Global Ethic Lecture
held by Tuebingen University
May 8, 2007
By Helmut Schmidt
First, I would like to thank you, dear Hans Küng. I was
very pleased to accept this invitation, as I have
followed the Global Ethic Project most positively since
the start of the 1990s. The words "Global Ethic" may
seem too ambitious to some, but the goal, the task to be
solved, is truly and, by necessity, very ambitious.
Perhaps at this point I can mention that an array of
former heads of state and government from all five
continents have set themselves a common goal very
similar to this one since 1987 as the InterAction
Council; however, as yet our work has only had
relatively little success. In contrast, the achievements
of Hans Küng and his friends are outstanding.
I myself can thank a devout Muslim for first inspiring
me to consider the moral laws common to the great
religions. More than a quarter of a century has gone by
since Anwar Al Sadat, then President of Egypt, explained
the common roots of the three Abrahamic religions to me,
as well as their many resemblances, and in particular
their corresponding moral laws. He knew of their shared
law on peace, for example in the psalms of the Jewish
Old Testament, in the Christian Sermon on the Mount or
in the fourth sura of the Moslem Koran. If only the
people were also aware of this convergence, he believed;
if only the people's political leaders, at least, were
aware of this ethic correspondence between their
religions, then long-lasting peace would be possible. He
was firmly convinced of this. Some years later, as
President of Egypt, he took political steps to match his
conviction and visited the capital and parliament of the
State of Israel, which had previously been his enemy in
four wars, to offer and conclude peace.
At my advanced age one has experienced the deaths of
one's own parents, siblings and many friends, but
Sadat's assassination by religious fanatics shook me
more severely than other losses. My friend Sadat was
killed because he obeyed the law of peace.
I will return to the law of peace in a moment, but first
a proviso: a single speech, especially one restricted in
length to less than one hour, cannot come close to
exhausting the topic of a politician's ethics. For this
reason, today I have to concentrate on a number of
comments, namely the relationship between politics and
religion, then the role of reason and conscience in
politics, and finally the need to compromise, and the
loss of stringency and consistency this inevitably
entails.
I.
Now let us return to the law on peace. The maxim of
peace is an essential element of the ethics or morals
which must be required of a politician. It applies
equally to domestic policy within a country and its
society, and to foreign policy. Along with this, there
are other laws and maxims. This naturally includes the
"Golden Rule" taught and demanded in all world
religions. Immanuel Kant merely reformulated it in his
Categorical Imperative; it is popularly reduced to the
phrase: "Do as you would be done by". This golden rule
applies to everyone. I do not believe that different
basic moral rules apply to politicians than to anybody
else.
However, at a level below the key rules of universal
morality, there are many special adaptations for
specific occupations or situations. Just think of
doctors' respected Hippocratic Oath of doctors, for
example, or a judge's professional ethics; or think of
the special ethic rules required of businesspeople, of
moneylenders or bankers, of employers or of soldiers at
war.
As I am neither a philosopher nor a theologian, I will
not make any attempt to present you with a compendium or
codex for the specific political ethic, and thus compete
with Plato, Aristotle or Confucius. For more than two
and a half millennia, great writers have brought
together all kinds of elements or components of the
political ethic, sometimes with highly controversial
results. In modern Europe this extends from Machiavelli
or Carl Schmitt to Hugo Grotius, Max Weber or Karl
Popper. I, on the other hand, must restrict myself to
presenting you with some of the insights I have gained
myself during my life as a politician and a political
publicist – for the most part in my home country, and,
for the rest, in dealing with our neighbouring
countries, both nearby and further away.
At this juncture I would also like to point to my
experience that, whereas talk of God and Christianity
has been far from rare in German domestic affairs, the
same is not true in discussion or negotiation with other
countries and their politicians. Recently, when
referendums were held in France and the Netherlands on
the draft European Union constitution, for many people
there the lack of reference to God in the text of the
constitution was a decisive motive for their rejection.
A majority of politicians had chosen to refrain from
invoking God in the text of the constitution. In the
German constitution, the Basic Law, God does appear in
the preamble: "Conscious of their responsibility before
God..."; and later a second time in the wording of the
oath of office in Article 56, where it finishes: "So
help me God". However, immediately after, the Basic Law
says: "The oath may also be taken without religious
affirmation". In both places it is left up to the
individual citizen to decide whether he means the God of
the Catholics or of the Protestants, the God of the Jews
or the Muslims.
