ANNEX B
THE BUNDESTAG AFTER FORTY YEARS: A BALANCE SHEET
Gerhard Loewenberg
Professor of Political Science
and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts
The University of Iowa
(English text of a lecture delivered in German at the Conference on the 40th anniversary of the Bundestag, Bonn, Germany, September 8-10, 1989)
Introduction
On August 11, 1928, just over six decades ago, the German philosopher Ernst Cassirer spoke at the invitation of the Senate of, the city of Hamburg on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the adoption of the Weimar Constitution. At a moment when supporters of the Republic could still view its destiny with hope, Cassirer sought to strengthen that hope by tracing the intellectual origins of democracy and republicanism in Germany to the German idealistic philosophical tradition.
'...the Idea underlying our republican constitution, he said, "grew on its own native ground, nourished by its own innate influences, by the influences of the philosophy of Idealism...' He quoted Goethe's observation: "The best thing about history is the enthusiasm it arouses." And Cassirer concluded his celebratory lecture on the history of political ideas with this expressed hope:
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So may an absorption into the history of the Idea of the republican constitution turn not only to the past, but may it strengthen in us the belief and the confidence that the influences from which it originally grew will show it the way into the future and will help to bring that future about. (1)
Cassirer's festive address reminds us that even in a moment of relative tranquility the Weimar Constitution required justification that it was an indigenous political system, and its friends required encouragement and reasons for hope. How different are the conditions in which we celebrate today not the ninth but the fortieth anniversary of what has been called the second republican constitution, and the central institution provided by that constitution. Few people feel the need to search the history of German political theory to gain confidence in the future of the contemporary political system. There is little doubt that the Bundestag is a distinctly German political institution, that, indeed it manifests a parliamentary tradition which, on the national level, goes back not just forty but one-hundred and forty years. There is little doubt that it is the interruption of that tradition between nineteen-hundred thirty-three and nineteen-hundred
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