resignation

This article explains resignation in the sense of resignation; for other meanings see resignation (disambiguation) .

As a resignation or resignation depositing one is office referred before the deadline. There are resignations from temporary employment or appointments in sports (coach), in business (manager) or in politics (minister, head of government, party chairman).

Public awareness of resignations

Upon resignation, the incumbent appears as an agent; Sometimes the resignation is motivated or forced by external reasons or forces.

Resignations can be received as a temporary social purification. Occasionally, on the occasion of resignations, theses are uttered about the understanding of office of politicians, about norms or about values ​​of a society or a part of society (e.g. politics at the federal level).

In 2007 the historian Michael Philipp (* 1962) published a book about political resignations in Germany since 1950. According to Philipp, the occasions for political resignations can be divided into normal cases of democracy and incidents such as scandalization . Philipp develops a typology of reasons for resignation and deals with eight of them, including personal misconduct, political misconduct, taking on “political responsibility” (following an unwritten rule ) and protest.

Resignations (examples)

• Spiro Agnew , US Vice President under Richard Nixon, resigned on October 10, 1973 after investigations into corruption in office began. It was the first resignation of a US Vice President since 1832 ( John C. Calhoun ).
• Richard Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal back after the US Congress an impeachment initiated.
• Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt resigned in the course of the Guillaume affair in early May 1974. He wrote to the Federal President that he was taking political responsibility for negligence in connection with the Guillaume agent affair .
• Samuel Schmid , a Swiss politician, resigned from the Federal Council at the end of 2008 after SVP politicians had "sidelined" him within the party.
• Horst Köhler resigned on May 31, 2010 . It was the first time that a German Federal President resigned with immediate effect (i.e. with the transfer of official duties to the Federal Council President ). Shortly before, Köhler had spoken in an interview about the Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan. Thereafter, it was assumed that he had advocated a deployment of the Bundeswehr to safeguard economic interests that was not covered by the Basic Law (or contrary to the Basic Law ) . When he resigned, Köhler vigorously rejected this and complained that it lacked the necessary respect for the highest state office.
• Christian Wulff resigned from the office of Federal President on February 17, 2012 .

The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.

The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. , the first of a Pope since 1415, was also called resignation in public and in the media .

Dismissal instead of resignation

In May 2012, Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Norbert Röttgen , then Environment Minister in her cabinet , to resign. When Röttgen refused, she dismissed him . This was only the second dismissal of a federal minister in the history of the Federal Republic.

literature

• Pascal Beucker , Frank Überall : End of the line resignation. Why do German politicians pack up. Econ Verlag, Berlin 2006; updated new edition Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 2011.
• Bodo Hombach (Ed.): Resignations: About the art of leaving an office. Tectum, Marburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-8288-3846-8 .
• Michael Philipp: “Personally, I have nothing to reproach myself with.” Political resignations in Germany from 1950 until today . Süddeutsche Zeitung Edition, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-86615-485-8 .

Web links

Wiktionary: Demission  - Explanation of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Typology of the resignations of politicians Photo gallery sueddeutsche.de November 15, 2007
• Robert Leicht : When "must" a minister resign? Never! , in: Die Zeit , No. 06/2002 p. 4

Footnotes

1. ↑ Michael Philipp: "Personally, I have nothing to reproach myself with." Political resignations in Germany from 1950 to today , Chapters 8, 9, 6 and 5.
2. ↑ Sylvia Englert : Cowboys, God and Coca-Cola: the history of the USA . Campus Verlag 2005, p. 175
3. ^ Photo of the letter from Michael Philipp (2007), p. 17
4. ↑ zeit.de May 31, 2010: Federal President Köhler resigns
5. ^ Message at www.tagesschau.de ( Memento from May 20, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ "You cannot shake off a dismissal" . The first case was the dismissal of Defense Minister Scharping by Gerhard Schröder in 2002, see Rudolf Scharping # Discharge