In the case of the Basic Law, it was also a majority of
politicians who formulated this text in 1948/49. In a
democratic order, under the rule of law, politicians and
their reason play the decisive role in constitutional
policy, rather than any specific religious confession or
its scribes.
We recently experienced how, after centuries, the Holy
See finally reversed the verdict against Galileo's
reason, once rendered by power politics. Today, we
experience every day how religious and political forces
in the Middle East are locked in bloody battles for
power over people's souls – and how reason, the
rationality we all possess, repeatedly falls by the
wayside. When, in 2001, some religious zealots took
their own lives and those of three thousand people in
New York, convinced they were serving their God,
Socrates' death sentence – for godlessness! – was
already two and a half thousand years in the past.
Obviously, the perennial conflict between religion and
politics and reason is a lasting element of the human
condition.
II.
Perhaps I can add a personal experience here. I grew up
during the Nazi period; at the start of 1933 I had only
just turned fourteen. During my eight years of
compulsory military service I had placed my hopes in the
Christian churches for the time after the expected
catastrophe. However, after 1945, I experienced how the
churches were able neither to re-establish morality nor
to re-establish democracy and a constitutional state. My
own church was still struggling over Paul's Epistle to
the Romans: "Be subject unto the higher powers."
Instead, at first some experienced politicians from the
Weimar period played a significant part in the new
beginning; Adenauer, Schumacher, Heuss and others.
However, at the start of the Federal Republic it was
less the old Weimarians, and far more the incredible
economic success of Ludwig Erhard and the American
Marshall aid which swung the Germans towards freedom and
democracy and in favour of the constitutional state.
There is no shame in this truth: after all, since Karl
Marx we have known that economic reality influences
political convictions. This conclusion may only comprise
a half-truth, but the fact remains that every democracy
is endangered if its governing authorities cannot keep
industry and labour in adequate order.
As a result, I remained disappointed by the churches'
sphere of influence, not only morally, but also
politically and economically. In the quarter of a
century since I was Chancellor, I have learned a lot of
new things and have read a lot. In this process, I have
learned a little more about other religions and a little
more about philosophies I was previously not familiar
with. This enrichment has strengthened my religious
tolerance; at the same time, it has put me at a greater
distance from Christianity. Nonetheless, I call myself a
Christian and remain in the Church, as it
counterbalances moral decline and offers many people
support.
III.
To this day, what continues to disturb me about
references to the Christian God – both among some
churchpeople and some politicians – is the tendency
towards excluding others which we come across in
Christianity – and equally in other religious
confessions, too: "You are wrong but I am enlightened;
my convictions and aims are godly." It has long been
clear to me that our different religions and ideologies
must not be allowed to stop us from working for the good
of all; after all, our moral values actually resemble
one another closely. It is possible for there to be
peace among us, but we always need to recreate this
peace and "establish" it, as Kant said.
It does not serve the aims of peace if a religion's
believers and priests try to convert the believers of
another religion and to proselytize to them. For this
reason, my attitude towards the basic idea behind
missions of faith is one of deep scepticism. My
knowledge of history plays a special role in this – I am
referring to the fact that, for centuries, both
Christianity and Islam were spread by the sword, by
conquest and subjugation, but not by commitment,
conviction and understanding. The politicians of the
Middle Ages; that is, the dukes and kings, the caliphs
and the popes, appropriated religious missionary
thoughts and turned them into an instrument to expand
their might – and hundreds of thousands of believers
willingly let themselves be used in this way.
In my eyes, for example, the Crusades in the name of
Christ, where soldiers held their bibles in their left
hand and their swords in their right, were really wars
of conquest. In the modern age, the Spanish and the
Portuguese, the English, the Dutch and French, and
finally also the Germans used violence to take over most
of the Americas, Africa and Asia. These foreign
continents may have been colonised with a conviction of
moral and religious superiority, but the establishment
of the colonial empires had very little to do with
Christianity. Instead, it was all about power and
egocentric interest. Or take the Reconquista on the
Iberian peninsula: it was not only about the victory of
Christianity, but, at its heart, concerned the power of
the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. When
Hindus and Muslims fight today on Indian soil, or when
Sunni and Shiite Muslims battle in the Middle East, time
after time the crux of the matter is power and control –
the religions and their priests are used to this end, as
they can influence the masses.
