Admonisher, critic and democrat – even at the age of 90, former Interior Minister Gerhart Baum regularly speaks out. Federal President Steinmeier now paid tribute to the FDP politician for his commitment to freedom and human rights.
The Federal President began his speech for Gerhart Baum with a question that was asked after the end of the Nazi dictatorship: Does Germany – given its past – have the right to speak out on questions of human rights and morals? According to Frank Walter Steinmeier, Baum answered this with a clear ‘yes’ in his lifetime:
Dear Mr. Baum, with your firm conviction that you want to build and shape a different Germany, you have campaigned for civil rights, human rights, the fight against extremists and culture, which is a matter close to your heart, for many years.
For this, Baum, who received the ‘Great Cross of Merit’ in 1980, has now been honored with the ‘Great Cross of Merit with Star’. A particularly high form of appreciation.
“The freedom to have social security”
The Federal President recalled important stages in the life of the lawyer, who was born in Dresden in 1932. During his time as Federal Minister of the Interior from the late 1970s, he tried to find out where the terror of the RAF came from. To the work as a German representative at the World Human Rights Conference in 1993 and as the UN Human Rights Commissioner in Sudan.
Steinmeier paid tribute to Baum’s concept of freedom: “You were always concerned with more than just ‘freedom from’ – from oppression, from violence, from dictatorship. You were also concerned with ‘freedom to’ – the freedom of every citizen to approach oneself develop, to have social security, to have access to art and culture.”
“Democracy only lives if you live it yourself,” said Gerhart Baum in his speech.
Flaming speech for democracy
Visibly touched, the honoree gave a passionate speech for democracy, which he had been committed to since his youth since the end of the Second World War. With many people in today’s short-lived society, he has the disturbing feeling that they don’t even know which republic they live in, “how it came about, what it carries.”
He also had advice for the traffic light coalition from his active days as a politician. “By the way, I got used to it then, taking responsibility for exchanging things with one another first.” When there is a dispute, it is essentially between the government and the opposition, stressed Baum. “And not within a government.”
The liberal looked at the rising poll numbers of the AfD with concern.
I remember that after the war we talked to a lot of people who said, yes, in 1930 in the big election, where Hitler got a lot of percentages, we voted for the Nazis, but we didn’t expect that that they are destroying democracy.
You have to say that to those who now want to express protest with a party that wants to destroy democracy. Baum called for supporting democracy with great energy. Democracy only lives if you live it yourself, he said, addressing young people in particular.