A state association
As can be seen from the press, District administrators, administrative directors and mayors are planning to set up a support association for the national park on February 17th, 2015 with the head of the national park administration, Dirk Treichel, and the blessing of the Brandenburg agriculture minister. It is obviously intended to raise funds that — for good reasons — are actually not accessible to state administrations. The state disguises itself as a private association in order to get additional money. Such a thing could be called a “state association”. According to the federal German association law, associations are actually an expression of civic engagement and not a playground for civil servants who — ideally still during their paid service — pretend they were a private association. At the time, the fathers of the German Civil Code (BGB) imagined it to be completely different.
The work of the long-disbanded association “Interest group for the protection of the Lower Oder Valley”, an association of the opponents of the National Park, to which also recent and fossil “public servants” had come together at the time, is still to be remembered. It is therefore a step forward that an association for and no longer against the national park is being founded by the public sector.
But in Brandenburg, too, there has been freedom of association for 25 years, and we will be watching the new “Scheinverein” from administrative manager Treichel with interest.
Thomas Berg
CEO