Hape Kerkeling warns against capitulating the facts to the volume

Hape Kerkeling, 61, has called on the SPD parliamentary group to resolutely counter intolerance and extremism. »If we give every assertion, no matter how crude, the same stage in the name of freedom of expression as a verified fact, if we give every enemy of the constitution the same resonance space as his opponents in the name of supposed fairness, then we are not cutting into the branches of intolerance. We are sawing on the branch on which we all sit together," said the comedian and entertainer Kerkeling in a retreat that took place behind closed doors. Excerpts from the speech were distributed in writing by the SPD.

The actor warned against a “capitulation of the facts to the volume” and also made reference to the AfD. He recalled that the parliamentary group leader of “a certain party” openly said in 2018 that the twelve years of National Socialism were just “bird shit” in over a thousand years of German history. The AfD parliamentary group leader at the time, Alexander Gauland, literally said: "Hitler and the Nazis are just a piece of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."

Kerkeling reminded the Social Democratic MPs of the SPD party leader Otto Wels, who stood up at a Reichstag meeting on March 23, 1933 and was the only one to contradict the National Socialists' enabling law. “Freedom and life can be taken away from us, but not our honor,” Wels had said. And: "No enabling law gives you the power to destroy ideas that are eternal and indestructible."

Kerkeling said to the SPD MPs that Wels could have remained silent. »Silence would have been more comfortable. (…) He still didn’t do it. And that is exactly why we are not standing at his grave today, ninety-three years later. We follow his example.«

The comedian Kerkeling has always taken political positions. In April he spoke to commemorate the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. There is a petition online calling for him to be elected Federal President next year.