of the European education traditions was ever further leveled. The Humboldt-type university, with the unity of teaching and research, the ideal of humanist education,           

Kai Gehring (Greens): And you learn nothing of that! Humboldt would turn over in his grave at your speech! Who was so very open-minded! An authentic cosmopolite!

was replaced by the guiding form of a tutelary, technocratic knowledge factory [das Leitbild einer verschulten, technokratischen Wissenfabrik], Herr Gehring. 

            Kai Gehring (Greens): Humboldt was a cosmopolite!

The essence of European higher education is endangered by the Bologna process. – That is written by no less than Julian Nida-Rümeln. And you all, as rotating governing parties up to now, are responsible for that. 

            Kai Gehring (Greens): And may you never come into government!

It was desired to achieve comparability of conclusion of studies and a higher mobility between European universities. Neither has been made by Bologna, and the improvements were at most alloted. And at what price? The abolition of the internationally honored German Diploma-Ingenieurs, the Meisters – completely without necessity – instead, the introduction of bachelor and masters courses of study, the modulization of studies, and the fixation on the ECTS [European Transfer and Accumulation System] performance points have trained the students in a tutelary gathering of points. Independent [eigenständige] search for truth is penalized rather than rewarded. The conformity pressure today is enormous in German universities. The “freedom” science year cannot divert from that.   

            Kai Gehring (Greens): Says a Herr Doktor!

And this pressure to conform is thoroughly reinforced in that 80 percent of scholars [Wissenschaftler] in Germany are employed per term. They are dependent on external funds which the universities, since Bologna, need to additionally raise because their basic financing was reduced. 

            Laura Kraft (Greens): Since when did that interest the AfD? 

Kai Gehring (Greens): Yet you always put budget motions which place entire courses of study at zero! Ever the same nonsense!

And who pays, purchases, ladies and gentlemen. For a great part, that is the state with its lead ideologies: Man-made climate change, diversity, gender, etc. 

Ria Schröder (FDP): The only ones who ever again want to limit scholarly freedom are you!

Young scholars who, for example, want to research the natural factors of climate change, or who do not salute the Gessler’s cap of gender dogma, can similarly bend their careers; simply no corresponding research proposals will be presented. 

            Kai Gehring (Greens): That appears to be a therapeutic problem!

The result is the policy of a compliant supply system of knowledge, as we needed to bitterly experience in the Corona times, and as was brought to light, at the latest, in the RKI files. Under political pressure, the Robert Koch Institute largely neglected data and facts, and furnished the absurd and harmful Corona preventive measures with the blessings of science. 

            Johannes Fechner (SPD): Such nonsense! That’s just not right! Such rubbish! 

Kai Gehring (Greens): Did China write the speech for you? Does the speech come from Russia Today or from Chinese spies?

This may not remain without consequences. We will in that connection still debate. Our alarm clocks sound 

Kai Gehring (Greens): With your speeches, our alarm clocks sound! China and Russia propaganda!

when in the Federal government’s report there is talk of “common values” which should form the “foundation of cooperation” in the area of European universities, and which now shall be increasingly examined in the universities. 

            Kai Gehring (Greens): Your doctorate should be examined!

I recall that a young researcher was not allowed to make an address on the biological duality of the sexes at the Berlin Humboldt University because this allegedly contradicted the values of the university. 

Ria Schröder (FDP): What exactly has that to do with Bologna? I still do not understand that! 

            Kai Gehring (Greens): Who actually? When and where?

The orientation of values begets attitude [Gesinnung] instead of knowledge, because cannot be what is not allowed to be [weil nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf]. That is highly dangerous, valued colleagues. 

            Alexander Föhr (CDU/CSU): What now has that to do with the Bologna process? 

Read Professor Nida-Rümelin:

            Kai Gehring (Greens): Do you still speak of Europe? 

“The instrumentalization of academia by state, clerical and business purposes has continually blocked the innovation potential of science.” 

That exactly so applies for supposed values of democracy. The fight against the right in the name of science, which the president of the Berlin Technical University now calls for, while there the lecture halls decay and the level ever further sinks, undermines science as a supra-party resort [überparteiliche Instanz]. 

            Kai Gehring (Greens): That you cite the NZZ [Neue Zürcher Zeitung] is clear! 

            Lukas Köhler (FDP): Lack of theme!

I come to conclusion. What we need is a reform of the Bologna reform: Away from the tutelage and bureaucracy and EU control; instead, a Humboldt for the 21st Century! 

Many thanks! 

            Holger Mann (SPD): What rubbish!

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Marc Jongen, September 6, 2023, Culture by Decree

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/118, pp. 14571-14572. 

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen. 

Who comes forward as Germany’s “rupture squad” [Abbruchkommando] – I very gladly overtake your term, Herr Scholz, for it perfectly fits this Federal government – needs obviously to make a high expenditure on propaganda. 

