Bodo Ramelow - Now I feel like there is something leaden over everything. E-Book

Heinz Michael Vilsmeier

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 57

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

With the words: "Now I have the feeling that there is a leaden weight over everything," Bodo Ramelow described the social mood in Germany on September 1, 2013, a few weeks before the federal election. At this time, Ramelow was still the parliamentary group leader of the Left Party (Die Linke) in the Thuringian State Parliament. With his "feeling," Ramelow, born on February 16, 1956 in Osterholz-Scharmbeck, Lower Saxony, was not alone. The society itself seemed on the verge of being crushed by a leaden burden, not just the mood within it. In those days, the final recourse of German politics had narrowed to the dogma of inevitability, and the ruling elite, in a grotesque manner, asserted a claim to political infallibility. In various coalitions, they had subjected the actions of the state to the paradigm of neoliberalism and called for market-radical globalization. They had reduced the role of the state to ensuring the functioning of the market. They treated its social responsibility towards the individual, society, and nature as a historical footnote. This paved the way for the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. Many people had begun to oppose the dictate of supposed inevitability. The disillusioned turned away from the governing parties. Not a few ended up in right-wing extremist groups. Against this background, the interviewer conducted the following conversation with Bodo Ramelow. In the lead-up to the 2013 federal election, it was intended to shed light on the extent to which the party Die Linke had a concept for how to win over those disillusioned by the politics of the governing parties for a democratic and emancipatory society. A few months after the interview, Bodo Ramelow became the first Minister President of the party Die Linke in a German state. The outcome of the 2013 federal election arithmetically would have permitted a red-red-green coalition government. – But things turned out differently.

Leseprobe

Heinz Michael Vilsmeier

in conversation with

Bodo Ramelow

Now I feel like there is something leaden over everything.

Printing and Publishing: epubli - a service of neopubli GmbH, Berlin

First English-language edition: © Copyright by Heinz Michael Vilsmeier, 2024

Cover: © Copyright by Heinz Michael Vilsmeier, 2020

Photos: with kind permission of Bodo Ramelow

PUBLISHER'S INFORMATION:

HAMCHA art integration

Heinz Michael Vilsmeier

Spiegelbrunn 11

D-84130 Dingolfing

[email protected]

ISBN: 978-3-7375-4484-9

https://interview-online.blog

Preface

With the words: "Now I have the feeling that there is a leaden weight over everything," Bodo Ramelow described the social mood in Germany on September 1, 2013, a few weeks before the federal election. At this time, Ramelow was still the parliamentary group leader of the Left Party (Die Linke) in the Thuringian State Parliament.

With his "feeling," Ramelow, born on February 16, 1956 in Osterholz-Scharmbeck, Lower Saxony, was not alone. The society itself seemed on the verge of being crushed by a leaden burden, not just the mood within it. In those days, the final recourse of German politics had narrowed to the dogma of inevitability, and the ruling elite, in a grotesque manner, asserted a claim to political infallibility.

In various coalitions, they had subjected the actions of the state to the paradigm of neoliberalism and called for market-radical globalization. They had reduced the role of the state to ensuring the functioning of the market. They treated its social responsibility towards the individual, society, and nature as a historical footnote. This paved the way for the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

Many people had begun to oppose the dictate of supposed inevitability. The disillusioned turned away from the governing parties. Not a few ended up in right-wing extremist groups.

Against this background, the interviewer conducted the following conversation with Bodo Ramelow. In the lead-up to the 2013 federal election, it was intended to shed light on the extent to which the party Die Linke had a concept for how to win over those disillusioned by the politics of the governing parties for a democratic and emancipatory society.

A few months after the interview, Bodo Ramelow became the first Minister President of the party Die Linke in a German state. The outcome of the 2013 federal election arithmetically would have permitted a red-red-green coalition government. - But things turned out differently.

When Red Heidi was still Red Heidi.

HAMCHA: Good morning Mr. Ramelow. - Why are you on the left?

Bodo Ramelow: Why am I on the left? - I come from an old, Protestant, conservative family where the issue of social responsibility has always played a central role. It was the question of responsibility, especially for other people or for societal developments. In our family, there has always been a strong affinity not only to focus on oneself but actually to care that one can only be well if those around are also doing well. - If there is a perspective there. That's a fundamental attitude that has been instilled in me from the cradle in my life. The question of party political affiliation only came to me many, many decades later.

Photo 1 courtesy of Bodo Ramelow

I have been a trade unionist, I have been a works councilor, I was involved in the peace movement in the 1970s. It wasn't until 1999, here in Thuringia, that I became a member of a party, namely the PDS at the time. The reason was, today is September 1st, the International Day of Peace, the bombing of Serbia, German involvement in a military operation, in a war effort, which deeply affected me. At that time, I became a member of the PDS, with the message: "I am joining this party to contribute to making it a party for all of Germany, a socialist party." In Germany, socialism has always been translated, especially in West Germany, through anti-communist currents and the Cold War, with terms like SED, the Berlin Wall, STASI, the Gulag, and other things. My vision of a different society is much more than a reduction to state capitalism as seen in Eastern European countries.

HAMCHA: Your family, as you mentioned, is Protestant and conservative. Was your path into the politically left-wing camp accompanied by conflicts against this background or was it accepted by your family?

Bodo Ramelow: The social policy aspect, my path through the trade union, was always unproblematic because this aspect had always been accepted in the family. Conflict arose only in 1999 when I intended to run as the top candidate for the PDS in the state election, still as an independent candidate. At that time, there was a family meeting in the West with my siblings. My brother lives in London, and he went with me to the cemetery, to Karl Marx's grave, where we stood in front of Karl Marx's bust and debated whether it made sense for me to run for the PDS. It was still a bit of patting on the back and winking from my brother. But my aunt in Rhineland-Palatinate, the whole family in Rhineland-Palatinate, is very focused on the CDU (Christian Democratic Union), and many are members of the CDU. My aunt then said, 'Boy, why are you doing this to me?!' When I asked, 'What am I doing to you?' she said, 'That you're running for the Communists!' And I said, 'Dear aunt, this is not a communist party, not what we understand as a state communist party!' - For me, the PDS in Thuringia is like the former SPD in southern Hesse was when it still had a socialist stance, and when Red Heidi was still Red Heidi. That's my youthful memory of it. The curious thing is that my aunt was horrified, as if the Russian army with tanks was about to invade her Rhineland-Palatinate village and I was somehow betraying the family. - However, a few years later, as I occasionally appeared on television due to the merger process with the WASG, forming the party Die Linke, my aunt said, 'The relatives said the boy did a good job!' When I was on the news and in the current affairs programs always with the project of Die Linke, even my relatives said I had done the job well, even though it wasn't their party. - My goal was always to develop an all-German perspective, that there must be an alternative beyond anti-communism, which involves dispelling prejudices associated with it, namely the reduction to what defined state capitalism in the former Eastern Bloc.

Photo 2 courtesy of Bodo Ramelow