Who helps when Germany burns? The Americans?

On Sunday evening, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier addressed the German people and asked for support for 735 million starving people.[1,2] As President of German Agro Action, he has to do this. Because the tight budgetary situation in Germany also affects development aid: in 2024, the financial resources for humanitarian aid are to be cut by one billion euros and the budget of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development is to be reduced by 700 million euros.[3] That is a minus of 40 and 23 percent respectively.

A Federal President - this is the general expectation in German-speaking countries - is a patron of welfare projects, he awards medals, signs laws. Frank-Walter Steinmeier is no different. Or is it?
The Social Democrat is currently serving his second term in the highest office of the Federal Republic. Steinmeier was State Secretary in the Federal Chancellery, Commissioner for the Intelligence Services, Head of the Federal Chancellery. He took office as Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs in 2005; from 2007 he was also Vice Chancellor.

He has not shed his self-image. He takes a political stand and uses his office to make this emphatically public. He knows that the statements of a German Federal President are heard, analysed and evaluated internationally.

Especially when it comes to current conflicts, Steinmeier's statements are increasingly problematic for the Federal Republic of Germany. You will hardly read anything about this in most German-language media. It is "good manners" in this country not to question the Federal President, let alone criticise him.

In his first public statement on the situation in Israel on 9.10.2023 he said:

Only a short time later, the Federal President met with members of the Jewish community at the Fraenkelufer Synagogue in Berlin on 13 October 2023.[5] Again, there was little criticism from politics and the media for statements like this:

According to official figures, about 5.5 million people of the Muslim faith live in Germany. About half of them (just under 3 million) have German citizenship. They are part of the nation for which the Federal President believes he speaks.

The Muslim share of the total population is thus about 6.6 %. After the approximately 45 million members of Christian churches (50 % of the total population), Muslim people form the second largest religious population group in the Federal Republic.[6] In 2022, the Central Council of Jews registered only 90,885 Jews in German communities and regional associations. Since 2005, the membership figures in the Jewish communities have been falling continuously.[7]

Steinmeier negates that he is dividing society in his own country with public statements. He denies that he is pouring oil on the fire and bringing the conflict from the Gaza Strip to Germany. The Central Council of Jews in Germany warns of increasing anti-Semitism. The Federal Criminal Police Office assumes that arms companies in Germany could become targets of pro-Palestinian forces, as Israel has asked the German government for ammunition supplies. In addition, the state protectors expect anti-Semitic actions from the left-wing extremist scene. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) fears that the expected Israeli military strike in the Gaza Strip will worsen the security situation in Germany.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier's public statements must be assessed against this background. For Steinmeier is not just any SPD politician, Steinmeier is the Federal President of Germany. The requirement of this office is clear: the Federal President is an integrating authority representing the unity of the state and the people, as head of state he embodies the state, he represents it and he is supposed to bring together the different social groups. At least this is how the German Federal Constitutional Court sees it in its ruling of 10.6.2014.[8]

The Federal Constitutional Court also speaks of the fact that it is in line with the constitutional expectations of the office of the Federal President and the established constitutional tradition that the Federal President maintains a certain distance from the goals and activities of political parties and social groups. Frank-Walter Steinmeier's public statements must be assessed against this background.

It is not the first time that Steinmeier has articulated himself in an offensively partisan manner on the subject of war. It is not the first time that public statements by the German President are to be classified as highly problematic from the perspective of international diplomacy. In the summer, for example, he called on the German government not to block a delivery of cluster munitions from the USA to Ukraine. In an interview with the German public broadcaster ZDF on 9.7.2023 [9], he commented that Germany could not stand in the arm of the USA in the current situation.

Just recently, on 6.10.2023, Frank-Walter Steinmeier was in the USA and made a joint statement with US President Joe Biden on German-American Day:

The German President is making himself the vicarious agent of the technostructure. He puts himself at the service of NATO. He bows to the agenda of the transatlantic ally.

For the most part, all this goes unchallenged - by politics, by the media, by social elites and those who would like to be. It remains unchallenged that the highest representative of the Federal Republic, against his better judgement, shoots one incendiary arrow after another into the centre of German society. It remains unchallenged that he is dividing society even more deeply. It remains unchallenged that he is contributing to Germany's downfall. Who will come to the rescue when Germany burns? The Americans?

This analysis was first published in: Le Courrier des Stratèges on October 17th, 2023

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