The Federal President reacts unconfidently to criticism

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung The Federal President reacts unconfidently to criticism Article by Jürgen Kaube • 1 hour • 3 minutes reading time Without false consideration: Marko Martin during his speech at Bellevue Palace The Federal President did not applaud. He had invited the speaker, Marko Martin, to speak at Bellevue Palace on the 35th anniversary of November 9, 1989. Martin, a journalist, writer and author of numerous non-fiction books on contemporary history, took the liberty of speaking openly. He reproached the Federal President for what he had done as Foreign Minister: a naive policy towards Vladimir Putin; the attempt to make Nord Stream 2 a basis for Germany's energy supply; downplaying the concerns of Eastern European countries about Russia. In 2016, Steinmeier described NATO maneuvers in northern Poland as "saber rattling." Putin had already invaded Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine was underway. Later, the derogatory and immediately regretted term "caliber experts" was used to describe participants in the discussion about arms deliveries to Kiev. Why all this at a ceremony to mark reunification? Marko Martin considered such errors to be symptomatic of the SPD. Egon Bahr had already described the Polish "Solidarność", whose strike in 1980 triggered what led nine years later to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, as a threat to world peace. This was not unusual among leftists. The German-German policy of détente was seen as being disrupted by the Catholic shipyard workers. Martin quoted Peter Rühmkorf's chauvinistic question about who would now have the courage to order the Poles to work and discipline. The intellectuals make everything more difficult? Today we have the war in Ukraine and an SPD in which the doors to the party have just been opened again to Putin's friend Gerhard Schröder by the new general secretary Matthias Miersch. Everyone knows that Rolf Mützenich, the parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, sees the Federal Republic less as an ally of Ukraine than as a mediator in the conflict. This ignores the fact that military support and diplomatic success are two sides of the same coin. Martin complained about the mentality of those who have no understanding of the Eastern European states' point of view, no understanding of the fact that Ukraine is also fighting for our freedom, as the Poles had done. After the speech, Martin said, the Federal President was upset. He felt defamed. He said that politicians were trying to solve problems, but intellectuals were making everything more difficult. Being upset is the opposite of thinking. Steinmeier's complaint presupposes, on the one hand, that Martin said something wrong. But there is nothing wrong with the succinct maxim "We get gas from the Russians, export to China and are protected by the United States," which he accuses the grand coalition under Angela Merkel and then Foreign Minister Steinmeier of. It was acted upon. Looking one's own self in the eye So why can't the Federal President look the person of yesterday in the eyes, whom he sees in the most friendly photos with Putin, Lavrov, Medvedev? Of course, he was the top German diplomat. But didn't he go too far with the friendliness? Should we believe that he has learned something when he remains self-righteous in his anger at the writer? On the other hand, if we can believe Marko Martin, the Federal President thinks that intellectuals are causing inappropriate disruption. That is surprising. Because most of the time they don't do that at all. Or does he also see the statements of Heinrich Böll, whom he admires, on the fight against left-wing terrorism in the 1970s as such an inappropriate disruption? Now someone has caused disruption by pointing out unpleasant facts at a ceremony. Steinmeier's confident response would have been to explain himself. And that goes beyond formulas like "Today we have a different level of knowledge," as if the level of knowledge from 2014 or 2016 had not been enough to know about Putin. As if it had not been a matter of political will, but of an easily forgivable cognitive deficit. Many politicians are not cutting a good figure these days. They seem like allegories of excuses. Excuses everywhere you look, wrapped up in appeals to the oath of office and responsibility. Up to this point they have always done almost everything right. They never really have to learn anything. Of course, telling such fairy tales does not make them any more dishonest than the rest of society. But they act like they do and, for example, criticize an author just because he has said what not only many people think, but what is true and can at least be discussed.