There was a kind of hesitant hope in December 2024, when then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced new elections.
Finally, after three years of a disastrous coalition between Social Democrats (SPD), the Green party and the Liberals (FDP), German citizens had the chance to course-correct their country's path. Coming in with the most votes were the (supposedly) conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the right-of-center Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The majority no longer wanted more “progressive politics”, but policies of a more conservative nature. What they got instead was more of the same. The faint hopes were very quickly dashed, when Chancellor-to-be Friedrich Merz (CDU) joined the SPD, the clear loser of the election, with an all-time low of only 16% of the votes, in yet another coalition. That coalition had a rather rough start: for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, a chancellor-to-be lost the first ballot in the Bundestag, which elects the chancellor. Friedrich Merz made it through the second ballot after procuring votes from, of all people, the far-left Die Linke. Ever since then, this new coalition has continued the policies of their predecessors:
- The national budget is based on record-breaking debt in the hundreds of billions of Euros, while the economy continues its downward trend, with rising unemployment and businesses closing down.
- A return to nuclear energy is strictly ruled out.
- Rents, taxes and contributions to healthcare and social security are rising, while spending power wanes.
- Any kind of cuts to the ballooning welfare payments are simply forbidden.
- Although some control measures on migration were introduced by increased border patrol (in the face of severe criticism from the left) and asylum applications numbers went down, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs is still flying in Afghans and Syrians. Since July, migrants can now, if eligible, apply online for German citizenship.
In short, the ever-more far-left SPD still dominates national policy, with a Christian-Democratic chancellor making one concession after another. For example, although demanded by members of the CDU, an inquiry into the industrial complex of political Non-Governmental Organizations and their financial ties to the SPD and Green Party has still not been undertaken.
Controversial Candidates
But now, what was supposed to be a mere formality has turned into a stern test for the uneasy coalition. It all started rather innocuously: three positions as judges in the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court, the highest court in the country) were to be filled, and the SPD presented two candidates: law professors Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf and Ann-Katrin Kaufhold (neither of whom has any experience as a judge). Both were accepted by the Bundestag's Judical Election Committee, with help from the CDU. They now needed to be approved by the whole Bundestag, and the vote was set for July 11th, right at the beginning of the parliamentary summer break. It looked like plain sailing. And then people started asking questions. Brosius-Gersdorf especially became a person of interest, although not in the way she might have hoped.
It turned out Brosius-Gersdorf was indeed a controversial person—and not just because she favors “gender-inclusive" language in law texts (in German, this often involves abolishing traditional grammatical forms), and even rewriting the German constitution in that manner. During the Covid-19 scare, she was among the hardliners, arguing for mandatory Covid vaccinations, and increased social pressure on and possible social exclusion of the unvaccinated. Furthermore, she is deeply in favor of banning the AfD. Nonetheless, her positions on abortion created the most outrage. In her view, human dignity only begins at birth. This is a direct quote: "The assumption that human dignity applies wherever human life exists is a biological-naturalistic fallacy. Human dignity and the protection of life are legally decoupled".
“The assumption that human dignity applies wherever human life exists is a biological-naturalistic fallacy. Human dignity and the protection of life are legally decoupled” - Federal Constitutional Court nominee Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf
In practice, this means abortions could be carried out until the last day before the actual birth (she later tried to play this down, but the point still stands). It is clear to see: Frauke Borsius-Gersdorf is very much aligned with the left—and represents its authoritarian wing. It didn't take long until the law professor's views were widely reported, especially by “alternative” and right-leaning media, questioning her suitability for the Court.
Campaign Calamity
What—or rather, who—brought things to a boil, however, was none other than Chancellor Merz himself. When the growing controversy around Brosius-Gersdorf reached the Bundestag, the chancellor showed his support for her. Asked by a member of the AfD, Beatrix von Storch, about his position on Brosius-Gersdorf's stand on abortion and if his own conscience would allow him to vote for her, his answer was a flat “Yes”. With this single word, he betrayed the entire base of his own party, the Christian-Democratic Union. It cost him dearly. Delegates of the party were flooded with complaints, and Merz was lambasted as a ruthless politician without principles. Meanwhile, the controversy heated up into hysteria, with the SPD, Green Party and large parts of the mainstream media throwing their weight behind Brosius-Gersdorf. When the day for the election to the Federal Consitutional Court finally arrived, all eyes were turned towards the Bundestag. But nothing happened. The vote was postponed. This was not entirely unexpected. A few days prior to the vote, questions arose around the jurist's dissertation. Several passages of her work were identical with that of her husband, published one year later. A case of plagiarism could not be proven, but it was enough for the CDU to delay the vote. The German Left went into full-blown meltdown mode, with accusations of a concerted, and misogynistic, “smear campaign” against an “accomplished, faultless jurist”, carried out by right-wing media outlets and ominous “foreign forces”.
The German Left went into full meltdown, with accusations of a concerted, and misogynistic, “smear campaign” against an “accomplished, faultless jurist”, carried out by right-wing media outlets and ominous “foreign forces”.
Frauke Borius-Gesdorf herself sought the limelight, by appearing on political talk shows, claiming her views were in fact centrist and shared by most of the citizenry. She decried the vile hate campaign against her and attempts at discrediting her. The SPD outright demanded that the CDU elects their candidate, or else. Because, as usual in current-day Germany, “Our Democracy” is at stake.
Alarming Agendas
Indeed these developments seem par for the course in a country that has clearly gone mad. Still, this case bears some significance. Although Brosius-Gersdorf claims to be fully grounded in the science of law (in German, law can be classified as a branch of “Wissenschaft”, i.e. “science”) and to have no political agenda, her works reveal the law professor to be firmly on the side of the Left to an almost comical degree. Not generally known, for example, is her stance on polygamy and marriage with minors. Polygamy, in her estimate, is generally compatible with the constitution, since the Grundgesetz doesn't strictly define “marriage” as monogamous. The same goes for marriages with minors, except for “individual cases”.
She is also a proponent of the banning of the AfD—and has even gone a bit further. What really worries her, so she said on a talk show in 2024, was that an AfD ban would not “eradicate” (beseitigen) the party's voter base. A year later, now firmly in the public eye, she apologized, citing being under the pressure of a talk show situation as excuse, and claiming she had not chosen her words wisely.
Brosius-Gersdorf chose a similar tactic when asked about her radical views during Covid-19. She assured the public that her statements were always based on the available scientific data and should be seen in that context. The keyword here is “scientific”. The whole affair is oddly reminiscent of the Covid era. Since her views became known and received harsh criticism, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf has been lionized by a fawning media apparatus, with the left-leaning newspaper Die Zeit unironically calling her an “Icon of Enlightenment”. The jurist herself practices humility: she is, as she repeats over and over, just a scientist. In short, the law professor Follows The Science. The exact same thing happened when virologist Christian Drosten became the face of the Covid Regime. At the time, he claimed that to disagree with him or criticize his views would be not only “unscientific”, but immoral. To disagree with Brosius-Gersdorf would constitute the same double sin. The difference is that this time it’s not that you “just want people to die”, but that you are refusing to rein in a possible fascist takeover in case she doesn't get elected.
