I am speaking to a brave woman. When Karoline Preisler became seriously ill with Corona in March 2020, she shared her grueling fight against the disease in a video diary. “I’m fine again,” she tells me now. “If I now have problems, it’s that of an average 50-year-old woman.” Still weakened by Long Covid, she later approached participants in lateral thinker demos, confronting the corona deniers with their own experience of the disease. Corona measures restricted their freedom, the demonstrators complained.
Vaccination opponents prepared to use violence with torches
But the FDP politician from the small town of Barth in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania understands this term to mean something else. She explains why she was still looking for a conversation: “I found it very questionable how the debate is being conducted by people who criticize measures and mean criticism of democracy in the subtext.”
In the meantime, violent anti-vaccination campaigners are holding torches in front of the private houses of politicians. Should one really still talk to such people? Preisler sees only one sensible answer here, “namely a very clear constitutional edge. Stop, this far and no further. “
The demonstrators in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, they refer to the Monday demonstrations at the end of the GDR period in their so-called walks in high-incidence corona areas. Karoline Preisler herself took part as a young adult to fight for human rights and liberation from dictatorship. “We wanted to be like among equals. The people who are demonstrating now claim democratic freedoms and basic rights exclusively for themselves, deny them to others, are essentially their own little dictators. “
Experienced bondage
With its concept of freedom, Preisler’s party repeatedly exposed itself to serious controversies during the Corona period: Dozens of FDP members of the Bundestag have just spoken out in a group proposal against a general vaccination requirement – which a clear majority of Germans support. Regardless of the outcome of the debate, Preisler believes that it will “enrich us all”: unlike the torch-lit walks, it will be “guided within the guard rails of the Basic Law”.
But that also means: If a parliamentary majority decides that vaccination is mandatory, this must be accepted despite all objections. “Democracy is also the prevention of stubbornness,” says Preisler, thinking back to the lack of freedom she experienced in the GDR. After the fall of the Wall, like almost all GDR citizens, she was left with nothing, but freely accessible education made her a happy, self-determined person, “because a society said I was waiting for you and gave me every help . “
Self-determination – for liberals something like the twin sister of freedom. That your party fought together with the Greens for a self-determined gender allocation, we only touch on the edge. Using the example of people in need of intensive care, Preisler explains to me why they reject outside regulation in the healthcare system – even if this would save costs. A caregiver who looks after several people in need of care in the home, wouldn’t that be more efficient? “Yes,” replies Preisler, “where is the self-determination of people who depend on ventilation but are members of a family, loved, in their home environment?”