Tagesschau and President Pervert the Constitution’s Meaning

According to Nius, the flagship Tagesschau news program devoted just over two minutes to the anniversary of Germany’s constitution during the May 23 DFB-Pokal final halftime break, reaching millions of viewers. Rather than explaining the Basic Law’s fundamental principles, the segment functioned as a promotional video for Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his “Day of Honor” initiative.

The broadcast showed Steinmeier planting tomatoes in rolled-up sleeves and gardening gloves, celebrating volunteer organizations and community engagement projects. Germans meeting with migrants were described by Tagesschau as “non-migrants,” a linguistic construction reminiscent of progressive terminology like “birthing persons.” Footage included volunteers collecting plastic waste and community integration events.

State appropriation of constitutional meaning

Steinmeier declared that volunteering is the backbone of our democracy, adding that Germans could wish for nothing better on the constitution’s birthday than to do something together for their country. The segment then concluded without addressing the Basic Law’s actual content or purpose.

As Nius reports, the problem lies not in celebrating volunteerism or community service, but in the fundamental misrepresentation of what a constitution is meant to accomplish. The Basic Law does not exist to encourage citizens to be kind to each other, collect plastic, or volunteer. Such a framing, endorsed by both the head of state and state media, perverts the document’s essential purpose.

The forgotten purpose of constitutional government

The article cites American founding father Thomas Paine, who wrote in 1792 that a constitution is not an act of government but an act of the people establishing a government. A government without a constitution is power without right, Paine observed, distinguishing clearly between constitutional limits and governmental authority.

German historian Golo Mann emphasized in his history of Germany that the Basic Law placed fundamental rights at its beginning to signal these 19 articles stood above the constitution itself and above all positive legislation. These rights incorporated lessons from Anglo-Saxon, French, and German philosophy developed over two centuries, as well as the bloody lessons of the Hitler era.

Mann noted that five years before the Basic Law’s adoption, “enemies of the people,” those who listened to foreign radio, and “defeatists” who doubted German victory were executed by the thousands. The new constitution abolished the death penalty. Five years earlier, fourteen-year-old children and sixty-year-old men were pressed into military service; the Basic Law explicitly denied the right to persecute people based on faith, race, or language.

Rights guaranteed against state power

The constitution guaranteed freedom of faith, opinion, press, speech, and the development of individual talents. These provisions exist not to promote community gardening projects, but to restrain government power and protect citizens from state overreach.

The Nius analysis concludes that ARD’s propaganda operated both through what was said and what was omitted. By reducing the Basic Law anniversary to a showcase for state-approved volunteerism, the broadcast deprived millions of viewers of understanding the constitution’s actual function: limiting the very state power that Steinmeier represents and that ARD, as a state-funded broadcaster, exercises.

The segment represents what Nius characterizes as a “dumbing down” initiative by public broadcasting employees who squandered an opportunity to educate the largest audience of the year about constitutional principles, instead delivering what could have passed as a presidential press release celebrating “our democracy”—a phrase that has become shorthand for state-approved ideological conformity.

With information from Nius