Constitution Day has been celebrated in Bavaria every year since 1967. It is intended to remind people that the Bavarian people gave themselves a constitution on December 1, 1946. This day is characterized by a ceremony that duly emphasizes the meaning and value of the Bavarian Constitution. For two years, the event only took place virtually because of the Corona plague. On Wednesday, however, politicians, clubs and associations, which lend the whole thing a colorful pomp, found themselves in person in the ballroom of the Munich Hofbräuhaus. This time, too, there was no shortage of flag and club delegations or of well-dressed guests.
Florian Besold, as President of the Bavarian Unification, the driving force behind the celebrations of the constitution, had put a cumbersome topic on the agenda this time, the discussion of which was of course more important than ever, as all speakers emphasized. Times are turbulent, democracy is under pressure. Besold therefore issued a call for honest self-examination: do we prioritize freedom and human rights, or prosperity and peace? It was about the question of the connection between prosperity and freedom in a democracy.
Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) recalled the impression under which the constitution was written after the war. One had experienced the devastation of a world without God, without values and without human dignity. Based on this experience, the message of the constitution in 2022 can only be to help people who are threatened by war. The increasing attacks on democracy and the rule of law, coupled with hatred and violence, endangered democracy. This lives from the argument and the dispute, “but a minimum of respect and compliance with the rules of the game is required,” said Herrmann.
State President Ilse Aigner confessed that she was “a big fan of the Bavarian Constitution”, which she combined with an appreciation of the constitution friend Besold, who does not make it easy for politics and often puts his finger in wounds. His call for self-examination is important. In times when right and left forces are attacking everything that represents the constitution, one shouldn’t give in a millimeter. There is a risk of social division, “but we have a broad middle and I am therefore full of confidence that we will preserve freedom and prosperity.”
In the panel discussion, Ursula Münch, director of the Academy for Civic Education, asked what we are willing to sacrifice in terms of comfort and prosperity. “First and foremost, democracy is responsible for freedom, that is its essence.” In a liberal democracy, the chance of prosperity is greater, there is definitely a correlation. The Bavarian Youth Red Cross, in which more than 106,000 children, adolescents and young adults are committed to health, the environment and international understanding, received the “Youth for Bavaria” constitutional prize.