Answers from the parties
The values that decisively shaped the Basic Law (Grundgesetz), our traditions and customs are Christian-Jewish and have led to a free and democratic guiding culture. Everyone who lives here and accepts this guiding culture is part of society. Society enables the individual freely to live out their personal needs and to pursue their goals, as long as these are not directed against others, against society or against the law.
We would like to see Germany as part of a vital European Union.
Germany is a European cultural nation, shaped above all by the Christian-Jewish tradition and by the Enlightenment. The basis for people living together in Germany is the order of values set out in the Basic Law. On this proven foundation our nation has united in a democratic, liberal, social and federal state under the rule of law. The CDU and the CSU hold fast to this. The more diverse and plural a society is, the more it needs a unifying bond – our guiding culture. It connects those who live in one and the same country and form a community of shared destiny. We are working towards our guiding culture being recognised as the basis of our life together in Germany by all people living here – irrespective of origin, religion or creed. The guiding culture comprises principles and convictions that are for us inalienable and indispensable: for example respect for the dignity of every single human being and the fundamental and human rights that follow from it, the affirmation of the free democratic state under the rule of law, and a commitment to the social market economy, which demands personal responsibility from every individual and guarantees solidarity for those who fall into hardship through no fault of their own.
The CDU and the CSU see themselves as Germany’s European parties. It was the CDU and the CSU that secured the Federal Republic of Germany’s integration into the West after the Second World War. We continue to feel bound by that legacy.
The SPD is committed to preserving our open and free society. The first 20 articles of our Basic Law are for us the basis of our life together.
We fight for a society that treats every person with respect, irrespective of gender, origin, sexual identity and religion. We fight for freedom, for the right of everyone to express and publish their opinion. We also fight for a free press and an independent judiciary. When we look around Europe and the world, we see these values under threat. The SPD stands up for these values, then as now.
Like no other party, we stand for the European idea. For more than 500 million people, this idea of a united Europe is the promise of a life in peace, freedom, security and prosperity. We want an economically dynamic, more democratic and more social Europe that puts people at its centre, creates understanding and fosters cohesion.
The Federal Republic of Germany is colourful. Among others, the three Abrahamic religions are part of it: Christianity, Judaism and Islam. For this diverse life to succeed with as little conflict as possible, two recognised norms are needed: the Basic Law, beginning with Article 1, and German as the language of society. No further general rules, let alone a catalogue of a so-called guiding culture, are required; they only exclude.
DIE LINKE has a fundamentally positive attitude towards European integration as the lesson drawn from a series of European wars and two world wars that essentially originated in Europe.
DIE LINKE expressly advocates a vital European Union. However, talking things up is not enough on its own; what is needed is making them better. The EU does not need still more military and intelligence services, as is currently being demanded. A new European Union requires more justice, solidarity and democracy, in the service of development and peace – worldwide.
We want to strengthen a united Europe. The unifying bond consists of the central fundamental values of the German and European constitutional tradition: human dignity, freedom, democracy, the equality of all people and of the sexes, and a self-determined life for all. Anyone who restricts the freedom of others violates our values. We do, however, oppose “guiding culture” debates that exclude and divide. Our society is free and pluralistic, and it is precisely in this that its civilisational and cultural progress lies.A “free and democratic guiding culture”
is supported without reservation by the AfD. However, the AfD sees this guiding culture as acutely endangered by a multiculturalism that is fundamentally misunderstood and intellectually unexamined. Multiculturalism, if it is not to be understood merely as superficial folklore, stands in opposition to universalist values such as those that grew above all out of Kant’s moral philosophy and found expression in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For communitarian multiculturalists demand that people be sorted according to cultural affiliation and that a corresponding legal separation be undertaken. Ultimately this leads to special rights, which in turn consistently conjures up the “clash of civilizations” predicted by Huntington.
The “free and democratic guiding culture” can of course only be a free, democratic and German guiding culture. That goes without saying. This culture definitely includes the German language and everything connected with that language (literature, theatre, philosophy, individual linguistic communication from the simplest to the most complex, the media). But it also includes our successful technical and scientific culture, which is becoming ever more important for the future. Not least, a strong culture of learning, which is being lost more and more in our schools, is also part of the German guiding culture.
The very term “guiding culture” provokes reflexive defensive reactions in many intellectuals, politicians and other representatives of society, so that a genuinely open and free debate on this and on many other subjects cannot take place. In this the AfD sees a threat to the core substance of our republic. For where no debate takes place, the public sphere cannot serve as a republican forum and consequently no truth can be established any longer. This goes hand in hand with a loss of reality in the public and political sphere, which according to Hannah Arendt is the “greatest danger in modernity”, because – as Arendt goes on – “If the resistance of reality is lacking, then in principle everything becomes possible.”
In addition to the roots of our values already mentioned, the Enlightenment properly understood and humanism must be added. With regard to the Enlightenment, in the AfD’s view at least two names must be mentioned. Firstly Kant, because of his foundational works, his moral philosophy and his essay “Perpetual Peace”. Secondly Rousseau, because he pointed out the value of small units, which are a necessary precondition for the existence of genuine democratic republics and of a law that deserves the name.
The AfD sees the centrally organised European Union, which after all commits itself to becoming an “ever closer union”, as a threat to a politically and economically strong and diverse Europe. The euro serves as a prime example of misguided policy: as a political project in permanent rescue mode by means of the ECB, it pretends that an EU state already exists. The AfD, however, regards monetary sovereignty as a core element of genuine statehood. Consequently, in the AfD’s view, the ECB’s conduct continuously violates law and statute, above all the Maastricht Treaty. For this reason too the AfD wants to reform the EU fundamentally and calls in its basic programme for a “Europe of fatherlands”. In doing so it sees itself in the tradition of Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle.
We Free Democrats are convinced that the Basic Law contains the guiding model for our society.
The Basic Law is the most liberal constitution Germany has ever had. It is therefore not a cold collection of rules but an objective order of values. It is the basis of our life together.
It guarantees freedom of conscience and belief as well as the equal treatment of the various religious and philosophical communities; the Basic Law is not baptised. The order of the Basic Law is therefore open to all who share its values – irrespective of religion and world view. Within this order, however, everyone must also be free to live as they think right, even if this may contradict the traditions of the majority society. For we reject in principle any attempt by a majority to impose its culture on the individual; instead we respect every person as they are. That is why we Free Democrats also demand of everyone who lives here or wishes to live here respect for fundamental rights, for the rule of law and for its laws. Where inner liberality and tolerance are concerned there can be no discount for anyone. The values of our Basic Law are not negotiable. Nor are the shared values that the European Union has given itself. For us Free Democrats, Germany’s future clearly lies in Europe.