It’s time to stand up for democracy, says Amy Gutmann at the memorial lecture for the “White Rose” in Munich – and even switches to German at crucial points in her speech.
Up to this point, Amy Gutmann has presented her appeal, dressed up as a lecture, in her native English, but now the US ambassador unexpectedly switches to German. “So many people think what we said and wrote, but they don’t dare say it.” This sentence comes from Sophie Scholl; it comes down to us from the court hearing in the Munich Palace of Justice, where she, her brother Hans Scholl and Christoph Probst were sentenced to death. The quote is apparently so important to Amy Gutmann that she wants to present it in the original. Ultimately, this statement captures the core idea of her speech at the “White Rose Memorial Lecture” in the Audimax of the Ludwig Maximilian University, which this year’s motto is: “Standing Up & Speaking Out for Democracy” – standing up and standing up for democracy .