It was a shady anniversary. A few months ago, in January 2022, the Radical Decree turned fifty years old. Anniversaries usually take a long time to prepare. This anniversary needs intensive follow-up. Why? Because those affected are still not rehabilitated. Because those affected have still not been compensated. Because there is still no Germany-wide collective state apology for a collective injustice committed by the state. And because again, for example in Brandenburg, work is being done on new radical decrees.
There is no need for new sweeping radical decrees to prevent Reich citizens from becoming civil servants; it needs concrete and individual attention.
The radical decree, which resulted in professional bans, was one of the most far-reaching disasters in the history of the Federal Republic. It led to a whole generation snooping on state opinions – which therefore distanced itself from the state. It is sorely necessary to learn lessons from this. What can you learn? One can learn how to fight radicalism and how not. You can learn from it how to protect democracy and how to damage it. The radical decree and the professional bans have harmed her.
How to protect democracy – and how to harm it
The Radical Decree required civil servants, employees and workers in the public sector to be guarantors of political order. They could only be considered guarantors if they “at all times” stand up for the “free democratic basic order in the sense of the Basic Law” and “actively work to preserve this basic order inside and outside of the service”.
The decree was the starting point for the so-called regular request to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, i.e. for a kind of ideological dragnet search. Millions of people were checked by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, who then used the knowledge they gained to answer inquiries from the recruitment authorities. From the real or alleged attitude of a 25-year-old at the time, conclusions were drawn about his actions as a 50-year-old.
General suspicious reviews
Tens of thousands were summoned by the state for embarrassing questioning, young teachers in particular were affected – and those who wanted to become teachers. They were not allowed to teach if they had ever attended a left-wing demonstration. Some of these young people were only to blame because they were at home in the left wing of the SPD or in the peace movement. Those who showed solidarity with them in newspaper ads were themselves persecuted.
It doesn’t take a tad from the state’s crown when it declares today that the years of generally suspicious reviews were wrong. The Greens, whose roots include the fight against occupational bans, did not particularly campaign for an apology and rehabilitation on the anniversary of the occupational bans – at least not at the federal level.
The 74-year-old Winfried Kretschmann, Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg, is well acquainted with the radical decree and professional ban. He has experienced this firsthand. At that time, as a 24-year-old, he was ASTA chairman and Maoist at the University of Hohenheim. He wasn’t allowed to become a teacher – until his wise opponent, the university president George Turner, secretly campaigned for him at the Ministry of Education in Stuttgart.
Kretschmann was incredibly lucky, many of his contemporaries were not so lucky. In an interview on the anniversary of the radical decree, Kretschmann squirmed like an eel when it came to collective state apologies and the rehabilitation of those badly affected. He referred to a scientific study currently being carried out by the University of Heidelberg on the extremist decision; he wants to wait.
A new study is here
He doesn’t have to wait for her anymore. The study, funded by the Stuttgart Ministry of Science, is now available. It was released on May 20th. Wallstein-Verlag has just published it as an important book – 684 pages, edited by the historian Edgar Wolfrum, holder of the chair for contemporary history at the historical seminar of the Ruprecht-Karl-University Heidelberg. The book is called: “Enemies of the Constitution in the State. The ‘Radical Decree’ of 1972 in the History of Baden-Württemberg and the Federal Republic”.
In the foreword, the Green Science Minister Theresia Bauer writes that it is “the task and duty of every government to review its own and previous government actions and to critically reflect them again and again”. That’s correct. She continues: The radical decree was issued fifty years ago in the hope of “strengthening the then still young democracy and protecting it from enemies.” In practice, however, this has led to “the life plans of young people in particular being destroyed and their livelihoods endangered”. This is also true.
Stronghold of professional bans
In Baden-Württemberg, the radical decree was implemented in a particularly radical way. Here it was called the “Schiess Decree”, named after the then Stuttgart CDU Interior Minister Karl Schiess. At the time, this minister had arranged that, before an applicant was accepted into the public service, “the recruitment authorities would first have to inquire with the Ministry of the Interior” “whether there were any known facts that gave rise to concerns about the recruitment.” This also applied to the hiring of cleaning ladies. Prime Minister Hans Filbinger praised the “iron determination” of his interior minister.
Anyone who reads the scientific study learns that Baden-Württemberg was a stronghold of occupational bans. He also learns that the measures taken in the course of the Radical Decree represent collective injustice: the so-called constitutional prognosis from that time, which was the basis of all the proceedings, violated the core norms of international labor law. They are usually not based on specific misconduct, but on the general assumption that the person in question will be guilty at some point because of their political beliefs.
Another thing became clear to me when reading the study and the book: that the professional bans in their implementation almost exclusively affected leftists who were critically oriented; the state was blind in the right eye. The study illustrates this with impressive examples.
Should Kretschmann apologize to himself?
As can be heard, Prime Minister Kretschmann is still resisting apologizing on behalf of the state to those affected by the occupational ban – because he can’t apologize to himself. That sounds quirky and teasing, but it’s not convincing. Winfried Kretschmann can take it upon himself, after all he caught it well and got through the shooting decree.
The young people who were thrown off the track by the radical decree and the occupational ban – today they are between seventy-five and eighty years old. Should, does politics want to rely on a biological solution? That would not be worthy of a constitutional state.