Martin Luther was an angry man, he was often against it. Against the vast majority of things: Rome and Aristotle, works-based righteousness and peasant revolt, human pride and extreme unction. Still a Catholic, he was already a Protestant. People weren't much use to him, nature was almost no good at all. Simul iustus et peccator is man, both just and sinner. But at the same time there was little to give. For to him man was much more a sinner than justified. Earthly things were nothing for Luther. Nevertheless, he encouraged the believers to be cheerful. Five hundred years ago, paradoxical action was not considered contradictory, but rather pious.
We are in Wittenberg, last Sunday, 10 a.m. The service takes place in the castle church, on the door of which Luther is said to have posted his 95 theses in October 1517. Luther looks down from the inner south side with a full-length portrait. Otherwise it doesn't appear. The Protestant and Catholic communities have given the day the strange title “Prayers on the way to the state elections”. There are readings, baptismal memories, a concert by the state youth choir and prayers. “A Christian’s craft is prayer,” says Luther.
A “special day”
The sermon given by the superintendent speaks of “this special day.” It doesn't get much more explicit than that. At least in Wittenberg we have moved on from the times when priests warned the congregation to please put their cross in the right place. The older southern German Catholics among us can still remember such election sermons.
After all, the congregation sings “Lord, you who once looked upon your land with grace.” Formerly. The drama in Saxony-Anhalt is limited to this line in the service, and the reference to Luther is only very indirect, because the melody that underlies Paul Gerhard's words actually belongs to the song “Out of deep distress, I scream to you.” Its text comes from the reformer. The deepest need therefore remains within the limits of an allusion.
Luther: a great from Saxony-Anhalt
The castle church, which is structurally connected to the Wittenberg Castle, is not completely full, but a good 150 seats in its pews are occupied. Confirmation candidates from Berlin arrived, as did a group from the county of Bentheim in Lower Saxony. The poster for the election day prayer program said that entry was free today. Otherwise the community charges a fee because most of its visitors are tourists and maintaining the church is expensive.
In all of Wittenberg, with a population of just under 50,000, there are fewer than 8,000 Christians. The castle church was transferred to the Protestants ten years ago in the anniversary year of the Reformation after a renovation that cost eight million euros from Saxony-Anhalt. At that time, the country was relieved of further maintenance costs. The left abstained from the relevant parliamentary decision, while the right railed against the “squandering of state property”. According to Tillschneider and his followers, Luther has hardly anything to do with today's Evangelical Church, but all the more with the former greatness of Saxony-Anhalt. For them, together with the Bismarck critic Nietzsche, who recommended more Latinity to the Germans, he belongs on the street of the best in the Germanic national performance competition.
Is anyone else getting angry here?
The superintendent's sermon makes no use of Luther. To be more precise: Although it takes place from the beautiful, simple Wittenberg pulpit, it is not attuned to Luther's emotions, not to protest and accusation. Nobody here proposes theses that are upsetting anymore. This wouldn't work on the "thesis door" either, it's been made of heavy metal for a long time.
The tone in which the passage in the Gospel with the rich tax collector Zacchaeus (Luke 19) is interpreted for the present in the sermon is, like the passage itself, anything but angry. The dignity of all people is underlined, the peace with one another, the colorful country. It's about community, says another pastor. Perhaps there is no need to be any clearer now. But perhaps you have become too friendly and uplifting to be angry anymore. Possibly also slowly being worn down.
Not even Siegmund can rely on his people
When the CDU candidate from the constituency, whom we meet later, talks about his political experiences with the right, he isn't angry either. Nico Elsner, twenty-five years old, just shakes his head often. The problem with Ulrich Siegmund's people is that not even he can rely on them. That is why he increased the demands on the majority from which he could imagine forming a government from “simple majority” to “stable majority”. The majority of his party members are too unreliable. They said one thing in the committee, shortly afterwards in the Wittenberg city council, of which Elsner is a member, or the opposite in the Magdeburg state parliament.
