Only peace shall come from German soil

Niemeyer (left) and Chancellor Dr. Helmut Kohl (1987)

by Ralph T. Niemeyer, chairman of Deutschlandkongress – Assembly

Our state is in a crisis, our society is in a crisis. The crisis is an economic one, a political one and a cultural one. The worldwide pandemic is being designed as a cover-up for the failed economic system which for the fourth time in 300 years on a worldwide scale in its entirety collapses.

Usually, such collapse would lead to a major war or even a world war. What we witness since 2020 is nothing less than a worldwide war by the rich elite against the citizens but without tanks and bombs but a similar fear that is being created in order to make people obey and agree to social control while democracy and civil rights are being replaced by a strict law and order regime that completely defies freedom and liberty promoted by the United States of America, Great Britain and France since their various revolutions and civil wars.

The tragedy in case of us Germans is that we never had a successful revolution so far but rather counter-revolutions whenever the danger was ripe that the German people took their fate into their own hands and since the defeat in 1918 lived under occupation far from anything described in the UN Charta as “self-determination”.

What is it our fellow European neighbors suspect that we Germans are ready to commit to? Where does the fear come from when French columnists write about the predominance of the Germans? Why were the French, especially, so reluctant in 1989 to allow us to be unified ultimately under one statehood after painful and long separation by a barbaric border?

What does the term “German problem” imply, and why is it still used today, almost eighty years after World War II? Are young Germans responsible for the crimes three generations before us committed? How can we contribute to permanent peace and equilibrium in the world, and do we have a special moral obligation whether or not we want to feel responsible for Auschwitz and whether or not there is such a thing as collective guilt, which even my generation has been taught about in school in a way that made many of us feel a burden of the past, and let many of us behave differently when meeting fellow students from France, Poland and Britain.

There are many questions, but I think we have to put the “German problem” into context, as it is there and can not be ignored. Firstly, one has to consider that Germany is surrounded by nine neighbours, of which Poland and France would be the larger and more powerful nations who therefore have been seen as rivals by all German governments since 1871 (the first German unification).

Moreover, the Pan-European corridors all begin in or go through Germany. Those corridors have their roots in the Middle Ages. The most vital corridors are the so-called fourth corridor, leading from Berlin and Dresden to Istanbul via Prague, Bratislava, Gyor, Budapest, Arad, Krajova, Sofia and Plovdiv, with some ramifications with Nuremberg, Vienna, Bucharest and Constanza; the eighth corridor, from the Albanian port of Durres to Warna in Bulgaria via Tirana, Kaftan, Skopje, Deve Bair, Sofia, Plovdiv and Burgas, and the tenth corridor, connecting Salzburg, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrad, Nis, Skopje, Veles and Thessaloniki. Ramifications connect this corridor to Graz, Maribor, Sofia, Bitola, Florina and Igoumenitza, as well as Augsburg. It has always been the vital strategic interest of all German governments to secure these corridors, as Germany’s trade and economy needed them for the transport routes as well as for possible expansion into other territories.

One can say Germany is in the heartland of Europe, and the geopolitical consequences have led to two world wars. It is important for any analysis of present German strategy to understand that the two world wars were not triggered because of one evil Kaiser or Führer who was angry at neighboring nations or simply crazy, as many historians still want to make us believe when they write about the evil gene of Hitler, but because of economic interests leading to German imperialism at a time all other major European powers already had their share of the cake in their colonies, which Germany almost completely missed out on, because of its failure to unite some three hundred German states, principalities and micro kingdoms. 

As Germany has always been a major economic power in Europe, lacking any dependencies and access to raw materials and resources abroad, its economy was and is constantly suffering from an expansion crisis. As Germany could make use of its geographic advantages only when controlling the transport routes from and through its own territory, it would logically also attempt to secure its grip on other routes that have vital meaning for its own expansion.

It is, of course, in the German interest to establish and wherever possible own or otherwise control the Pan-European routes or corridors. By controlling those it would be the dominate power on the continent, to have access to and make use of the Pan-European Network (PAN), which has many more global effects that we may now be able to explain. The network is designed to develop the former Soviet Union and other East European “emerging markets.”

It is, of course, essential to integrate these new markets into the European economic system, not for the sake of their economies, but for the sake of our, German, expansion. So far, the European Union has advanced this quite efficiently, given that the EU pursued this only since the early nineties.

The full scale will be implemented once the pan-European transport system (PETRA) covers the area from the Atlantic to the Urals as well as the EU-associated Mediterranean of the Maghreb, an economic area of more than one billion people, 18,000 kilometers of roads, 20,000 kilometers of railways, thirty-eight airports, thirteen seaports, forty-nine rivers, numerous gas and oil pipelines, as well as telecommunication knots.

