Autor/Autorin
Article 1 of the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany, which the lawyer and Auschwitz prosecutor Dr Fritz Bauer had affixed to the buildings where he exercised his office as Attorney General, was used today to lay the foundation stone for the Fritz Bauer Forum (Centre for Human Rights) in Bochum. The initiator of the project and author of the first Fritz Bauer biography, Dr Irmtrud Wojak, welcomed the numerous guests. Among them were many committed people from Bochum’s civil society, politics, the judiciary and representatives of Bochum companies. Jens Mittelsten Scheid, German Donor Award winner, who has supported the project from the very beginning and generously sponsored its development, also attended the laying of the foundation stone. For the future, further sponsors are being sought for the Fritz Bauer Forum and its current tasks.
Bochum’s Lord Mayor Thomas Eiskirch, Dr Ansgar Klein (Managing Director of the Federal Network for Civic Engagement) and Headmistress Antje Fehrholz, Principal of Eickel Grammar School, gave welcoming speeches. A pilot project took place at the grammar school in which committed pupils from the Human Rights Working Group tested the interactive Fritz Bauer Library and researched and documented their own stories of the struggle for human rights. They will be published shortly.
We are publishing Irmtrud Wojak’s speech at the laying of the foundation stone here, with further contributions to follow. – The editorial team
Irmtrud Wojak
Dear guests, dear friends,
The social democrat Dr Fritz Bauer once said that a state that violates human dignity and fails to protect it is an unjust state.
Political opposition and resistance were already the main themes of the young Fritz Bauer after the First World War and during his student days, when he witnessed the rise of the Nazi movement in Munich. As a budding lawyer and soon after the youngest district judge in Germany, Dr Bauer actively campaigned for the preservation of democracy in his native city of Stuttgart. He became the leader of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold (Black-Red-Gold Banner of the Republic) defence organisation and spoke at a meeting almost every weekend. His commitment led to the Nazi henchmen immediately throwing him into a concentration camp in 1933. Bauer escaped into exile in Denmark in 1936 and Sweden in October 1943. He returned to Germany in 1949, shortly after the Basic Law was passed.
It was not an easy decision for the returnee. After years of bitter exile, Bauer relied on the principle of hope and the younger generation. The political lawyer wanted to convey to them something of the spirit of resistance of the young members of the opposition in the Weimar Republic. Of the fight for human rights, as he now described his life after the deep cuts and new beginnings.
Once again, Dr Bauer’s path led him directly into the political opposition. While still in exile, he published his book Kriegsverbrecher vor Gericht (War Criminals on Trial ), which has still not found a German publisher. In it, Bauer explained that the Germans needed a lesson in international law. With his fight against the impunity of Nazi crimes – Bauer called this „holding judgement on ourselves“ – he once again made himself vulnerable in the conservative Adenauer era.
The almost seamless integration of the National Socialists into the system of the Federal Republic is often described as the greatest achievement of the Adenauer era. For Fritz Bauer, this was precisely the heaviest political burden for the young democracy and the establishment of the constitutional state. Bauer fought against it throughout his life. He brought the deportation specialist Eichmann and the Auschwitz perpetrators to justice, the Nazi judiciary and Nazi medicine, including Nazi euthanasia, the crimes of the Wehrmacht and the police in the Nazi state. The Attorney General also wanted to bring Adenauer’s head of the Chancellery Dr Hans Globke to court, whose name as commentator on the Nuremberg Race Laws and responsible for the anti-Semitic name change decree of the Nazi regime stands for the continuity of the Nazi elites in the young Federal Republic – in vain.
Robert M. W. Kempner, chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, put it in a nutshell when he declared after the unexpected death of the Hessian prosecutor in 1968: „Fritz Bauer was, after the death of Chancellor Adenauer, the greatest ambassador the Federal Republic of Germany had.“
After Adenauer’s death… because he never mentioned Bauer’s efforts to investigate and punish Nazi crimes in a positive light. In fact, the lawyer only received one honour during his lifetime. The Ludwig Thoma Medal for Civil Courage of the City of Munich, named after the Bavarian folk poet and anti-Semite – on 30 April 1968, of all things. Not an honour that would have caused a stir, added glamour or dignity, was one comment. Bauer found out about it two months later to the day he was dead. The exact cause of death could no longer be determined and no major forensic medical examination was ordered.
