“As Secretary General of the umbrella organization, it was with great dismay that I followed the discussion and the council’s decision in Cloppenburg regarding the establishment of an independent school. The majority of the council suppressed a fundamental right enshrined in our constitution: the right of parents to found and run an independent school.
Whether deliberately or not, the majority of the Council has thus gone against the letter and spirit of the Basic Law and disregarded it.
Article 1 of our constitution states: “The following fundamental rights shall bind legislation, executive power and jurisdiction as directly applicable law”.
Article 7 of our Basic Law guarantees the establishment of free schools. In our constitution, this fundamental right even takes precedence over the right to freedom of assembly and demonstrations, the right to form associations (and parties or voter associations), the secrecy of correspondence, the guarantee of freedom of movement within the federal territory, the freedom to choose an occupation, the inviolability of the home, the guarantee of property, the right to asylum and long before the freedom of opinion/press freedom that is so important to us all (Articles 8 to 18 of the Basic Law).
The mothers and fathers of the Basic Law therefore placed a high value on the freedom to establish independent schools, as the order in which the fundamental rights are listed clearly shows.
All the arguments I have read against the debate on free schools do not stand up to a fundamental right! School planning, for example – this relates to state schools, but must never prevent independent schools! Or should a reference to a municipal gazette prevent the founding of a new newspaper or news website? Or should the founding of a new association be prohibited with reference to the many existing associations in the city? Of course not.
However, by debating the pros and cons of a free Christian school, the establishment of which they should protect and enable as a fundamental right under Article 1 of the Basic Law, the Council deprived itself of decision-making powers and made it all too clear that it was abusing its position.
With the council resolution against a minority of citizens of the town of Cloppenburg (discrimination), a majority of the council assembly believes it is allowed to undermine an important fundamental right of our state, some even in the name of “liberality”. Rosa Luxemburg, the social democratic campaigner who was murdered 102 years ago by political dissidents, wrote the thought-provoking sentence: “Freedom is always the freedom of those who think differently”.
It is very concerning that this spirit is not present in the majority of the Cloppenburg council.”
