Stephan J. Kramer

Stephan J. Kramer (2019)

Stephan Joachim Kramer (* 1968 in Siegen ) is a German political official . From 2004 to January 2014 he was General Secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and head of the Berlin office of the European Jewish Congress . Since December 1, 2015 he has been President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Thuringia .

Life

Origin, education and political career

Kramer's father and grandfather came from Altenburg in Thuringia. He himself grew up in the Siegerland . As a student he joined the Junge Union and later the CDU . He did his military service in the German Navy , where he became a first lieutenant at sea .

He then began studying law , first at the Philipps University in Marburg , then at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main , the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Bonn and finally back in Marburg, but did not graduate. At the beginning of the 1990s he worked as an office manager for the CDU Bundestag MPs Hans Stercken and Friedhelm Ost , later he switched to FDP MP Norbert Eimer until he left the Bundestag in 1994 and was a member of the FDP himself during this time.

He has been a member of the SPD since 2010 .

During his time as general secretary of the Central Council of Jews, Kramer began studying social pedagogy at the Erfurt University of Applied Sciences , where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in 2011 and a master's degree in 2015 . The topic of his thesis was the immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel.

After an information exercise in 2009 and a corresponding application to the Bundeswehr , Kramer was appointed frigate captain of the reserve .

General Secretary of the Central Council of Jews

From 1995 Kramer worked for the Jewish Claims Conference , where he was initially assistant to the European director. Since 1998 he has been working for the Central Council of Jews in Germany, initially as a personal advisor to Ignatz Bubis , then as managing director. It was only at this time that Kramer himself converted to Judaism. In April 2004 he was appointed Secretary General. Before the 2007 municipal parliament elections, Kramer joined the Berlin Jewish community on the ATID (Hebrew: future) electoral list founded by community member Lala Süsskind . Kramer is deputy chairman of the board of trustees of AMCHA Germany .

Kramer is also a member of the German Council on Foreign Relations , as well as the "Board of Governors" of the World Jewish Congress and a regular guest in the 12th Advisory Council on questions of internal leadership of the Bundeswehr at the Ministry of Defense .

After the assassination of Marwa El-Sherbini in 2009, Kramer complained that in his opinion the socio-political dimension of this act was neglected.

Thilo Sarrazin's comments on immigrants in Berlin in 2009 criticized Kramer with the words "I have the impression that Sarrazin is doing Göring , Goebbels and Hitler a great honor with his ideas ." Kramer's statement called out because it was also seen as a relativization of the National Socialist crimes, sharp contradiction. Kramer regretted his comparison in a row, but stuck with his assessment that Sarrazin's statements were racist . Once again, Kramer criticized Sarrazin for his book Germany abolishes itself, which was published at the end of August 2010, and suggested that he join the right-wing extremist NPD .

In May 2010, Kramer gave an interview to Focus magazine in which he accused the German media of hidden and open anti-Semitism . The criticism was rejected by the editors-in-chief of the Tagesspiegel and the Junge Welt .

On Yom Kippur 2012, Kramer, who was on his way to the synagogue in Berlin with his children, was recognized and threatened by a passer-by as a Jew because of his Machsor .

In October 2012, in the debate about religiously motivated circumcision , Kramer reaffirmed the official position of the Central Council Presidium, according to which the ritual known as Brit Mila in the Jewish religious community is a religiously constitutive, physically visible seal of the covenant with God and its ritual execution on the eighth day after the Birth for a male Jew was not an option, but expressed doubts about some of the arguments put forward in support of this position and complained that the aggressive and intolerant debate on circumcision made it difficult to reconsider one's own traditions.

On January 31, 2014, Kramer resigned due to differences in content within the Central Council Presidium. B. with regard to the NPD prohibition procedure from the office of the Secretary General. Afterwards he became more involved in the Jewish community in Berlin and supported the approach to develop it into a regional association. He then joined the German-Israeli Society from 2014 to 2015 as a member of the executive committee and treasurer.

He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation .

President of the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution

On November 19, 2015, Interior Minister Holger Poppenhäger ( SPD ) introduced Kramer as the new President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Thuringia . The Thuringian Constitutional Protection Act stipulates that the president of the authority should be qualified to hold judicial office , which is not the case with Kramer. The Thuringian Ministry of the Interior and Local Affairs replied to doubts about the qualification that the “should” formulation of the law (“The office of president should only be assigned to a person who is qualified to be a judge”) leaves a limited margin of discretion .

