First World War: low-key commemoration
"It is scandalous that the German Federal Government is marking the commemoration of the beginning of the First World War with, mostly, inaction. In its pursuit of a new German foreign policy, with new power and new responsibility worldwide and with Federal Armed Forces mandates, it clearly does not want to raise the topic of war guilt any more", Sevim Dagdelen, The Left Party parliamentary group’s spokeswoman for international relations, declared in response to the Federal Government’s reply to her Minor Interpellation "The Federal Government’s commemoration of the centenary of the First World War" (Bundestag Printed Paper 18/686). Sevim Dagdelen continued:
"After showing no sign for months of whether and how it will commemorate the beginning of the First World War, the Federal Government has now finally released concrete figures and events. The total expenditure comes to just a fraction of the funding allocated by, for example, the British and the French Government. The fact that the Federal Government wishes to offer a platform to the historian Christopher Clark, a revisionist who downplays the guilt of the German elites and German capital in starting the war, suggests that the Federal Government – against the background also of its declared intention to send the Federal Armed Forces abroad more often – is seeking to downplay Germany’s war guilt. Clark is regarded even by fellow historians as an outright fan of Germany – and of Austro-Hungary.
It is also surprising that the Federal Government is actually organising events in Benin and Bolivia, while the eastern front will hardly play a role in the commemoration – the millions of victims in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia are obviously of no significance to the German Government.
The Left Party calls on the Federal Government not to deny the German role at the beginning of the First World War, to massively increase the funding for commemorating the beginning of the Great War and not to offer a platform to historical revisionists. One hundred years after the First World War, The Left Party still says: No more war!"
