Happy 70th, Grundgesetz

[Arneb]

70 years ago today, the Parliamentarian Council, appointed by 11 State Parliaments in the three "Western" occupied zones, finalized the Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany), the new (West) German constitution. It went into effect on 2400 hrs that day. The Rat deliberately avoided the word Verfassung (constitution) even though the Grundgesetz is one for all intents and purposes, because they explicitly wanted this Law to be provisionary for the time until a unified Germany could determine a Constitution (with a capital C) in free self-determination. As it turned out, the Grundgesetz has proven itself one of the most durable, all-terrerain-all-weather document to secure liberty and the rule of law in existence. it wasn't even abolished during the process of re-unification when Germans would, indeed, have had the opportunity to write a new Constitution from scratch - because why bother? It doesn't get much better than that, so we kept our "provisionary" Law.

If anyone here doubts or denies that humans can indeed learn from history, they should read this law, and maybe also read the protocols of the Council. They grappled with our past, they desperately wanted to write a document that would provide protection against the evil that had plunged Germany into an abyss of barbarism and cost humanity 50 million lives. And they succeeded. they created a law that had "Never Again" written all over it. When the Grundgesetz was published, less than half of West Germans believed democracy was the solution, and more than half believed fascism had been a great idea that somehow went wrong, and we could have won the war if the generals hadn't failed. Today, Germany's democracy is noted for its boring, somewhat square, somewhat thick-skinned, somewhat sluggish stability.

This came out well.

[Heid the Ba]

This did indeed come out well. And any time I hear the expression "Leader of the Free World" I think of Mutti.

[Мастер]