Later Years in Germany
Die Linke has twice nominated Beate Klarsfeld for the Federal Cross of Merit, but the foreign ministers Joschka Fischer and Guido Westerwelle did not approve her. Fischer said she was not worthy of the recognition; Westerwelle offered no justification to deny the award.
In 2012, Die Linke nominated Beate Klarsfeld as its presidential candidate after the other parties agreed on Joachim Gauck as a consensus candidate. He is a Lutheran pastor, civil rights activist and former East German. Die Linke opposes him due to his strong criticism of the former East German communist regime. Many members of Die Linke, especially supporters of Oskar Lafontaine, consider Klarsfeld's Zionism controversial. The newspaper Junge Welt, affiliated with Die Linke, criticised Klarsfeld for being a "warmonger" and "aggressive Zionist apologist." In an article in Die Welt, Henryk Broder wrote that Beate Klarsfeld "is driven primarily by her desire for social recognition", calling her "an activist without a program." The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Der Tagesspiegel joined the criticism of Klarsfeld. The German Jewish author and expert on antisemitism, Günter B. Ginzel, accused Die Linke of using Klarsfeld for their own political aims, in order to avoid coming to terms with the crimes of the former Communist dictatorship in East Germany. According to Die Zeit, Oskar Lafontaine had tried to prevent his party's nomination of Klarsfeld.
In Germany, presidential candidates are usually invited to present themselves to all factions in the Bundestag prior to voting. But, the CDU/CSU, the FDP and the SPD rejected Die Linke's request that Klarsfeld be allowed to meet with their factions.
The CDU secretary-general Hermann Gröhe described Klarsfeld as a "totally unacceptable" candidate due to her past cooperation with the Stasi of the East German communist regime, and argued that her nomination demonstrated the "contempt of the left communists for our democracy and our free society." The CSU secretary-general Alexander Dobrindt described Klarsfeld as a "puppet of the SED." The FDP secretary-general Patrick Döring said that Klarsfeld's nomination was a "slap in the face of all democrats in our country," claiming that she was "an accomplice of the SED regime." On March 18, 2012 Beate Klarsfeld won 126 votes; 991 were cast overwhelmingly in favour of Joachim Gauck.
Read more about this topic: Serge And Beate Klarsfeld
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