Today it greatly concerns me that at the start of the
21st century a real danger has developed of a worldwide
"clash of civilisations", religiously motivated or in
religious guise. In some parts of the modern world,
motives of power, under the guise of religion, are mixed
with righteous anger about poverty and with envy at
others' prosperity. Religious missionary motives are
mixed with excessive motives of power. In this context
it is hard for the balanced, restrained voices of reason
to gain attention. In ecstatic, excited crowds, an
appeal to individuals' reason can not be heard at all.
The same is true today in places where Western
ideologies and teachings on democracy and human rights,
which are perfectly respectable, are forced with
military might and almost religious fervour upon
cultures which have developed in a totally different
manner.
IV.
I myself have drawn a clear conclusion from all these
experiences: mistrust any politician, any head of
government or state, who turns his religion into the
instrument of his quest for power. Stay clear of
politicians who mingle their religion, oriented towards
the next world, with their politics in this world.
This caution applies equally to politics at home and
abroad. It applies equally to the citizens of a country
and to its politicians. We must demand that politicians
respect and tolerate believers from other religions.
Anyone who is not capable of this as a political leader
must be seen as a risk to peace – to peace within our
country as well as to peace with others.
It is a tragedy that, on all sides, the rabbis, the
priests and pastors, the mullahs and ayatollahs have, to
a great degree, kept all knowledge of other religions
from us. Instead they have variously taught us to think
of other religions disapprovingly and even to look down
upon them. However, anyone who wants peace among the
religions should preach religious tolerance and respect.
Respect towards others requires a minimum amount of
knowledge about them. I have long been convinced that –
in addition to the three Abrahamic religions – Hinduism,
Buddhism and Shintoism rightly demand equal respect and
equal tolerance.
Because of this conviction, I welcomed the Chicago
Declaration Toward a Global Ethic by the Parliament of
the World’s Religions, seeing it not only as desirable
but also as urgently necessary. Based on the same
fundamental position, ten years ago today the
InterAction Council of former heads of state and
government sent the Secretary-General of the United
Nations a draft entitled “Universal Declaration of
Humans Responsibilities” which we had developed on the
initiative of Takeo Fukuda from Japan. Our text, written
with help from representatives of all the great
religions, contains the fundamental principles of
humanity. At this point, I would particularly like to
thank Hans Küng for his assistance. At the same time, I
gratefully recall the contributions made by the late
Franz Cardinal König of Vienna.
V.
However, I have also come to understand that, two and a
half thousand years ago, some of humanity's seminal
teachers, Socrates, Aristotle, Confucius and Mencius,
had no need for religion, even though they paid lip
service to it, as they were expected to, more on the
margins of their work. Everything we know about them
tells us that Socrates based his philosophy, and
Confucius his ethics, on the application of reason
alone; none of their teachings had religion as a basis.
Yet both have come to lead the way, even today, for
millions upon millions of people. Without Socrates there
would have been no Plato – perhaps even no Immanuel Kant
and no Karl Popper. Without Confucius and Confucianism,
it is hard to imagine that the Chinese culture and the
"Kingdom of Silk", whose lifespan and vitality are
unique in world history, would have existed.
Here, one experience is important to me: clearly, it is
also perfectly possible to produce outstanding insights,
scientific achievements, and thus also ethical and
political teachings even if their originator does not
consider himself bound to a God, to a prophet, to a Holy
Scripture or to a certain religion, but only feels bound
by his reason. This applies equally to socio-economic
and political achievements. However, it cost the
American and European Enlightenment many centuries of
struggle and battle before it was possible for this
experience to make its breakthrough in our part of the
world. Here the word "breakthrough" is justified with
respect to science, technology and industry.
With respect to politics, on the other hand, the word
"breakthrough" unfortunately only applies to the
Enlightenment to a limited extent. Whether it is the
example of Wilhelm II seeing himself as a monarch "by
the grace of God", whether it is an American president
invoking God or politicians today invoking Christian
values with their politics: they consider themselves
bound religiously as Christians. Some plainly and
clearly feel they have a position of Christian religious
responsibility; others only perceive this responsibility
relatively vaguely – just as most Germans probably also
do today. Many Germans have, after all, now broken away
from Christianity, many have left their church; some
have also broken away from God – and yet are good people
and good neighbours.
VI.
Today, the vast majority of Germans share some
important, fundamental, binding political convictions.
Above all, I mean they are bound to inalienable human
rights and the principle of democracy. This inner
commitment is evidently independent of their own belief
or lack of belief, and also independent of the fact that
neither principle is included in the Christian
denomination.
