Graefelfing: Hans Maier believes in the renaissance of the people’s parties – district of Munich

Readings and discussions with the former Bavarian Minister of Culture, Hans Maier, are always an intellectual delight. The audience in Gräfelfinger Bürgerhaus was able to experience this again on Tuesday evening, when the 90-year-old read from his new book “Germany – Landmarks in his History” and then – and that was the actually interesting and touching part of the evening – his questions Fan base provided. Incidentally, that consisted not only of more mature semesters, but also, for example, of a class from the Feodor-Lynen-Gymnasium that had come with their teacher, Angelika Lawo, the Planegger councilor. The community center was fully occupied, almost 200 visitors had come. They all experienced a master of language who explained even the most difficult historical connections in such a way that they appeared causal, logical and, above all, understandable. Klaus Stadler from the hundred-year-old “Literary Society Graefelfing” put it in a nutshell: “Maier is a speaker who can be understood, academic jargon is rather alien to him.”

Maier, long professor at the LMU Munich and President of the Central Committee of German Catholics, first gave a lecture on the various interpretations of the word “German”, which he called a “late word” due to its history. Above all, it was the Nazis who made a mess with the term “German” and thus in connection with the word “Reich”, Maier said. It was “a false appropriation”, he said, and it had “no tradition whatsoever”, but rather a “tyranny without barriers”: “The party commands the state.” After the Second World War, the time of “inflation of the word empire” was over, as was “the times of political religions.” After the Hitler dictatorship there was an “inner turn to democracy”. Today, the historian stated, “despite difficult times, there is a confidence in the present.”

Several visitors asked for an assessment of the risk by right-wing parties in Germany. Maier recalled a number of right-wing movements that had taken place in Germany after 1945 and some of which had made it into the Bundestag – even the FDP was once a downright right-wing party, much like the FPÖ in Austria today. There were the NPD and the Republicans, “but I was always sure that they would also go away”. With the AfD it is different, said Maier: “They have established themselves quite well in the East.” One could certainly speak of a “threatening development”, especially since the right and left, according to Maier, “often represent similar theses.”

Two strong people’s parties – “the happiest years in Germany”

With regard to the current “long coalition negotiations and the many political groups in the Bundestag”, the historian and politician Maier said that for him the long years of a system of two strong people’s parties, the CDU / CSU and the SPD, were the “happiest in Germany”. And he also believes that there will be “real people’s parties” again – Maier even agrees with the left-wing SPD politician Kevin Kühnert, as he said. “I believe in it, although the crumbling into six parties brings inner unrest,” said Maier. The Christian socialist Maier sees the development of the Greens as “absolutely astonishing and positive: it shows that democracy is a formative force.” Overall, Maier believes that the forthcoming Ampel coalition will have “very strong democratic potential”. Long applause.

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