Former Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) paid tribute to the late philosopher Jürgen Habermas, describing him as a formative intellectual whose ideas strongly influenced his political thinking. In a personal obituary for the magazine “Stern”, Scholz wrote that Habermas’s death represents the loss of an intellectual and moral compass that repeatedly helped him order his thoughts about the present, his nation, Europe, and the world throughout his political career. He recalled how a teacher at his Gymnasium encouraged him to read Habermas’s study “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere”-a pioneering work that shaped his lifelong conviction that a democratic society must make rational communication about its goals and means possible, that it must continually debate the right path, give weight to reason and arguments, and ultimately accept the decisions reached.
As a chancellor candidate in 2021 and 2025, Scholz had highlighted a key motif of his campaigns, which he again traces to Habermas’s reflections: for a democracy to succeed, citizens must, despite differences, regard one another as fundamentally equal. “Only by organizing our country so that no one looks down on others because they consider them less educated, less prosperous, or less successful will our democracy endure” he wrote.
“For anyone who holds the values of reason, enlightenment, and democracy dear, Habermas’s work will remain an indispensable compass for many decades. I am sure – it will not just be I who misses him”.