“A Russian aggressor has shattered our peace order,” warns Frank WalterSteinmeier
EFE (via 14ymedio), Berlin, November 9, 2025 — On Sunday German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for the defense of democracy, saying it faces the greatest threats it has experienced since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
He also invoked the darkest and brightest moments in German history during the ceremony to commemorate November 9, a date he described as “ambivalent” because of the various events with which it is associated.
“One hundred and seven years after November 9, 1918, the date of the proclamation of the first German republic, our liberal democracy is under pressure,” Steinmeier said.
“Populists and extremists mock our democratic institutions, poison our debates, and profit from fear,” he added.
“Populists and extremists mock our democratic institutions, poison our debates, and profit from fear.”
He went on to recall the pogroms of November 9, 1938, the so-called Kristallnacht, and said that 87 years later anti-Semitism has intensified since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023.
“And 36 years after November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall fell? We feel above all how the distance between East and West is growing, and how the memory of the energy of the peaceful revolution is losing its power. It is not easy for us to draw strength and confidence from those happy times,” he said.
Steinmeier asserted that everyone who knows him knows that he does not tend towards alarmism or describing apocalyptic scenarios, but he added that given the current situation, one must dare to look at the threats that exist.
“We cannot lend ourselves to a new fascination with authoritarianism and then fall into a lack of freedom, only to have everyone later say that they neither wanted it nor knew it was coming. Today, November 9th, I say it clearly: we can know it, and we do know it,” he stated.
According to Steinmeier, never before, since the reunification of Germany, have democracy and freedom been so threatened as they are now.
“Never before, since the reunification of Germany, have democracy and freedom been so threatened.”
“Threatened by a Russian aggressor who has shattered our peaceful order and against whom we must protect ourselves, and threatened by far-right forces that attack our democracy and gain support among the population,” he declared.
Simply waiting for the storm to pass is not, according to Steinmeier, a solution. “We have to act, and we can act. Our democracy is not doomed to surrender,” he emphasized.
“Our historical experience teaches us that the reckless attempt to tame anti-democrats by giving them power is something that failed not only in Weimar. Extremism, according to the American political scientist Daniel Ziblatt, never triumphs on its own. If it succeeds, it is because others allow it. That is the lesson of the Weimar Republic,” he remarked.
Therefore, Steinmeier called for maintaining the existing cordon sanitaire against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), although without explicitly mentioning that party.
“There can be no political cooperation with extremists. Not in the government, nor in parliaments,” he emphasized.
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