The Ministry of Defense is currently working on a regulation on ethical education in the Bundeswehr. Churches and military officials are alarmed. You don’t want supervisors to take over the training of your conscience in the future.
The term “Innereführung” is the code for what makes the German military so special. When the Bundeswehr was founded, it defined a new understanding of the soldier as a lesson from the armed forces’ complicity in the crimes of National Socialism – as a “citizen in uniform” who is committed to the Basic Law and his conscience.
“Inner leadership ensures that the Bundeswehr remains in the middle of society,” says the relevant service regulation. To ensure this, part of the curriculum for German soldiers is ethical education, as a kind of training in conscience.
“This is what the churches are responsible for”
A new regulation is planned for this lesson, which will meet with resistance from the churches and the Bundestag’s defense commissioners. Basically, the question is who will be responsible for questions of conscience in the future: the military itself or churches and other civil institutions.
“At the moment, under the umbrella of ‘Inner Leadership’, we have political and historical education and, for 65 years, we have been teaching life science lessons that are given by military chaplains,” explains Protestant military bishop Bernhard Felmberg.
In addition to political and historical education, ethical education should now be placed as a third pillar. Felmberg rejects the reform, above all because, according to him, supervisors should give this ethical instruction in the future.
“A superior cannot act like a pastor”
“The superior who gives orders would then teach at the same time how such orders can be rejected on an ethical basis,” says the theologian. He speaks of a “conflict of goals” and fears that the teaching will lose its openness.
“Due to his role, a superior can never develop the freedom of freedom like a pastor who is outside the chain of command,” says Felmberg. The Catholic military bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck sees it similarly. Many superiors taught the subjects “Political Education”, “Intercultural Education” and “Inner Leadership” with a high level of competence.
Ethical education differs from it, however, because it often touches on very personal issues. “Here it is wise to make appropriate distinctions between the complexity of the requirements and to have these lessons given by the military chaplains,” he says.
Advertising agent underlines the criticism
The defense commissioner Eva Högl (SPD) also shares the criticism of the churches. With a view to the expansion of military pastoral care, it is not clear why the Ministry of Defense does not use pastors for this task.
What is meant are the imminent start for Jewish military pastoral care and considerations to also involve Muslim and Orthodox clergy. Högl also emphasizes the importance of independent staff who enable a “free and trusting exchange of ideas”.
The Ministry of Defense weighs down the criticism. In principle, no change is planned, said a spokesman for the epd. Rather, the purpose and goals of ethical education should be presented and summarized in a set of rules for the first time.
In addition, the life science lessons, which are usually given by military chaplains, should remain unchanged, “that is, it remains with the previous implementation”. The churches are concerned, however, that the character of teaching will change as a result of the new regulation.
New rules come into effect this year
According to the ministry, the new regulation will be issued this year. The final formulations are still being negotiated behind the scenes, also with the churches, who see their pastors as an important element in the troops.
“When the Bundeswehr was founded in 1956, following the experience of the Nazi dictatorship, a civil factor was consciously provided for in the Bundeswehr,” says Military Bishop Felmberg. That is why Protestant and Catholic pastors were involved from the start not only as pastors, but also as educational staff.
“A new ethics lesson, given by supervisors, undermines this historical insight.”
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