At the so-called green culture conference, Culture State Minister Claudia Roth swore in the culture branch to “climate defense and sustainability”, and indeed not only to what concerns energy consumption and the like, but – as we have heard – it will also be called upon for “aesthetic discussion with the climate crisis”, for the “sensitization of the public” in regards to “man-made climate change”. Gender and diversity guidelines in film promotion have already been announced. It is frightening with what sang-froid art and culture are being instrumentalized by this government. That has nothing to do with freedom of art, Frau Roth. That is decreed state art [verordnete Staatskunst]. Yet the lack of success of the woke Netflix series or the politically correct German films very clearly shows what the public thinks of such educative and instructional art; namely, simply nothing, ladies and gentlemen. 

Quite important themes for this Federal government: Sexual harassment and violence. No, not on Germany’s streets at night, but in the culture and media branches. The culture council shall now prepare a relations code, initially for voluntary personal commitment. Yet Frau Roth already threatens: Should this no “thorough effect show, we will go to the next step and make our requirements mandatory for all”. End citation. Say it: Who before state feminism is not a well-behaved little man receives no more funding. 

Ladies and gentlemen, one need not be a fan of Till Lindemann, yet the Rammstein affair has nevertheless shown that the denunciation and indignation industry in this country long since runs wild [freidrehen], according to the motto, “Just throw dirt, something will stick”. This Unkultur you systematically promote, and with the reporting person defense law – Orwellian title – whereby any citizen can be slandered with impunity by specifically created reporting offices. That is the way to a totalitarian state, ladies and gentlemen. 

The anti-racism commissioner, Frau Alabali-Radovan, naturally here does not want to come up short and demands more complaint offices for victims of racism where then can be happily denounced he who expresses wrong views on mass migration and thereby proves himself  a “structural racist”. What then do you actually say to the Zeche Zollern Museum in Dortmund, Frau Alabali, where whites on Saturdays are not allowed to enter the colonialism exhibition; evidently so that their historical guilt based on their being white will be remembered? That is the racism which needs disturb us today in Germany. And it does not proceed from the majority society, but from an aggressive ideology into which this Federal government has long since lapsed. 

What else do we we see in this Culture budget? Growth for the Prussian Cultural Foundation – yes, that is good – yet a threefold increase of means to around 6 million euros for the deep red socio-cultural centers, of which the association chief has disparaged the idea of a “deutsche Kultur” as “nationalistic”. And zero euros for the memorial for the victims of communist tyranny. You again put off its construction, Frau Roth. That, you should here also honestly admit. 

And still a word for the Federal government’s eastern commissioner, Carsten Schneider. When you tell the press that the strength of the AfD in eastern Germany is a danger for economy and society, 

            Wiebke Esdar (SPD): He’s right there!

you thereby prove only one thing, namely your complete de-coupling from the reality. From a government which drives industry out of the country and permanently defames the citizens as “racists” and “extremists”, the eastern Germans quite clearly need not let themselves be arrogantly tutored, and they no longer do so: 35 percent for the AfD in Saxony and 7 percent for the SPD speaks a clear Sprache. You perhaps should ponder who on your summer vacation was underway as a wrong-way driver. 

Many thanks. 

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

Marc Jongen, November 30, 2022, Ukrainian History

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/72, pp. 8421-8422.

Frau President. Ladies and gentlemen.

The Holodomor – Ukrainian for “mass murder by starvation” – is one of the 20^th Century’s greatest crimes against humanity. Lenin in 1922 had already announced it: We will even use terror, including economic terror. – Which Stalin then executed in incomprehensible brutality. The forcibly collectivized Kulaks, those independent farmers hated by the Communists, were in 1932-33 throughout the Soviet Union obligated to unfulfillable deliveries. He who did not submit, armed commandos took away from him the entire harvest and all food stores. The Ukraine, as the granary of Europe, was especially hard hit because there Stalin wanted to eliminate national consciousness. The country was blockaded, rail traffic was no longer allowed. Up to four million people were given up to certain death by starvation.  

When we today remember these monstrous crimes, then there needs be primarily one lesson: The socialist ideology with its hatred of individuality and freedom, with its levelling terror and its madness of being able to create a new man, is to be rejected and fought wherever in new guise it raises its hideous head. That pertains to the national socialist variant, yet also plainly pertains to the international variant which hides behind fine sounding words like “justice” and “progress”.  

The AfD delegation briefed on the Holodomor here in the German Bundestag already three years ago. At that time, scarcely anyone was interested. In regards to crimes in communist spheres of power, our left-leaning political establishment has for decades preferred to look away. Certainly the remembrance of the crimes of the SED does not come forward fittingly; the monument is still not built. The leader engaged for the Hohenschönhaus memorial was elegantly gotten rid of, etc.

Why now is remembrance of the Holodomor so important to these same political forces? We fear, for crooked reasons. In your speeches here and in other announcements occur a strong parallelization and identification [Ineinssetzung] of the historical event with the present war of Russia against the Ukraine. The Heidelberg historian Tanya Penter speaks in Spiegel quite correctly of an “unfortunate interweaving of separate historical contexts” in your motion [Drucksache 20/4681] and the genocide researcher Kristin Platt warned in Deutschlandfunk Kultur: One must deal very carefully with the term genocide or Völkermord; for certainly in a war it will be frequently used strategically and also as propaganda. Besides, Vladimir Putin has cited the Ukraine for the Völkermord of Russians in the eastern provinces. We here in the West should not mirror the immoderation of such accusations, ladies and gentlemen.