Not only Christianity, but also the other world
religions and their holy books, have mainly imposed laws
and duties upon their believers, whereas the rights of
the individual are hardly ever found in the holy books.
On the other hand, in its first twenty articles, our
Basic Law speaks almost entirely of the constitutional
rights of individual citizens, whereas their
responsibilities and duties are hardly mentioned. Our
list of civil rights was a healthy reaction to the
extreme suppression of the freedom of the individual
under Nazi rule. It is not built upon Christian or other
religious teachings, but entirely upon the only basic
value expressed plainly and clearly in our constitution:
"inviolable human dignity".
In the same breath, in the same Article 1, the
legislature, the executive and the judiciary are bound
by the basic rights as directly applicable law; this
also means that all politicians are bound, whether they
are law-makers, governing authorities or administrators;
whether in the Federal Government, in the Länder or the
municipalities. At the same time, politicians have a
wide scope for action, as the Basic Law allows good or
successful politics just as it does poor or unsuccessful
politics. For this reason, we need not only the
law-makers' and ruling parties' compliance with the
constitution; not only, secondly, their regulation by
the Constitutional Court, but also, thirdly and most
importantly, the regulation of politics by the voters
and their public opinion.
Of course politicians succumb to error; of course they
make mistakes. After all, they are subject to the same
human weaknesses as any other citizen, the same
weaknesses as public opinion. From time to time,
politicians are forced to make spontaneous decisions;
mostly, however, they have enough time and sufficient
opportunity to get advice from several sources, to weigh
up the available options and their foreseeable
consequences before they come to a decision. The more a
politician allows himself to be led by a fixed theory or
ideology, by his party's interests in power, the less he
will weigh up all the discernible factors and all
consequences of his decision in each individual case;
the greater the danger of error, of mistakes and
failure. This risk is particularly high when a decision
has to be made spontaneously. In each case he is
responsible for the consequences – and more often than
not this responsibility can be a real burden. In many
cases politicians do not find any help in making their
decisions in the constitution, in their religion, in any
philosophy or theory, but have to rely upon their reason
and judgement alone.
This is why Max Weber was being rather too general when
he spoke in his still readable speech of 1919 on
"Politics as a Vocation" of a politician's "sense of
proportion". He added that a politician must "give an
account of the results of his action". In fact, I
believe, not only the results in general, but also
specifically the unintended or tolerated side effects
must be justified; the aims of his actions must be
morally justified, and his ways and means must, equally,
be ethically justified. The "sense of proportion" must,
then again, suffice for any unavoidable, necessary
spontaneous decision. Yet if there is enough time to
weigh things up, there must be careful analysis and
deliberation. This maxim does not only apply to
decisions made in extreme, dramatic cases, but also to
normal, everyday legislation, such as in tax or labour
policy; it applies just as much to decisions about new
power stations or new motorways. It applies without
constraint.
In other words: politicians cannot square their actions
and the consequences of those actions with their
conscience unless they have applied their reason. Good
intentions or honourable convictions alone cannot
relieve the burden of their responsibility. For this
reason I have always seen Max Weber's words on the
necessity of an ethic of responsibility, in contrast to
an ethic of ultimate ends, as valid.
At the same time, however, we know that many people who
enter politics are motivated by their convictions, not
by reason. Equally, we must concede that some decisions,
both on domestic and foreign affairs, are born of
people's convictions – and not of rational deliberation.
And hopefully we have no illusions about the fact that a
large proportion of voters principally base their
choices on who to vote for in politics on their
convictions – and are stirred by their current mood.
Nonetheless, I have expressed the fundamental importance
of the two elements of political decision-making –
reason and conscience – in speech and in writing for
many decades.
VII.
I must add something, however: as simple and unambiguous
as this conclusion sounds or reads, it is not that
simple in democratic reality. In a democratic system of
government, it is actually the exception if one person
alone makes a political decision. In the great majority
of cases, it is not an individual who decides, but far
more a majority of people. This is true for all
legislation, for example, without exception.
In order to attain a legislative majority in parliament,
several hundred people have to agree on a common text. A
relatively unimportant matter can, at the same time, be
complicated or hard to approach. In this kind of case,
it is easy to rely upon the recognised experts or
recognised leaders in one's own parliamentary party, but
there are many cases, and there are important matters,
where some members of parliament start off with
different, well-founded opinions on one or several
points. For them to agree, one has to accommodate
them.
