Enlarge image
Lettering on the entrance gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp
Photo: Martin Schutt/ DPA
The motto "suum cuique" (to each his own) of the Bundeswehr military police remains in place despite criticism from anti-Semitism commissioner Felix Klein.
Federal Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) "sees no reason to have this value-based identity symbol removed from the military unit insignia of the Feldjäger force," a ministry spokesman told the "Welt" on Monday.
The Central Council of Jews had also demanded the removal of the slogan because it was emblazoned in German as a lettering above the entrance gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The Feldjäger are the military police of the Bundeswehr.
They use the Latin phrase »suum cuique« in badges worn on a beret, for example.
Principle of law handed down from antiquity
According to the report, the ministry points out that "suum cuique" is a legal principle handed down from antiquity "to grant everyone what is due to them".
In this sense of justice, the motto emphasizes the personal merit of the honored ("To each according to his merit").
Shortly after it was set up in 1955, the military police chose the Prussian star of the guard with the Latin phrase as their emblem.
"The Feldjäger troop ties in directly with the honorable Prussian tradition," said the ministry spokesman for the newspaper.
The soldiers of the military police of the Wehrmacht had not used the medal star.
"The choice of the star with the inscription 'suum cuique' for the Bundeswehr military police means a deliberate break with the military police in the 'Third Reich' and thus with National Socialism," the newspaper quoted the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense as saying.
In the case of “publicity-effective websites”, the Bundeswehr wants to add “a sensitization and contextualization of the motto”.
The anti-Semitism commissioner of the federal government wanted to visit the military police on Monday together with the military commissioner of the Bundestag, Eva Högl (SPD), at their headquarters in Hanover, as the "Welt" further reported.
He wanted to discuss his initiative again "with regard to the motto 'suum cuique' and the decision that has now been made by the Federal Minister of Defense," Klein told the newspaper.
At the same time, he welcomed the fact that “the motto on the public website of the Feldjäger will be contextualized in the future and that they will be sensitized in training courses with regard to the use of the German translation of the motto by the National Socialists in the future, even if I would have wished for an even more far-reaching decision”.
muk/AFP