Yet German politics as usual is intoxicated to exaltation in its moralizing superiority. Foreign Minister Baerbock now even speaks in regards Russia’s conduct of the war, which so far according to UN statistics has claimed around 6,500 civilian victims, of a break with civilization. – An expression which otherwise has been reserved for the Holocaust. Frau Baerbock – wherever she is today – certainly demonstrates a wise statesmanship in a crisis not in maximum rhetorical escalation but with measure and circumspection [Maß und Umsicht] in regards the peace which she should keep in view. She is strikingly lacking in both.

In conclusion, I want to correct one error of yours: The Ukrainians who now with weapons in hand and perhaps with the memory of the Holodomor in heart defend their homeland do not do it for the values of the international rainbow, for diversity, tolerance and equalization. They do it for the sovereignty of their country, for the preservation of their people and of their culture. They therein have our solidarity. The Holodomor is to be remembered,

            Vice-president Katrin Göring-Eckardt: Herr colleague, your speaking time is                        at an end.

but the instrumentalization of history which you are pushing, we reject.

            Lamya Kaddor (Greens): For you, nothing is too harmful!

Many thanks.

            Britta Haßelmann (Greens): For you, nothing is too harmful! Respect –                                    not a chance!

 

[trans: tem]

 

Marc Jongen, March 17, 2022, Anti-totalitarian Consensus

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 20/21, p. 1548.

Frau President. Valued members. Right honorable members of the inquest commission.

“There is never a document of culture without there being at the same time one of barbarism.” This sentence of Walter Benjamin came to me in the sense of preparing for today’s debate on the reappraisal [Aufarbeitung] of the SED dictatorship. The barbarians commit crimes, be it by national socialists or later the red socialists, and following generations found inquest commissions, institutes, build memorials, organize a most highly scrupulous remembrance culture around the past crimes and evil – necessary, yet oppressive.

One of the central conclusions of the first SED inquest commission in the 90s stated – I cite:

The SED state was a dictatorship. It was one not as a result of maldevelopment or individual abuse of power – which occurred in particular instances – but of its historical and ideological fundamentals.

An enormously important statement, in regards to which we are not allowed to forget one thing: The party by the name of Die Linke, which since 1990 sits in the Bundestag, which was earlier called the PDS, was before that called the SED. This Linke is legally identical with the SED; even today, they live on the assets which they robbed from the citizens of the DDR and they still stand on the same ideological fundamentals. This is a disgrace for this sovereign house and for this country, ladies and gentlemen.  

DDR spelled out is: German Democratic Republic. You should please always think of that – primarily you of the CDU – when you here call yourselves in common with all others as far as the Linke “the democratic delegations”. To be democratic, that does not mean to have the allegedly only correct opinion and a hyper-moral conscious. To be democratic means to accept the competition of political ideas, to allow for authentic alternatives, ladies and gentlemen.

Otherwise, in regards the bloc parties of the DDR which pretended a variety, we are still where it is only ever the same in red, yellow or black. The irony of history wills that old grievances with spite again insidiously creep into all remembrance and admonition, often it even happens impudently clothed in remembrance and admonition. The concluding report of the second inquest commission retains the following which is of much importance:

The anti-totalitarian consensus as part of a democratic remembrance culture is one of the best sureties that what is not allowed to repeat is not repeated.

The former Family Minister Schwesig, SPD, and the former Interior Minister de Mazière, CDU, who abolished the extremism clause, have forsaken this anti-totalitarian consensus so that leftist radical associations could again be promoted, vehemently cheered on by Anetta Kahane, a former Stasi informant, who today again manages censorship at public expense. It cannot be imagined.

This anti-totalitarian consensus has Interior Minister Faeser also forsaken, who writes in Antifa approved publications and is totally blind in the leftist extremism eye. Under the banner of anti-fascism – now finally become a state doctrine – free opinion is again today cut off and sanctioned, those thinking otherwise cancelled and punished.

The Wall, as is known, was called in DDR jargon an “anti-fascist defense wall”. Well, for their own defense some inmates of the DDR, those who sought the way to freedom, were bled to death at the Wall. “Yet I love all people” – the famous words of Stasi chief Mielke.

Seven years ago, in rhetorical overdrive, Stern wrote: “Germany is completely DDR-ized…accommodation pays, opposition today is best practiced silently.” Why today is such like no longer to be read in the state-fed media? Because everything of this kind has improved? Or because the climate of opinion meantime has become still more repressive? Please ponder over this. And please, Frau Roth: Let us look at Russia, yes; yet let us also mind our own business.

Many thanks.

 

[trans: tem]

 

 

 

Marc Jongen, April 22, 2021, Cultural Identity

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]