In other words: legislation and decision-making by
parliamentary majority means all these individuals must
have the ability and the will to compromise! Without
compromise, a majority consensus cannot be formed.
Anyone who, as a matter of principle, cannot or does not
want to compromise is of no use to democratic
legislation. Admittedly, compromise often goes hand in
hand with a loss of stringency and consistency in
political actions, but a democratic member of parliament
must be willing to accept losses of this kind.
VIII.
Compromises are likewise always necessary in foreign
policy to keep peace between countries. A national sacro
egoismo, such as that currently cultivated by the
government of the USA, cannot work peacefully in the
long term.
It is true that across thousands of years – from
Alexander or Caesar, from Genghis Khan, Pizarro or
Napoleon, all the way to Hitler and Stalin – the ideal
of peace has only rarely played a decisive role in the
implementation of foreign policy. It has equally rarely
played a role in theoretical governmental ethics or the
integration of philosophy into politics. On the
contrary: for thousands of years, and even from
Machiavelli to Clausewitz, war was almost taken for
granted as an element of politics.
It was not until the European Enlightenment that a small
number of writers – such as the Dutchman, Hugo Grotius,
or the German, Immanuel Kant – elevated peace to its
position as a desirable political ideal. Yet even
throughout the entire nineteenth century, for the major
European states, war remained a continuation of politics
by different means – and so it went on in the twentieth
century. The people had long seen war as one of
humanity's cardinal evils, to be avoided; it was not
until the appalling misery of the two World Wars that
this view was also passed on to leading politicians in
the West and the East. This can be seen from the attempt
to create a League of Nations, and later the founding of
the United Nations, still in force today; it can also be
seen from the arms limitation treaties aimed at
achieving a balance between the USA and the Soviet
Union, as well as from the establishment of European
integration since the 1950s, and from German Ostpolitik
since the start of the 1970s.
Incidentally, Bonn's Ostpolitik towards Moscow, Warsaw
and Prague was a notable example of a crucial element of
any peace policy: a statesman wanting to act in the
interests of peace must speak to the statesman on the
other side (that is, the potential enemy!) and must
listen to him! Speak, listen and, if possible, come to a
compromise. Another example was the Final Act of the
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
(Helsinki Declaration) in 1975, which was a compromise
in the interests of peace. The Soviet Union gained the
Western statesmen's signatures under a declaration of
the inviolability of Eastern European frontiers, and the
West gained the Communist heads of state's signatures
under the point on human rights (which was later to
become famous as Basket Three of the Accords). The
collapse of the Soviet Union one and a half decades
later was, then, not the result of military force from
outside – thank God! – but instead the internal
implosion of a system which had far overstretched its
power.
A converse, negative example is the wars and acts of
violence perpetrated for decades between the State of
Israel and its Palestine and Arabic neighbours. If
neither side talks to the other, compromise and peace
remain only an illusory hope.
Since 1945, international law, in the shape of the
United Nations Charter, has forbidden any external
interference in a state's affairs by means of force;
only the Security Council may decide upon exceptions to
this basic rule. It appears urgently necessary to me
today to remind politicians of this basic rule. For
example, the military intervention in Iraq, one based,
moreover, on falsehoods, is unambiguously a violation of
the principle of non-interference, a flagrant violation
of the United Nations Charter. Politicians of many
nations share the blame for this violation. Equally,
politicians of many nations (including Germans) share
the responsibility for interventions contradicting
international law on humanitarian grounds. For example,
for more than a decade, violent conflicts of interest in
the Balkans have been disguised behind the cloak of
humanitarianism on the part of the West (including the
bombing of Belgrade).
IX.
However, I would like to leave this digression towards
foreign policy and return to parliamentary compromise.
The mass media, which, in our open society, shape public
opinion to a great extent, sometimes speak of political
compromise as "horse trading" or as "lazy" compromises,
sometimes they are incensed by supposedly immoral party
discipline. Although, on the one hand, it is good and
useful if the media continue to critically examine the
opinion-forming process, at the same time the theorem of
the democratic necessity of compromise remains true.
After all, a legislative body where the individual
members all stuck unyieldingly to their individual
opinions would throw the state into chaos. Similarly, a
government would become unable to rule if the individual
members all stuck unyieldingly to their individual
judgements. Every governmental minister and every member
of a parliamentary party knows this. All democratic
politicians know they must compromise. Without the
principle of compromise, there can be no principle of
democracy.