Up to now the EU has invested more than 90 billion Euros in this venture, which has been pursued again and again since Charles the Great, but suffered heavy backlashes every single time the capitalistic expansion led to wars and even world wars.

The International Herald Tribune stated on 7 December, 2000, that “The ‘German problem’ antedates World War I. It is not just an affair of Nazism and WW II; it goes back to the Franco-Prussian war and German unification in 1871. When Bismarck brought all but Austria undessa’s domination, the German state was the most populous in Europe. It was too big. It unbalanced the old Europe, overshadowing France and Austria-Hungary, and challenging the British Empire.”

That’s exactly where we stand again, after two world wars and the cold war being over, by neither side carrying a permanent victory. All Adenauer and de Gaulle negotiated in 1951 was about coal and steel, but in fact it was more, it was about the new equilibrium in Europe. 

It laid the ground for increasing cooperation, first economically, then politically, and it did not take long until one spoke of the French-German brotherhood and that it was a driving force for the unification of Europe. All these decades it had been essential to the few European nations being involved, that all members be treated as equals, no matter what size or how populous.

This was the equilibrium that made the French, Dutch, Belgians and Luxemburgeoise gain confidence in the new Germany. Having suffered tremendously from previous German expansions, those nations have been very wary of any attempt by the Germans to fall back into hegemonic power behavior.

It probably helped at this stage that Germany was divided and not sovereign. The two Germanies were rivals from the very beginning, and the East Germans, claiming higher moral standing for being tougher on NAZIs, may also have been responsible by their sheer existence for a more socially balanced—and in its foreign affairs modest—West Germany, claiming to represent all of Germany. In fact, this Germany was the one the world may have liked better, as it was a non-repressive, liberal society, abstaining not only because of the cold war but also because of a general mood in Germany from any military adventurism and advocating a modest foreign policy—at least publicly.

All this changed after 3rd October, 1990, and the promises of Chancellor Kohl and Foreign Minister Genscher that, “Only peace shall come from German soil” were soon forgotten. The Herald Tribune noted that “Germany’s venture into policy leadership in 1992, by forcing EU recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, did not prove a good idea.”

To put it mildly, other European leaders were not impressed by Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher combining German approval of the Maastricht accord with a European vote on its policy towards the new—old—Yugoslavian republics, who were about to trigger the first war in Europe since 1945. 

Should the agreement signed at Maastricht survive only the following days it would be necessary for Europe to speak with a single voice in the emerging Balkan conflict, meaning that Chancellor Kohl’s promise of “full diplomatic recognition for Croatia and Slovenia before Christmas” would be honored in exchange for the German’s willingness to ‘sacrifice’ their beloved Deutschemark to the ECU, later EURO, single currency project, which they advocated more than any other European Nation.

Even the traditionally German-friendly Turkish Foreign Ministry’s Balkan expert, Alev Kilic, asserted that the early diplomatic recognition Croatia and Slovenia, won by the EC following intense German pressure, buried any hope for a peaceful solution in the Balkan conflict.

Secondly, the liberal weekly DIE ZEIT admitted that “the splitting-up of the Yugoslavian state, along with the closer alignment of the Croats and Slovenians with the German economy, brought kind of an emancipation of these peoples who were previously attached to the empires in central Europe and later with the ‘Third Reich’, but also was meant to be a punishment for the Serbs, who have been on the victor’s side in both world wars.

And thirdly, it made those treaties vanish, which punished Germany for its two defeats. In short: due to the almighty economy, Germany regained what it lost in battle.”

The Germans finally have achieved economically what Hitler failed to achieve by military terrorism and brutal violence against all peoples of this planet…

The English, for exactly the above reasons have chosen on behalf of the Welsh and Scottish to leave the European Union.

In view of the massive restrictions on fundamental rights due to the alleged but non-existent correlation between the number of PCR tests and the total number of tests, a “pandemic situation on a national scale” that cannot be scientifically proven, and as a result of the factual abolition of the “Basic Law”, West-Germanys provisional post WW II “constitution” by the “Infection Protection Act” of November 18, 2020 and its deepening with Paragraph 28b on April 22, 2021, a legal vacuum has occurred, which acutely endangers the existence of the free-democratic state of the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as the de-facto abolition of administrative jurisdiction and de jure counter-caricature of federalism further undermine the “Basic Law” which we have regarded as our constitution since 1949.

The call for the creation of a German constitution is getting louder and is more justified today than ever before, because on closer inspection we have been living completely without one since July 18, 1990, if only one referred to the last legal position on this question, namely, that the “Basic Law of May 23, 1949” as a “provisional solution”, as it is called on the website of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, would be regarded as a quasi replacement for a German constitution.

