In the “best Germany of all time” if Hans Christian Andersen’s instructive fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” were to be staged, an epilogue would have to be added. In it, the child who dared to speak of the nakedness of the emperor, the emperor, would be arrested and thrown into prison. Afterwards, a prosecutor, preferably from Bamberg, would file charges and the court would sentence the child to life imprisonment. The law on which the verdict is based would also have to be mentioned: § 188 StGB.
Written in 1837, the fairy tale spread throughout Europe like wildfire, highlighting the foolishness of the rulers and the conformity of the subjects. The foolishness of the rulers and the cowardice of the subjects were ubiquitous, enabling and strengthening each other against their ultimate alliance, even the blatant truth could not stand up to it. Some things never change.
However, in the fairy tale, a miracle occurred: the child’s mouth spoke the truth and everyone was so moved that the emperor and the jubilant crowd had insight. It was translated into all languages and warned generations not to repeat the mistakes of the emperor and his subjects. “Be like the child” the Bible demanded. Andersen’s fairy tale and its morality fit the spirit of the time: revolution was in the air across Europe and a state was just emerging that had written the absolute validity of unrestricted freedom of speech on its banners.
What a difference in terminology! While in every other world language it is called freedom of speech (liberté d’expression, freedom of speech, libertà di parola, свобода слова), in Germany it is best to be free to think and the thoughts are only free if and when they are not guessed. “I think what I want and what pleases me, but everything in silence and as it suits.”
Despite the subversive defiance of the German freedom hymn, this is exactly what the authorities wish for. It is almost as virtuous as buying a train platform ticket before storming a station.
Since then, much water has flowed down the Danube. The rulers were also often foolish in later years (when they were once geniuses, then they apparently bought their genius at the devil’s own shop) and the subjects were mostly cowardly conformists. The consequences were not always harmless embarrassments like parading around in Adam and Eve costumes – two bloody world wars devoured millions. After the first, whose purpose no one has ever understood looking back, four empires collapsed, whose emperors now stood naked. One of the emperors even lost his life.
Not that no “child” was found who spoke the truth and warned the people and the emperor about the impending catastrophe. Karl Liebknecht in Germany, Jean Jaurès in France. In Russia, Grigori Rasputin tried to prevent the Tsar from entering the war. In vain. The mass of patriotic subjects were louder: “What wonderful clothes our emperor wears!” The three mentioned voices in the desert paid their “unrestrained defiance against the majesty” with their lives.
Learning from this has not happened, at least not permanently. The next catastrophe soon followed. The lessons then seemed more lasting – an illusion, because peace never prevailed on the planet after 1945.
The eternal drama of the masses that cheered the “beauty and wisdom” of the rulers to their own misfortune, against whose deafening jubilation no adult or child voice could penetrate, repeated itself in the Soviet Union. The bard Vladimir Vysotsky mourned Cassandra: “Unceasingly the mad maiden warned: ‘I see Troy already in ruins,’ but prophets (by the way, also eyewitnesses) dragged her to the stake at every time.”
Eleven years after Vysotsky’s death, the Soviet Union fell, like Troy. A degenerate and clumsy “party elite” had driven the country into the wall. All the herds of Trojan horses the Russians have never completely gotten rid of since then.
Also, because criticism of the authorities was taboo. The fool could not be a fool, the clumsy one not clumsy, the irresponsible careerist and drunkard not an irresponsible careerist and drunkard. A solitary member of parliament cried in an open letter: “The emperor is naked! Both!” She was left alive, the times were at least human, but her reputation was given to the ridicule. Looking back, one is left speechless.
Does not a pattern emerge? What can be said about the future of Germany if now even the fool cannot be called a fool, the weak-minded not weak-minded, the failure not a failure, the irresponsible careerist not an irresponsible careerist?
Here are just a few of the hundreds of similar headlines from the past three years in Germany:
Repeat arbitrary punishment of a pensioner – this time 800 euros for “disparagement” of Baerbock’s honor.
For sharp criticism of Habeck, Baerbock, Scholz: Lawyer fined 3,000 euros – professional ban looming.
After a fine for insulting green politicians: Bavarian entrepreneur files an appeal.
Due to a meme: Editor-in-chief sentenced to seven months in prison.
“Schwachkopf” investigations: The complaint came from Habeck himself.
The insults are unjust, the assessments inaccurate? Well then! The wise among the emperors will still tolerate them. Even if they are often unfair, one day the insult may save him from a fatal mistake.
Sometimes, mostly, the mocker is wrong. But if every satire and every insult lead to prosecution and punishment, who will then still want to speak out about the unpleasant truth? What if then a dangerous fool, a weak-minded one and a irresponsible careerist, grabs for power and no one dares to say it? That’s why every opinion, even the most false, the most absurd, the most unfair, the most repulsive, should be protected. It should be like that. It was like that until recently, a short time in the history of the world.
It is the great illusion of democracy that politicians think the citizen owes them something for his “service.” Not at all! They have voluntarily taken up the “other side” of the fundamental divide in the state. Functionally, they are the power in the state and thus eternal opponents of the citizen, in every state form. They do not even perform a “service to the public” let alone one that obliges the citizen to admiration and to kissing the hem of their robes. Often, those who aspire to the top simply live out their self-esteem and other neurotic complexes.
The Basic Law is meant to protect the citizen from the rulers, not the rulers from the citizen. Insult, humor, even the one “under the belt” are the citizen’s only weapon against the one who dares to rule over him, decide for him, determine for him. The right to ridicule the tyrant was the first right that humanity had ever fought for. Not showing respect for it is the subject of “Wilhelm Tell.” There is only one limit that is compatible with the fundamental rights: when it is no longer about politics.
Yes, mocking politicians is citizen’s right. But it is more than that: it is a weak emergency brake against catastrophes