In reality, however, there are also bad compromises –
for example at the expense of third parties or at the
expense of generations to come. There are inadequate
compromises, which do not solve the problem at hand, but
only give the impression that they solve it. In this
way, then, the necessary virtue of compromise faces the
temptation of mere opportunism. The temptation of
opportunistic compromise with public opinion, or
elements of public opinion, recurs daily! For this
reason, politicians who are willing to compromise must
rely on their personal conscience.
There are compromises a politician should not enter
into, as it goes against his conscience. In this type of
case, the only thing left open to him is public dissent;
in some cases all that remains is resignation or the
loss of his seat. Going against one's own conscience
undermines one's honour and morals – and others' trust
in one's personal integrity.
But then there is also the error of conscience. One's
own reasoning can fail, and so can one's own conscience.
In cases like this, moral reproach is not justified, yet
terrible damage can be done. If, in cases like this, the
politician later recognises his error, he faces the
question of whether he should admit his error and tell
the truth. In this kind of situation, politicians
usually act in only too human a manner, just as all of
us in this room: it is hard for any of us to admit our
own errors of conscience and the truth about ourselves
in public.
X.
The question of truth can sometimes contrast with the
passion Max Weber identified as one of the three
pre-eminent qualities of a politician. The question of
truth can also contrast with the required rhetorical
ability already seen as one of the most important arts
two and a half thousand years ago in democratic Athens –
and which, if anything, has become even more important
in today's television society. Those wanting to be
elected have to present voters with their intentions,
their manifesto. In doing so they are in danger of
promising more than they can later fulfil, especially if
they want to appeal to a television audience. Every
campaigner is vulnerable to the temptation of
exaggeration. The competition for prestige, and above
all to appeal to a television audience, has further
intensified this temptation compared with the old
newspaper-reading society.
Our modern mass democracy is, rather like Winston
Churchill once said, truly by far the best form of
government for us – compared with all those other forms
we have tried from time to time – but it is by no means
ideal. It is inevitably afflicted with great
temptations, with errors and with deficiencies. What
remains decisive is the positive fact that the
electorate can change governments without violence or
bloodshed, and that, for this reason, those elected and
the parliamentary majority behind them must answer for
their actions before the electorate.
XI.
As well as passion and a sense of proportion, Max Weber
believed the third characteristic quality for a
politician was a feeling of responsibility. The question
remains: responsibility towards whom? For me, the
electorate is not the final authority a politician has
to answer to; voters often make only a very general,
trend-following decision, often making a choice based on
their feelings and whims. Nonetheless, their majority
decision must command the politicians' obedience.
For me, the final authority remains my own conscience,
although I realise that there are many theological and
philosophical opinions about the conscience. The word
was already used in the time of the Greeks and Romans.
Later, Paul and other theologians used it to mean our
awareness of God and God's ordained order, and, at the
same time, our awareness that every violation of this
order is a sin. Some Christians speak of the "voice of
God in us". In the writings of my friend Richard
Schröder I have read that our understanding of the
conscience emerged from Biblical thought coming into
contact with the world of Hellenism. On the other hand,
his whole life long, Immanuel Kant never gave thought to
the basic values of his conscience without religion
playing a role in it. Kant described the conscience as
"the awareness of an inner court of justice in man".
Whether one believes the conscience comes from people's
reason or from God – whatever the case, there is little
doubt in the existence of the human conscience. Whether
a person is a Christian, a Muslim or a Jew, an agnostic
or a freethinker, an adult human being has a conscience.
I shall add rather quietly: all of us have gone against
our own conscience more than once: we have all had to
live "with a guilty conscience". Of course, this all too
human weakness is shared by politicians, too.
XII.
I have tried to describe to you a few insights gained
during three decades of experience acquired by a
professional politician. Of course, these were only very
limited extracts from a multifaceted reality. One final,
double insight is very important to me. Firstly, that
is, that our open society and our democracy suffer from
many imperfections and deficiencies, and that all
politicians still have all-too-human weaknesses. It
would be a dangerous error to think of our real,
existing democracy as a pure ideal. But, secondly, we
Germans – due to our catastrophic history – nonetheless
have every reason in the world to cling on to democracy
with all our might, constantly revitalising it and
constantly standing up bravely to its enemies. Only when
we agree upon this will our national anthem, with its
"Unity and Justice and Freedom", be justifiable.