Therefore, as chairman of Deutschlandkongress, the assembly preparing the constitutional council, which we founded on October 7, 1989 in Berlin, the capital of the GDR and on November 10, 1989 in Bonn – Bad Godesberg, on February 11, 1990 after a conversation with Chancellor Kohl, in which he had told me that “a new constitution will have to be created”, broadcast by ARD and ZDF, I invoked Article 146 of the Basic Law and called for the constituent assembly for all of Germany.

According to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditory Forces (SHAEF) Law No. 52, Article 1 of September 12, 1944, „Germany” until today is regarded the territory within the boundaries as of December 31, 1937, as these were still undisputed under international law at least at the time of German unification. The President of the USSR, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, confirmed to me in two interviews that he had heard from Chancellor Kohl that a new constitution would be drawn up and that the Soviet Union had offered a peace treaty.

Niemeyer with USSR – President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in 1991

Nothing of that kind has materialised until today. We still don’t have a constitution and no peace treaty.

So what is true today? On July 17, 1990, I was present at the negotiations in Paris for the “Two Plus Four Treaty” between the Four Allies and the two Germanies and heard US Secretary of State James Baker informing West-German (FRG) and German Democratic Republic (GDR) Foreign Ministers Hans Dietrich Genscher and Markus Meckel that the expiration of the constitution of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) would become effective on 3^rd October 1990 at midnight and Article 23 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany already with effect from July 18, 1990 at midnight.

Strictly speaking, and so one has to do it in legal questions, even if people often think that international law is vague, after this point in time no Bundestag, no People’s Chamber and no German government was entitled to act under constitutional or international law.

I asked FRG-Foreign Minister Genscher about this immediately after the meeting with Foreign Minister Baker, but he weighed down that this was only to be understood symbolically, that a united Germany would be completely sovereign.

However, this cannot be the case for several reasons, because according to the footnotes to the “Two plus Four Treaty”, the NATO troop statute of 1957 continues to apply, but also the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditory Forces (S.H.A.E.F.) – Laws that are only deemed to be “suspended” unless the Federal Republic of Germany leaves the path of the separation of powers, a free democratic order based on human rights, civil rights and federalism.

All three pre-conditions are no longer met by the “Infection Protection Act”, enacted 18^th April 2020 by the German Bundestag in particular by introducing Paragraph 28 b on 22^nd April 2021, which means that the Allies are again exercising sovereignty from 23^rd April 2021 at midnight on.

But: the “Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany” was no longer valid already well before, because with the deletion of Article 23 Basic Law on July 18, 1990, one wanted to ensure that “only” the GDR and not possibly other areas of the old Reich would make use of that clause and also “join” the borders of December 31, 1937 beyond the Oder-Neisse line, todays Poland. What happened probably by mistake, which not even the most insane “Reichsbürger” (people who believe that the German Reich still exists) could have phantasised about, namely that the scope of the “Basic Law” no longer applies, in effect has created a vacuum of power and legality.

Other than in Article 23 of the Basic Law the scope of application is not specified anywhere else in the “Basic Law”. In the first semester of law in university, one learns that there is no law without a scope. As I said, it is probably only due to the clumsiness of the hasty and euphoric reunionists Kohl and Genscher not to heed this fact, but these are the facts. Both of them reassured me again and again that the united Germany would be sovereign, but my question about the constitution for Germany was suddenly ironed out with reference to the “Two plus Four Treaty”, but even according to Article 43 of the Hague Land Warfare Regulations of 1910 a “Basic Law” is always only a temporary solution and not a constitution. That is why Article 146 of the Basic Law regulates that a German constitution is to be created in free self-determination once all Germans are unified peacefully under one statehood.

Since the Federal Republic of Germany expressly referred its constitutional sovereignty to the area of application of the “Basic Law”, the Federal Republic of Germany was de jure, but not de facto, dissolved by the United States of America on July 18, 1990 by deleting Article 23 of the Basic Law. But what are the consequences for “German unity”?

Chancellor Kohl always denied in front of me that this was ineffective, but you know how emotionally touched the gentleman always had been, especially about his own role when it came to the fact that “the mantle of history” (original sound Dr. Helmut Kohl) would have “brushed” him. Kohl was never interested in the details, but only in the “big picture”.

