Lambrecht rejects the removal of the controversial Feldjäger motto

The assessment of the anti-Semitism commissioner of the federal government was clear. In a letter to Federal Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) at the end of May, Felix Klein wrote: “In my opinion, it is highly problematic that part of the German armed forces has a motto that the National Socialists used as a death formula. The inscription is deeply hurtful and hard to bear for the victims of the Shoah and their families.”

"Suum cuique" is the motto on the association badge and the beret caps of the Feldjägertruppe, the military police of the Bundeswehr, in English: "To each his own". As a cynical humiliation of the camp inmates, the slogan was emblazoned as a lettering above the entrance gate of the Buchenwald concentration camp - in derision of the prisoners it was attached in such a way that it was legible from the inside. Anti-Semitism Commissioner Klein therefore wished that the lettering "suum cuique" be removed from the military police insignia.

The defense minister then checked the motto together with the troops – and has now made her decision. "Federal Minister Lambrecht sees no reason to have this value-based identity symbol removed from the military service insignia of the military police," said a spokesman when asked by WELT.

The ministry points out that “suum cuique” is a legal principle handed down from antiquity, “to grant everyone what is due to them”. In this sense of justice, the motto emphasizes the personal merit of the awardee ("To each according to his merit").

Elector Frederick III. von Brandenburg, the later Prussian King Frederick I, donated the Black Eagle Order in 1701, which later became the highest order of the Prussian crown. "Suum cuique" was embedded in an eight-pointed star of the Order.

According to the Ministry of Defense, the star of the order was donated with the previously mentioned "meritocratic meaning". Later, the Prussian Army Guard Corps used the star as a badge. Shortly after it was set up in 1955, the Feldjäger of the Bundeswehr also chose this Prussian guard star with the Latin phrase as their emblem.

"The Feldjäger troop ties directly to the honorable Prussian tradition," said the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense. The soldiers of the military police of the Wehrmacht did not use the medal star, but wore a metal plaque with the inscription "feldgendarmerie" or "feldjäger corps" around their neck.

"The choice of the star with the inscription 'suum cuique' for the Bundeswehr military police means a deliberate break with the military police in the 'Third Reich' and thus with National Socialism," the ministry continued. For the Feldjäger of the Bundeswehr, their badge is an "important and value-based identification symbol in the sense of the free-democratic basic order". The meaning is expressly in line with the guidelines on understanding and maintaining tradition in the Bundeswehr.

A traditional decree passed in 2018 states that the Bundeswehr is aware of the contradictory legacy of German military history “with its highs, but also its abysses”. In the case of "publicity-effective websites", the Bundeswehr wants to add "a sensitization and contextualisation of the motto", the ministry said.

The anti-Semitism commissioner Klein wanted to visit the military police this Monday together with the military commissioner of the German Bundestag, Eva Högl (SPD), at their headquarters in Hanover. "I will once again discuss my approach with regard to the motto 'suum cuique' and the decision that has now been made by the Federal Minister of Defense," said Klein WELT.

"I welcome the fact that the motto on the public website of the Feldjäger will be contextualized in the future and that they will be sensitized during training courses with regard to the use of the German translation of the motto by the National Socialists in the future, even if I would have liked an even more far-reaching decision."

Klein's demand was supported in June by the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the International Auschwitz Committee, the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation and the left-wing faction in the Bundestag. The phrase was not invented by the National Socialists, but was "indelibly linked to the National Socialist mass murder," said Central Council President Josef Schuster at the time. The FDP was skeptical at the time, while the Union and AfD rejected it.

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