On the occasion of the day commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 25 years ago, the President of the Humanist Association of Germany, Frieder Otto Wolf, pointed out the significance of the peaceful revolution for the association and the right to freedom of conscience and ideology on Friday afternoon in Berlin. Wolf described the surprising opening of the border as an “essential step on the way to overcoming the historical damage to organized humanism caused by the two German dictatorships in the 20th century.” The opening of the inner-German wall had not only restored freedom of travel to the people of the GDR, but also numerous other freedoms “that are indispensable for the principles and practice of a humanist world view”, Wolf continued. These included freedom of conscience, opinion and speech, as well as the right to assemble freely and unhindered and to form social associations. “For many people like us, the fall of the Berlin Wall brought the long-awaited freedom from the oppression in the name of socialism, which had followed on from the persecution of non-religious and free religious communities by the Nazi dictatorship in the territory of the Soviet occupation after the end of the war.” After the Nazi regime seized power in 1933, humanist, free-thinking and free-religious communities were dissolved and their representatives persecuted, imprisoned or murdered. The secular-humanist school movement, which was only a few years old at the time, was destroyed within a short space of time, youth consecration ceremonies were banned and extensive expropriations took place. (see: http://www.zerstoerte-vielfalt-humanismus.de/) In the GDR, which emerged after the end of the war, the free formation of ideological communities remained prohibited. The Jugendweihe, which had already been established in the middle of the 19th century, was later instrumentalized by the socialist state leadership and misused for political purposes. After the fall of the GDR and German reunification, the Humanist Association of Germany was founded in January 1993 to build on and revive the traditions, ideas and goals of the humanist, free-spirited associations. Frieder Otto Wolf went on to say that without the “fall of the Berlin Wall, which was fought for by a broad citizens’ movement, the development of the association to date would have been unlikely.” Only the resulting reunification had been able to “inspire and encourage humanists from all parts of Germany to seek a common future in the regained freedom and under the umbrella of our association, and to develop their activities and fields of work in new practical ways. Not least with the desire to act as a contact and representative of people without religious convictions vis-à-vis the public and politicians.” And despite many positive developments, even a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the damage from German history has not yet been overcome, Wolf emphasized.
This is also due to “the numerous systematic disadvantages that non-religious people have traditionally been confronted with in the Federal Republic of Germany, such as the discriminatory exceptions to church labor law, consideration in public bodies and public broadcasting or the right to offer their own value-forming lessons in schools on an equal footing with the various religious teachings.” To commemorate the fall of the inner-German Wall, representatives of the Humanist Association, among others, will take part in the “Lichtgrenze” light installation in Berlin this weekend. This will see 8,000 white balloons light up 15 kilometers of the former course of the Wall, which will be carried by “light sponsors” and released into the sky in the evening.
