The 75th anniversary of our constitution is upon us. - Grandmother composed the fundamental law.
Reminiscing about his grandmother, Axel Selbert (72) proudly states, "It wasn't until a teacher invited her to speak at school about her work in the Parliamentary Council that I fully understood her significance."
On September 1, 1948, 65 people, including 4 women, convened in Bonn to establish the Parliamentary Council. Approximately 8 months after their formation, they endorsed the text of their legislation, one of which was Elisabeth Selbert with a vote of 53 in favor. At the time, Selbert was a lawyer and had been involved in drafting the constitution of Hesse when she got selected for the Council.
However, it's her contributions that made a significant difference. If not for her, our Basic Law, especially in its original form, would likely have been less fair and more biased towards men. Selbert advocated for the following statement: "Men and women have equal rights." It's undoubtedly been the case since 1949 in Article 3.
At first, the Council was dominated by men and intended to endorse a milder wording from the Weimar Constitution: "Men and women have the same civil rights and obligations." However, their selection was more radical, according to Axel Selbert, grandson of the groundbreaking woman.
Elisabeth once mentioned, "My proudest moment was when women's equal rights were acknowledged."
In addition to fighting for female equality, she also championed an awful right taken for granted today: "the equality of illegitimate children with children of married parents in Article 6." As Axel informs, this notion has been an undeniable reality since his grandmother's crucial efforts in 1949.
In 1956, Selbert received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for this extraordinary feat. In 2013, ARD produced a movie about her life, starring Iris Berben.
Axel Selbert, who shares his grandmother's legal profession and learned it at her law office in Kassel (Hesse), reveals, "I aspired to be a lawyer from the age of five, learning and practicing law from my grandmother." Today, he works at the desk where his grandmother wrote the Basic Law in 1949, inherited from a former high-ranking Wehrmacht officer who's desk was seized by the US military.
In light of the seven and a half decades that have passed, Axel Selbert believes the Basic Law, comprised of fundamental rights in Articles 1 to 17, is just as relevant and fundamental to today's political landscape as it was when it was first drafted in 1949. Though the current debates may involve terms like "raison d'état" or "culture of the state," these arguments are still shaped by fundamental rights.
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Source: symclub.org