The “Unification Treaty”, which was published in the Federal Law Gazette on September 28, 1990, states in Chapter 1 “Effect of Accession”: “(1) With the accession of the German Democratic Republic to the Federal Republic of Germany in accordance with Article 23 of the Basic Law on 3^rd October 1990 the states of Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia become states of the Federal Republic of Germany … ”

And in the “Constitutional Law for the Formation of Countries in the German Democratic Republic”, published in the Law Gazette of the German Democratic Republic on August 14, 1990, it says under point 1: “With effect from October 14, 1990, the following countries will be formed in the GDR: Mecklenburg Western Pomerania by amalgamating the district territories of Neubrandenburg, Rostock and Schwerin … ” According to the extract from the Basic Law of October 3, 1990, it says there under Article 23“ repealed ”.

Article 23 of the Basic Law, to which the Unification Treaty refers, did not even exist at the time in question. It was “cancelled”. In the repealed article, the scope of the Basic Law was named, as one can easily see: Article 23 GG: “This Basic Law initially applies in the areas of Baden, Bavaria, Bremen, Greater Berlin, Hamburg, Hesse, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia , Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein, Württemberg-Baden and Württemberg-Hohenzollern … ”

My colleagues and I correctly pointed out in our publications that there was an astonishing botch-up: “It has been proven that since the deletion of Article 23 of the old version of the Basic Law, this paragraph was on August 31^st, 1990, the day the “Unification Treaty” no longer existed because it was cancelled on July 17^th, 1990. Thus, Paragraph 1 of the “Unification Treaty” (accession according to Art. 23 old version “GG”) could hardly have been implemented. The “Basic Law”, which for its part has never been ratified (!) and only became a kind of customary law in the “FRG” through “factual submission” (cf. Prof. Dr. Carlo Schmid in his speech in the Parliamentary Council on September 8^th, 1948), but as a “substitute constitution” cannot do without a spatial definition of its area of application (as in the old Article 23).

As the highest right, a constitution and also a Basic Law has to make these basic provisions as to where it shall apply itself! This is currently no longer the case and so the supposed “FRG” is only a non-governmental organization.

Recently, I established again contact with the Russian Federation in order to win support from the nation that had suffered most under German NAZISm and which should always be involved in establishing a new Pan-European security structure.

Niemeyer with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in 2017

The question now arises as to whether the GDR would still exist and whether its constitution would actually still apply? Purely legally, but not legitimately, presumably. This sloppiness, which is so atypical for us Germans, can be explained by the fact that the mood in the GDR was no longer so clear for the immediate unification after the air had been let out of the kettle and everyone in the East had travelled to the West and had bought an overpriced used car from West Germany.

But such blatant legal errors in the most important legal act for us Germans of the 20th century? In Germany, the local courts regulate the history of the world with meticulous precision, so that even the dinosaurs could sue the mammals!

De facto, however, we haven’t lived too badly with the “Basic Law” for the past 31 years, even if this is supposed to have been an illusion, but we have filled it with life and now notice how well it actually worked. Today I am fully convinced and say so: the unity of the motherland and fatherland is not up for discussion, but we want to finally create a constitution recognised under international law, free, democratic and self-determined, so that we can get rid of the untenable SHAEF – Laws and by this avert the same mistakes to be repeated when in Versailles after WWI Germany was made pay for a war all by itself that in fact had been the fault of many nations which inevitably lead to WWII. To be able to finally put all pre-conditions aside and to conclude a peace treaty with all nations involved in World War II without opening up old borders and wounds again.

Deutschlandkongress was inactive for over thirty years, until August 29, 2020, when I renewed the proclamation in accordance with Article 146 of the Basic Law with applause at the largest demonstration in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany to date.

With appropriate legal preparatory work in regards to the above aspects and without actually having to go back to the Empire or the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, with a simple declaration under international law from 1871, just by switching back to 1871 for a technical legal second, we could enact the new constitution by public acclamation.

There have been two Deutschlandkongress-conferences so far in 2021. At the second meeting of the executive council of Deutschlandkongress last weekend in Bonn’s old government district, all members present unanimously agreed to hold a constitutional clarification meeting in the form of a conference of Deutschlandkongress on September 25^th 2021, also in Bonn, as the initial Constituent Assembly. Every citizen entitled to vote within the meaning of the Basic Law can register for participation and voting and have it verified at deutschlandkongress.poovi.de

More information at deutschlandkongress.net

We, the German people will for the first time ever, and after two dreadful wars that brought about huge sufferings to many peoples on the planet, create our constitution, as demanded by the UN charter in self-determination as a people with distinguished territory and according to Article 146 of the Basic Law as it was imposed on us by the Western Allies on 23^rd May 1949. 

Back then, my comrade, the leader of the Communist Party, Max Reimann, stated that “today we Communists will not sign this Basic Law as it manifests the division of Germany, but we believe that the day will come when we who have not signed will have to defend it against those who today enacted it.”

Today, I vow to protect the German constitution we are finally going to enact peacefully and democratically so that only peace shall come from German soil.

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