He has many examples of the destructive attitude of this political opponent. If a proposal for a higher police presence at Arsenalplatz in Wittenberg is made because young people there have behavioral problems, the right will reject it. For what reason? Because the suggestion came from another party. Besides, it is said, this only combats symptoms. That means: Asylum seekers are the real problem, even if it is proven that they do not play a prominent role at Arsenalplatz. There are demands that more prisons should be built for them and fewer suspended sentences should be given. Where the prison guards will come from and whether immediate detention solves the problem of juvenile crime are irrelevant to those who demand it. The main thing is that it looks that way, the main thing is that people seem radical and can pat each other on the back.
Kebab snacks as foreign to culture?
We are sitting in a café on the long Schlossstrasse. Coswiger Straße also runs parallel to the Wittenberg market square. The proposal to brighten up this less busy, less pretty street in terms of urban planning and thereby make it safer – was also rejected. Because he came from the CDU. Because foreigners are the problem. This doesn't mean the Italians whose bars line Schlossstrasse. But you can't be entirely sure, depending on which of the anti-immigration activists you talk to. The dozen kebab snack bars that exist in Wittenberg were considered by some to be “foreign to culture”.
In concrete terms, according to Elsner, there is hardly a problem that can be solved with the right as long as they care far too little about improving living conditions in Wittenberg and Saxony-Anhalt. One could also say: As long as they can enjoy the malaise, both real and fictional. Almost every topic becomes symbolic. If it is suggested that the churches be given significantly fewer resources - because they have annoyed the right-wing with their migrant-friendly behavior - for Elsner this ultimately amounts to allowing the city and castle churches to fall into disrepair. The political opponent doesn't care; he isn't interested in Christianity anyway. Or just – see above under Luther – as a national past. When it is pointed out that twenty percent of all doctors in Saxony-Anhalt are of foreign origin, it is said that many of them do not even know German. Reliable numbers? None.
All problems are related to asylum seekers
So behind the firewall there are political adventurers who basically don't care what's true. When Ulrich Siegmund was asked how it could be claimed in his election program that no German authors were being played on the stages in Saxony-Anhalt, that wasn't true at all, he said: Well then everything is fine. Normal communication is difficult with such people because it is not in their interest at all. Concrete problems that exist, for example, with asylum seekers and which are often denied by other parties and the media, disappear among the right-wingers in their claim that almost all problems are somehow related to asylum seekers.
From 5:30 p.m. onwards there will be the “public viewing” of the ARD election broadcast in the Evangelical Academy. “Public” but more in the sense of “private” because barely two dozen people came. “Viewing” again more in the sense of watching mostly in silence. Nobody is outraged, perhaps they are tired of the outrage. Not even a groan goes through the ranks when the forecast is made; they probably expected it to be exactly the same. Here and there a laugh when the political staff utters a particularly foolish sentence or Franziska Brantner repeats the joke that some people in the CDU wanted the Chancellor to take an even longer vacation. But this cannot be called political publicity.
Your term seems to be in need of revision. It is said on television that Siegmund gained followers through bratwurst parties. You actually see him with the demeanor of a pop singer who drives up to the town center festival to play evergreens. We briefly think of Friedrich Merz's statement that Germany is not Kreuzberg, but Gillamoos. Back then we thought it was nonsensical to say that Germany was a folk festival. We had simply forgotten Georg Büchner's instructions to always go where our phrases are embodied. Now Merz has been caught up in his own phrase.
The AfD as a representative of East German interests?
Jörg Schönenborn then shows a table on ARD that asks for the competencies that are attributed to the parties in combating crime, representing East German interests and enforcing social justice. In every dimension the CDU was clearly behind. What Schönenborn didn't say: That Siegmund and his people have never fought crime, even in vain, never had to represent East German interests or achieve anything in terms of social policy.
So voters were asked to compare disappointing efforts with campaign posters, dishes with recipes, facts with wishes. Luther already suspected that this comparison would end in favor of his wishes. He would have called the tendency to indulge in promises that flatter one sinful. At least when it comes to promises that are not divine but come from pompous pop singers. That's why we returned to Berlin from Wittenberg in the evening with gratitude and with the impression that there was still a lot to be gained from the Catholic Luther for the protest against the madness of our time.