The office of president had previously been vacant since July 2012, as the previous owner, Thomas Sippel, resigned after the official scandal surrounding the right-wing extremist terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) became known. In the 1990s in particular, the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution managed a large number of informants in key positions in the right-wing extremist scene and provided them with generous financial and logistical support. As a result, the scene was strengthened and radicalized under the eyes of the authorities, without them intervening or exercising sufficient control. In addition, three right-wing extremists surrounded by informants, the later NSU terrorists Uwe Mundlos , Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe , went underground in 1998 without the constitutional security service locating them despite intensive surveillance. The taz then spoke of Kramer's “surprising” vocation as the greatest possible break with the tradition of the authorities and called Kramer a “maximum reformer”. In March 2016, Kramer announced that his authority would reintroduce the use of informants as a last resort because essential information could not be obtained otherwise. He was criticized for this by representatives of the red-red-green government factions in the state parliament, because the Ramelow government had decided to suspend the leadership of V-persons after the failure of the V-Person character in the NSU complex. After this decision, the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution was considered isolated among the other domestic intelligence services of the federal states and the federal government.

The AFD Thuringia strained in 2019 due to the publicly announced by the Thuringian Agency for State Protection classification of the Party as a test case, a Organstreit proceedings before the Thuringian Constitutional Court on. The complaint also cited the behavior of Kramer, who was responsible for the classification as president and who also expressed criticism in an interview about the later top candidate of the AfD Thuringia, Björn Höcke , in the near future of a state party conference of the AfD . Shortly before the hearing before the Constitutional Court, the press was leaked an email from the head of the department for right-wing extremism at the time, in which he stated that when the AfD was classified as a test case, the department responsible for right-wing extremism had been bypassed on Kramer's express instructions . The hearing took place on September 11, 2019, and the court's decision was announced in November of the same year. The application was rejected for formal reasons, as organ dispute proceedings can only be directed against constitutional bodies or equivalent institutions, which, according to the court, does not include the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The content of the AfD's lawsuit was not examined.

Publications

• Risk the future. 60 years of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. With a greeting from Richard von Weizsäcker . Hentrich and Hentrich, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-942271-10-3 .
• With Johannes Heil (Ed.): Circumcision: the sign of the covenant in criticism. On the debate about the Cologne judgment. Metropol, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86331-098-1 .

Web links

• Appointments of the Thuringian constitution protection president. In: www.thueringen.de/th3/verfassungsschutz. the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution, accessed on April 15, 2018 . 

Footnotes

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Stefan Schirmer: Agent Provocateur. Zeit Online, November 26, 2015, accessed November 29, 2015 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Simone Rothe, Elmar Otto: career changer becomes head of the protection of the constitution: why Stephan Kramer? Thüringische Landeszeitung, November 20, 2015, accessed on November 25, 2015 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Martin Debes: The Kramer Experiment. Ostthüringer Zeitung, January 11, 2016, p. 3.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Volkhard Paczulla: New Head of the Protection of the Constitution Stephan Kramer: Not suitable for top office in Thuringia? Thüringer Allgemeine, November 22, 2015, accessed on November 25, 2015 . 
5. ↑ Dirk Reinhardt: Mediator between two worlds: politicians in the Bundeswehr. In: mdr.de. Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk , May 6, 2018, accessed on May 24, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Central Council of Jews - "Sarrazin pays Hitler great honor" . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 9, 2009
7. ↑ Michael Wolffsohn : Position: Not a mega-criminal . In: Der Tagesspiegel . October 11, 2009
8. ^ Stephan J. Kramer: Guest contribution: Racism remains racism . In: Der Tagesspiegel . October 13, 2009
9. ^ After controversial statements: "Sarrazin should join the NPD" . In: Handelsblatt . August 25, 2010
10. ↑ Jan-Philipp Hein: Media: "Better directly in the face than around the back" . In: Focus . No. 20, May 17, 2010
11. ^ Marc Felix Serrao: Central Council of Jews: Accusation - Anti-Semitic Trend? In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 20, 2010
12. ^ Crime: Member of the Central Council of Jews in Berlin threatened . In: Focus . September 27, 2012
13. ↑ Mariam Lau : Rituals: “The Jewish community must talk about circumcision” . In: The time . October 12, 2012 (interview)
14. ↑ Secretary General Stephan Kramer leaves . In: Der Tagesspiegel . January 16, 2014
15. ↑ Christine Richter , Brigitte Schmiemann: Stephan J. Kramer: "The Jewish community must change" . In: Berliner Morgenpost . April 5, 2014 (interview)
16. ↑ https://www.amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de/wir-ueber-uns/gremien/
17. ↑ Protection of the Constitution with a new "spirit". Thuringian Ministry of the Interior and Municipal Affairs, accessed on November 20, 2015 . 
18. ↑ Grade B 4
19. ↑ Konrad Litschko, Sabine am Orde: The maximum reformer. In: Die Tageszeitung , November 17, 2015.
20. ↑ Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution wants to use V-men again. In: Zeit Online , March 7, 2016.
21. ^ Controversy over AfD in the Thuringian constitutional protection: Massive allegations against Kramer. In: Thüringer Allgemeine , September 11, 2019.
22. ↑ Constitutional Court negotiates AfD lawsuit against the head of the protection of the constitution. In: mdr.de , September 11, 2019.
23. ↑ Constitutional Court AFD as a test case? Judgment in Thuringia. In: mdr.de , November 20, 2019.