Democracy in Germany
Democracy in Germany
Firstly we tried to find out what democracy means with the help of an encyclopaedia and the Internet. These are the results:
The word democracy comes from Ancient Greek and means: empowerment of the ordinary people. The ancient democracies were the “ancestors” of our democracies now.
Democracy means a kind of state with a constitution which guaranties personal and political rights. It also means fair elections with independent law courts.
A democracy grows out of a total misuse of power and a wide range of power for the ruling class. The features of a modern democracy are: separation of powers, human rights, freedom of religion and separation of church and government.
The opposite of democracy means dictatorship. This form comes to power if a number of people took the power in a country with the help of violent means.
Secondly we want to talk about what democracy means to us. We live in former East Germany so we asked our parents and grand parents about the time of socialism and democracy. From 1949 on the two German states were separated into East and West or German Democratic Republic and Federal Republic of Germany. There were two different political systems in these states- two different opinions about what democracy is as well.
In former East Germany democracy meant that the state told the people what they had to think and to do. People who didn’t care about the official political opinion got into trouble with the system. Different organizations like the so called Socialist Unity Party or the security service called “Staatssicherheit” cared about those people. They were allowed to question people, sent them into prison or even throw them out of the country in the worst cases. They made people like Wolf Biermann, Armin Müller-Stahl and other East German intellectuals leave the country. Lot of people did not agree to the system and that’s why used trips to “capitalist” countries for leaving their home country. East German people were only allowed to visit the other East European countries like Rumania, Bulgaria or the former Soviet Union. Only pensioners were allowed to travel to the “west”, but they had to “apply” for such a trip as well. They could get the allowance or not. If you wanted to leave the “GDR”, you had to apply for an allowance and they had to fear the restrictions of the government and its institutions: you could lose your job, although there was no unemployment in this country at all. It could last for a long time to “escape” from the GDR and not all people that applied got the allowance or it took them years to get it. That’s why some people tried to cross the wall between the two German states illegally, but this was a very dangerous decision, because the army had the order to shut them. Lots of people were killed this way.
With the German reunification the West German system was transferred to East Germany as well. We have a separation of power now, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, separation of state power and church and last but not least human rights.
Our parents, and we ourselves as well at the age of 18, are free to elect the political power in our country. We do have “political freedom” on the basis of the constitution.
Nevertheless, this democracy brought some disadvantages for the people in the East as well: we got to know what unemployment and homelessness mean. Lots of people are concerned about their future and that explains their Sehnsucht for former East Germany and its social system with social safety.
We personally enjoy things like travelling around the world (joining Comenius projects with different countries) or expressing our opinions freely. We are also involved into decision making at school.