The radical humanism surprised still today, 70 years after the German basic law was adopted. Without the bitter experiences of Nazism, it would be inconceivable.
“The Dignity of man is inviolable.” Instead of complicated passages on state-building, this clear and nothing was put into perspective, there’s a phrase right at the beginning. Was the human dignity in national socialism nothing in value; millions of people were humiliated, murdered and tortured. Now this Would be the focus should be.
Like in school: The Parliamentary Council, the basic law was 1948/49
The Weimar Constitution, the predecessor of the basic law, was for its time a modern. They, too, contained fundamental rights and introduced the right of women to vote in Germany. However, it has not prevented the national socialist dictatorship. The legal scholar Prof. Ulrich baptistery believes: “Weimar is not a failure of its Constitution, but the fact that there were too few Democrats.” But the Weimar Constitution had serious weaknesses, you want to avoid the basic law necessarily.
Weak Federal President – because Weimar
Problematic, for example, the very strong position of the Reich President was. He could dissolve the Reichstag at will and even Parliament using emergency decrees to govern. This finally helped Adolf Hitler to Power. The Federal President today, therefore, has only a mainly representative function. The Power of the Federal Parliament and the elected Federal Chancellor has strengthened the basic law.
The Federal President is indirectly elected, he has mainly a representative function
Suspicious of the authors of the basic law on the subject of direct democracy. Also had to do with the experience of the story. The German President was directly elected. In politically and economically troubled times, this could be dangerous, especially in connection with the power of the office. The basic law therefore relies on a of politicians elected Federal President. Today, this distrust may seem exaggerated. But Ulrich baptistery holds a direct election of the Federal President to be wrong. Because then the President can play “always easy, his choice against the Parliament” and thus against the people’s elected representatives in position. For showing the Brexit Referendum in the UK was not “necessarily advertisement for direct democracy”.
Initially, only “for a transitional period”
But not only the Failure of the Weimar Republic and the experiences of national socialism were for the basic law of embossing, but also the particular circumstances of this time, the time of its creation: 1949 cemented the division of Germany. The basic law was only for the nascent Federal Republic, but it remained committed to the unit. It should apply only “for a transitional period” until all the German could contribute to a Constitution. Therefore, it is also the name of the basic law and not the Constitution.
With the German reunification in 1990, the basic law for the whole of Germany
With the reunification in 1990, the goal was achieved. However, instead of a whole new Constitution, decided to the leading political forces, that “the accession of the German Democratic Republic should take place as to the scope of the basic law”. It remained, therefore, in the existing basic law, and also in the expression. The Provisional was abandoned. Instead of the accession article 23, there is since 1992, the European article, which requires “the achievement of a United Europe”.
Today, the speech is almost always from the fathers and mothers of the basic law. The four mothers were mentioned in the beginning, but in addition to the 61 men hardly. It is thanks to the women and, above all, the lawyer Elisabeth Selbert, that the phrase “men and women are equal” into the basic law. “This shows what can bring about feisty women. The men, the meaning then was not,” says Ulrich baptistery.
However, claim and reality gaped at that time still far apart. So women were not allowed to pursue until 1977, against the will of her husband a job. And, since 1997, rape in marriage a criminal Offence. Since 1994, it is now also in the basic law: “the state shall promote the actual implementation of equal rights between women and men and works towards the elimination of existing disadvantages.”
Some of it will apply to “forever”
The example also shows how the law developed, it was changed to today, more than 60 times. Another example is the asylum article: “the Politically Persecuted enjoy asylum”, it was said at the beginning, unambiguously. As the beginning of the 1990s, the number of asylum applications rose sharply, restricted to the Bundestag with the necessary two-thirds majority, the right to asylum is a fundamental change in the law. Since then, more and more professions, for example the one to suggest entering via an EU state after Germany.
The asylum law was tightened since 1949, significantly, the basic law is amended accordingly
But there is a core in the basic law, which is protected by an “eternity clause” against changes and restrictions. Democracy (“All state authority emanates from the people”), and the rule of law (“belonging to The Executive authority and the judiciary are bound by law and justice”) as well as article 1 on human dignity. The Federal building is off limits.
The basic law was adopted in 1949 as a temporary solution. However, it should be the so far longest-lived German Constitution. Many articles have been detailed in the course of time and word-rich.
A tremendous set that binds all state Action
But it’s the simple phrases that appeal to many people, as before, as the the inviolable Dignity of the human person. Together with the German Federal constitutional court protects the Constitution, and sometimes “the fundamental rights against the state has designed,” says Ulrich battistotti, enjoys the basic law is also very special trust in the Germans. It is probably the most important lesson from the German past: Not a citizen to the state, to subordinate, but the state for man.