Around 600 celebrities from politics, churches and trade unions have signed an appeal against the planned special fund for the Bundeswehr in the amount of 100 billion euros.
The appeal against what the authors call “the federal government’s upgrade plans” to enable the Bundeswehr to once again fulfill its military mandate was presented on Tuesday morning in Berlin.
The first signatories "agree that such a fundamental change of course, which is so momentous in terms of foreign and domestic policy, requires and should presuppose a broad social debate," the letter says.
The initiative wants to contribute to this debate.
According to the authors, the list of signatories reflects “the whole range of society”;
in fact, however, the majority are politicians from the "Left", trade unionists and Greens politicians who are assigned to the left spectrum.
The initiators are the sociologist Klaus Dörre from the University of Vienna, the SPD politicians Andrea Ypsilanti and Jan Dieren, Ingar Solty from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the left-wing politician Julia Schramm, who is a member of the Federal Executive Committee of the Left Party.
Among the first to sign are the trade unionist Annelie Buntenbach, the actresses Katja Riemann and Corinna Harfouch, the Green politician Hans-Christian Ströbele, the deputy GEW chairman Andreas Keller, the theologian Margot Käßmann, the musician Bela B. and the singer Sebastian Krumbiegel.
"I support the appeal because peacekeeping cannot be forced through armament," said Andrea Ypsilanti.
In addition, the planned special fund “doesn’t fall out of the blue”.
“It has to be financed and will certainly block the way to a socio-ecological-cultural transformation.
The resulting consequences must be put on the table and debated," said the Hessian SPD politician.