Laudatory Speech by the President of the German Bundestag Bärbel Bas for Joachim Gauck at the Gala of the Aspen Institute Germany 2024
[Unofficial Translation; The Spoken Word Applies]
Dear Mr. Federal President,
dear Joachim Gauck,
Dear Dr. Mildner,
Mr. Governing Mayor,
Mr. von Klaeden,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Aspen Institute Germany – congratulations! And we are celebrating a special personality: Joachim Gauck!
Ladies and gentlemen,
The Aspen Institute Germany was founded in the middle of the Cold War. As a transatlantic think tank for freedom. In West Berlin – the “front city” of the bloc confrontation.
Let’s look back to 1974: the division of Germany seems to be cemented. “Permanent representations” of the other German state are established in Bonn and East Berlin. The USA officially establish diplomatic relations with East Berlin. The goal of “unification of the two German states” disappears from the GDR constitution. The “GDR” license plate is introduced – as a sign of a new self-confidence.
Dear Joachim Gauck,
In 1974, you were a Protestant pastor in Rostock-Evershagen, a dreary prefabricated housing estate. From nothing, you created a thriving community there. The Stasi already had you on their radar because you were successful. Especially in youth work. In the young community, which you described as the “yeast in society”. However, your “spiritual home” was on the other side of the Iron Curtain. In the West. With its liberal values. With true democracy. With freedom of opinion and human rights.
The Aspen idea of openness of thought with liberal values would have suited you well even then. The idea of a place “where the human soul can flourish”. This is how the founder of the Aspen Institute in the U.S., Walter Paepcke, put it. He was the son of a Mecklenburg immigrant from Teterow. A town in your home district of Rostock.
For you, the GDR was not a place where your soul could flourish. You didn’t feel like a citizen. Instead, you felt like an “inmate” of a state that had democracy in its name – but treated its citizens like underage inmates. One that kept them under surveillance and spied on them. Who sealed them off from the free world with walls and barbed wire. It was a “shadowy existence in camouflage suits of conformity”, as you put it in one of your famous sermons. You learned early on what oppression, paternalism and state despotism meant.
When you were eleven, you witnessed your father being “picked up”, as it was called at the time. And initially disappeared without a trace. Only after two years did you find out that he had been sentenced to two 25-year terms of forced labor in Siberia. Because of a letter and a nautical magazine from the West. After almost four and a half years, your father returned home. You lived in two worlds. I quote: “At school I heard about the great father of nations, Stalin, sang songs about grandiose socialism and at home I looked into my mother’s tearful eyes.” End of quote. As a 15-year-old, you witnessed how the uprising of June 17, 1953, was brutally crushed. This was also an incisive experience of powerlessness.
These experiences politicized you and taught you the value of freedom – your major life theme. Freedom as a lived responsibility for yourself and for the common good. Freedom and responsibility as two sides of the same coin. But life in a dictatorship also taught you to perceive the nuances. To listen and listen carefully. To argue in a differentiated way and – very importantly! – to maintain your inner independence. All skills that predestined you for your later tasks in a united Germany. Perhaps your GDR biography is also the reason why you have not joined any party to this day and are a self-confessed swing voter? Because you always look at life from many perspectives and are aware of the many shades of reality. You describe yourself as a “left-wing, liberal conservative”.
You consider the Peaceful Revolution and the year of reunification in 1990 to be “the most important and most beautiful time” of your life. I’ll be honest: I was 21 years old when the Wall came down. The fall of the Wall had no noticeable impact on my life deep in the West. But I also know from many conversations with East Germans: It was completely different for people from the former GDR. They experienced the Peaceful Revolution as an “empowerment” of the people in the GDR, which was reflected in the powerful sentence: “We are the people.” The most beautiful sentence in German political history in your view. I can well understand that.
In the fall of 1989, you were right in the middle of the democracy movement. In Rostock, you “simply preached away” the Stasi, as it was called. You took on political responsibility and became a member of parliament. As a representative of the New Forum in the first and last freely elected People’s Chamber of the GDR.
On October 3, 1990, you also became a member of the Bundestag. For a single day! You resigned from your seat on October 4. With the completion of the unification, you became the Federal Government Commissioner for Stasi Records. It was a Herculean task, a necessary and painful process. You consistently ensured that the SED dictatorship was dealt with. Using constitutional means. And you made sure that the victims were heard and are still heard today. The “Gauck Office” has thus become a building block of a reunified Germany. A lasting achievement on your part.
Dear Mr. Gauck,
You have come a long way from being a Protestant pastor in a communist dictatorship to becoming head of state in a liberal democracy. You were already a president of the heart before you moved into Bellevue Palace! On March 18, 2012, you were elected the eleventh Federal President. With an overwhelming majority. You have left a deep mark on the office of Federal President. And provided our country with a compass in turbulent times. With your gift for initiating new ideas and saying the uncomfortable.
You have repeatedly reminded us that liberal democracy, European unification and the Western way of life must be defended. Even abroad, you have clearly stood up for the fundamental values of a liberal democracy – for freedom, the rule of law, human rights and democratic participation for all. You named the Armenian genocide before the Bundestag did so. Or refused to travel to the Winter Olympics in Sochi in the face of Putin’s policies. You were quick to urge Germany to take more international responsibility in security matters. That is why you are now standing firmly by Ukraine’s side and advocating extensive support.
Dear Mr. Gauck,
Your major concern was and is comprehensible communication. A language that reaches not only the head, but also the heart and mind. With your extraordinary rhetorical talent, you bring people and arguments together. Added to this are your forceful power of reflection and personal credibility. You act as an honest broker between different points of view and interests. You tirelessly promote an argumentative culture of debate, a “combative tolerance” even in the face of controversial positions.
Your speech at the ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the constituent meeting of the Parliamentary Council made a great impression on me. You addressed what has been bothering us for years – the dissatisfaction with politics, the loss of trust in our institutions, the growing approval of authoritarian positions. You said sentences that I often have to think about. I quote you: “Even if we often find it an imposition: Every peaceful protest movement is an expression of freedom in action and can help to strengthen our democracy. We will have to learn to live more controversy and endure more ambivalence.” But you wouldn’t be Joachim Gauck if you didn’t also encourage us. Our history of democracy teaches us confidence – and, as you say: “A confidence that knows self-criticism, but not self-despair.”
Dear Mr. Gauck,
One of your most gratifying tasks as Federal President has been to honor committed citizens. Today you are being honored! You embody the Aspen idea of a free, open, democratic society in a special way. And a transatlantic community of values that stands for a rules-based international order. I congratulate you warmly on the Shepard Stone Award and conclude with a poet whom you appreciate: Fritz Reuter. “If a man does what he can do, he can do no more than he does.” End of quote. This Mecklenburg wisdom aptly describes your merits. As a pastor and critic of the regime in a dictatorship. As an investigator of Stasi injustice and bridge builder for the internal unity of our country. As Federal President, lover of freedom and teacher of democracy. As a convinced transatlanticist and always alert critical spirit.
Congratulations!
