Not every expression of opinion is a heroic act. Resistance can be many things. A good date to remember especially these days is July 20th.
Of
Joachim Kaeppner
Anyone who still knows what to do with the name Egon Franke probably thinks of the Federal Minister for Inner-German Relations under Helmut Schmidt and head of the “channel workers” in the SPD, a group of traditionally proud Social Democrats in which the old, down-to-earth workers’ party still lived on. Franke, nicknamed “Canale Grande”, liked to hold court in the legendary Bonn restaurant “Rheinlust”. He was one of the favorite enemies of the left wing of the party, whom he disliked. The verbal radicalism of many 1968ers and the zeitgeist flirting with Marxist theories of world instruction did not seem to him to be an enrichment for democracy, but rather a danger. One shudders in amusement to think what “Canale Grande” would say about the language-cleansing obsessions of some privileged academic circles of our day.