He had spent his life in political opposition and resistance, often at great risk and always accepting hostility and even death threats. After Bauer’s sudden death, his friends wondered whether they had stood by him enough. Robert M. W. Kempner expressed this most clearly in his memorial speech, which he wanted to be understood as being on behalf of those „who can no longer speak for themselves“, the tens of thousands of victims and survivors to whom the Attorney General gave a voice. „Have we actually ‚cared‘ enough about Fritz Bauer?“ asked Kempner. And he regretted for himself that he had unfortunately not „punched the mean political character assassins in the face on the right and left“.
This brings me to the mission of the Fritz Bauer Forum and our dedicated Fritz Bauer Library. Fritz Bauer was the voice of the survivors‘ resistance. Our task today is to ensure that this voice remains alive. That the courageous, often self-sacrificing story of the struggle for human rights is researched, documented and passed on.
– I am thinking here of the stories of refugees on the Mediterranean or in the camps in Greece, Syria, Libya, Turkey, African countries or even on the borders of the USA. Denying people their inherent, inalienable human rights – because that is ignoring the daily hardship caused by lack and need from which they have to flee – is a violation of human rights.
– I am thinking of the rights of people who are less able than we are. People who fear for their rights because of a physical disability, for example, or because of their age or illness. Together with them, we are campaigning for their rights to be recognised, not least for „medicine with humanity“.
– I am thinking of the human rights of the weakest in our societies, those affected by poor educational opportunities, poverty and homelessness who have fallen through the social net. I am also thinking of the rights of prisoners or people who have committed offences and to whom we extend our hand, as Fritz Bauer did, because this is a requirement of human dignity.
– I am thinking of those who fight for the recognition of diversity in our society. With our interactive Fritz Bauer Library, we are strengthening the voices of those who do not remain silent in the face of exclusion from social participation, who actively oppose discrimination against minorities on the basis of gender, religion, origin or skin colour.
Let me summarise this task in the words of Fritz Bauer: Resistance, which is necessary in an unjust state, „need not only begin when the unjust state is established.“ Or more emphatically: „The great resistance in an unjust state only remains possible if the small resistance against injustice is practised in everyday state life and nurtured and cared for like a precious plant.“
The task of the Fritz Bauer Forum is not only to criticise intellectually, but also to practise human rights so that small-scale resistance remains alive in everyday life.
There are numerous examples of this, some of which you can already find in our Fritz Bauer Library. The story of Franco Basaglia’s fight for the opening of sanatoriums in Italy, of Gabriela Brimmer’s fight for the rights of disabled people in Mexico, of Jura Soyfer’s fight against Austrofascism and for the morale of prisoners in the Dachau concentration camp, of the Brazilian footballer Sócrates for the democratisation of his country after the military dictatorship or of the writer Birgit Lohmeyer’s fight against the rampant right-wing extremism in a village full of neo-Nazis – here in our country. A number of pupils from the Eickel grammar school’s human rights working group are here today, having researched further stories, some of which are still largely unknown, and which will be published shortly.
The point here is not to impose an obligation to actively resist. Fritz Bauer didn’t mean that either. He said it was about „disobedience against state laws and orders (…) that are unconstitutional, i.e. that violate human dignity or a human right or concern a war of aggression. There is only a duty of passive resistance, only a duty to refrain from evil, (…) not to become an accomplice to injustice.“
At no time and in no state is this duty obsolete. Our task is and remains to be vigilant and to practise resistance that does not come from pure reason or legal paragraphs, but from a compassionate heart.
I therefore invite you today: Take part in building the Fritz Bauer Library. Make a donation, join us in seeking further funding or contribute to keeping the stories of resistance and survival alive by writing and filming. They tell of great courage, trust and joy. Despite defeats and painful losses, they tell of a love of life. Of everything that a diverse society needs and what is worth living and fighting for.
Let’s explore this resistance together at the Fritz Bauer Forum: resistance that transcends national borders, that everyone is entitled to and that can be practised by anyone and everyone. Its history coincides with the history of human rights, the inviolability of the dignity of every human being.