After an online variant last year, the Frankfurt FDP members came together again in the same way as the traditional Epiphany meeting.

Even the digital party FDP has not yet found a convincing download solution for the warm potato soup with sausages, which, alongside spontaneous personal conversations, is one of the advantages of an analogue get-together.

Party chairman Thorsten Lieb got those present in the mood for a special year 2023 with two election campaigns and the Paulskirche anniversary.

He is not giving up efforts to hold a special session of the Bundestag in the Paulskirche.

Bernhard Biener

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung

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The meeting was also the start of the election campaign for the FDP mayoral candidate Yanki Pürsün.

In view of the 20 applicants, he made the calculation with a wink: "Statistically, everyone gets five percent."

In the election campaign, he will not simply demand more money.

The budget is approaching five billion euros.

“There is enough money there, what you need you have to save elsewhere.”

Isabel Schnitzler, who, like Pürsün, is a candidate for the state parliament, registered the FDP's claim to government in Hesse.

She addressed the incidents on New Year's Eve and called many statements "creepy." You have to name the problems, "otherwise others will do it." Party leader Lieb had already emphasized that Justitia was blindfolded.

"There is no rule of law discount, no matter what origin or skin color someone is."

Guest speaker Ulrike Ackermann, Director of the John Stuart Mill Institute in Bad Homburg, addressed the question of what is allowed to be said and what is better avoided for fear of political incorrectness.

The sociologist and political scientist sees democracy in danger if the legitimate concern of minorities to emancipate themselves and fight discrimination becomes the general accusation of "structural racism".

Identity is then created by belonging to a group of victims who are opposed to the white, male majority of society as the perpetrators.

It no longer matters what the individual does.

This would call into question the western achievements of the Enlightenment and the Revolution of 1848, which would have led from corporate society to the free individual.