Both people without a religious view of life and people with a religious view of life worked towards the unification of the German population after October 3, 1990. “We still owe them all our gratitude today,” said the President of the Humanist Association of Germany, Frieder Otto Wolf, in a statement on October 3, 2015, the 25th anniversary of German unity.
Wolf went on to explain that the new Germany is the work of “educated and changed people, but also of citizens with a history of migration, who have made the Federal Republic of Germany a country of immigration since the 1980s”. However, although the developments of the last 25 years are a cause for celebration, they are no reason for complacency. The President of the Humanist Association referred to the “major challenges of the deep crises”, which “are currently finding lasting expression in the form of ‘uncontrollable streams of refugees'”. These showed “how far a ‘common European home’, which is peaceful internally and a peaceful neighbor externally, has once again receded into the distance”, said Wolf. However, this year’s anniversary also offers a reason for gratitude because the establishment of the new state unity put an end to “the comprehensive suppression of free ideological communities as practiced by the Nazi regime and the GDR”. Wolf referred here to the various bans and political instrumentalization of non-religious and humanist traditions, structures and ideas that had existed in the dictatorships of the last century. However, despite various positive developments, non-denominational and non-religious people in Germany are still systematically disadvantaged today. “As non-religious humanists, we must continue to actively and critically support the development of this new Germany in the future: With a view to pressing problems in this country, where unfortunately the realization of an equal social position for the large number of citizens without religious confession is still at stake,” Wolf continued. “However, we will also continue to be committed to the prerequisites for cohesion within European societies, which are working together on the global project of securing peace, freedom and cultural progress.”
More on the topic
The report “Glass Walls” on the discrimination of non-religious people in Germany was published on the occasion of the survey “Discrimination in Germany 2015” by the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency, which runs until November 30, 2015, and can be obtained online as a free PDF at:
