analysis
As head of state, Federal President Steinmeier is committed to neutrality. At the same time, he is concerned about the future of the country. Should he be more explicit towards enemies of democracy?
Frank-Walter Steinmeier is known among his people in Bellevue Palace for the fact that he still puts his hand to his speeches and polishes them – the Federal President likes to bring well-known authors into the team to prepare the speeches. He may have particularly fine-tuned his speech on the 75th anniversary of the Herrenchiemsee Constitutional Convention – it’s about Steinmeier’s heart issue, which has been on his mind from the beginning of his first term: the importance of democracy in this country.
enemies of democracy address
The difference from the beginning of his first term in 2017 is that enemies of democracy are now much more popular – and trust in government policy continues to decline. According to two studies by the SPD-affiliated Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation from the years 2019 and 2022, the satisfaction values for the functioning of democracy are just under 50 percent. An alarm signal – not only for the Federal President. He should see it as his central task to address this group.
Getting closer – that’s probably why he came up with the “local time” format after re-election in February 2022. For three days at a time, he relocates his office to smaller towns in the country and talks there with as many different people as possible – whether at the market stall or with representatives of local politics. But is that enough? He scores in direct conversation. The larger the audience, the more brittle, lecturing and technocratic the expert on political administrative apparatus seems – his speeches oscillate somewhere between lecture and speech.
democracy stabilizing function
In February 2017, the month of his election as Federal President, Steinmeier topped the list of politician satisfaction as then SPD politician and foreign minister with 79 percent ARD Germany trend well ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Only Federal President Joachim Gauck was more popular with the people at 81 percent. The AfD, which was not yet represented in the Bundestag, was 12 percent. At the end of his first term in office, the political scientist Heinrich Oberreuter attested that Steinmeier played a role in stabilizing democracy.
That would now be more necessary than ever: In the current Germany trend the partially right-wing extremist AfD has a new high of 21 percent, and far above that in some East German federal states – not all of their sympathizers are immediately considered to be right-wing extremists themselves, but they don’t seem to be bothered by the ethnic-national and anti-minority orientation of the party. It can be assumed that Steinmeier is very concerned about this: Is the country’s basic anti-totalitarian consensus still in place, which not only draws on the constitutional convention of 1948 in West Germany, but also on the peaceful revolution of the East Germans in 1989?
General and diplomatic
Measured against how concerned Steinmeier seems to be about the future of democracy in this country, his publicly chosen words come across as irritatingly general and diplomatic. In the ZDF summer interview about a month ago, when asked about the AfD survey high, he didn’t say the word “right-wing extremist”.
Of course, according to protocol, he is at the head of the state and, as head of state, is committed to party-political neutrality. As a consequence, this clearly means that he is also the representative of the AfD members and electorate. On the one hand, according to the Constitutional Court, he should maintain a certain distance from the goals and activities of political parties and social groups. On the other hand, he should assume a constitutional control function. He derives the authority and dignity of his office from the intellectual and moral effect – after all, political decisions are a matter for the executive, the government.
Warn but don’t name
One could interpret this as sufficient leeway to warn more clearly about parties and movements that are anti-constitutional in parts and to try to win their supporters back into the democratic spectrum. Or as a dilemma.
For Steinmeier it seems to be the latter: he wants to warn against the AfD, but does not call them by their names. His statements and words sometimes sound so general that none of them need to feel addressed. As clever as they may be worded, the question arises: Does it reach the people who are increasingly turning away in protest? All he says is that voters assume responsibility if they support parties “that contribute to the brutalization of the conflict.”
Or shouldn’t he just say clearly into the microphone at prime time: There are currently parties and movements that are striving for a different political system and want to destroy ours? He doesn’t have to call them “screamers” with no brains – as Chancellor Olaf Scholz slipped out in June in a public appearance against Putin-friendly troublemakers.
Too careful?
“Nobody prevents him from saying that there are parties in the German party system that are shaking the foundations of the free and democratic basic order,” says political scientist Gero Neugebauer in an interview with tagesschau.de. He could point much more clearly to the character of the AfD represented in the Bundestag with its völkisch-national concept.
Compared to the clear statements by the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, on the AfD, Steinmeier seems downright cautious. “In a number of statements, an ethnic understanding of the people is expressed, for example by invoking the ‘Great Exchange’,” Haldenwang told the ARD Capital Studio: “Such statements offer indications that the human dignity guarantee of the Basic Law for certain population groups is being questioned.”
in one current guest article in “Spiegel” Steinmeier speaks quite generally of the fight against extremism: “Clear, resolute, even combative opposition from the democratic parties is always required, for example, when agitators in a municipal assembly denigrate our democracy as a ‘system’, ‘unjust regime’ or ‘dictatorship’ and demand their elimination.”
Maybe he should be even clearer, point out the current danger of an authoritarian development – and that such sayings are already part of everyday life somewhere in the republic.