Online reports – Politics – “Liberal values ​​can only be preserved if you live them”

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“Gang of a mountaineer”: Author Rhinow (right), moderator Knechtli*

Former President of the Council of States of Basel-Landschaft and law professor Rene Rhinow presents his autobiography

From Peter Knechtli

EHe doesn't like labels, babble or flattery – and yet: René Rhinow, who grew up in Basel and Münchenstein, lived for many years in Seltisberg and now lives in Liestal (and in Ticino), was actually the first eco-liberal in the Basel region, perhaps together with Christoph Eymann, the long-standing Basel LDP government and National Councillor. Eco-liberalism was already part of his election campaign for the Council of States in 1987. This was at a time when the warning term “sustainability” was slowly beginning to make its way into public consciousness.

DHe, a socially liberal Free Democrat, was ahead of many of his party colleagues in thinking. He believes that his party is now trying to quickly get on the climate party curve, even if the FDP's course of the last two decades is probably no longer as close to the times when the Free Democrats in Basel-Landschaft were among the driving forces of reform.

JNow that he has taken some time off from his active time as a politician and legal scholar, he is presenting an autobiography (he prefers to call it a “biography”). The 330-page work was not written out of his own need. Rather, he was encouraged to do so – “I needed a nudge” – by three people, including the head of the Reinhardt publishing house.

TTypical of Rhinow: Don't overdo it! “Everything in moderation” is the title of the “Thoughts and stories from the life of a border crosser”. It is not the title of someone driven by a mission, but rather it is his credo, which has grown over 76 years of life.

“The measure, the moderate, the moderating
is part of humanity.”

GAt the end of his notes, he takes up the “connection between mass and humanity” again: “At the beginning of my first election campaign for the Council of States, in a speech in August, I compared politics to the gait of a mountain climber who has a goal in mind, the gait.” but adapts to the terrain and his constitution, taking small steps if necessary. and makes a stop to reach his goal. I became increasingly aware that measure, moderation, and moderation are part of humanity, and that everything extreme and absolute seems fatal.

ARhinow also managed his own career carefully and in a controlled manner. In the more than four decades in which I have observed his life as head of the legal department of the Basel-Landschaft government, later as president of the administrative court, professor of constitutional and administrative law, lateral entry member of the Council of States and president of the Council of States, I cannot remember a single scene in which he really lost his temper. In his book, on the other hand, a side of him becomes apparent that rarely comes to the fore in everyday encounters.

So reports on negotiations in his capacity as President of the Swiss Red Cross with Guido A. Zäch, the then chief physician of the Nottwil Paraplegic Centre. “I met him for the first and last time at a meeting. He certainly had great merits in the field of paraplegics, but seemed to have the airs of a prima donna. He approached me arrogantly and dismissed me.” But Zäch had “got the wrong person in me”. “I broke off the discussion and the business was done.”

PRhinow faced opposition within the party in November 1984 in the referendum on the new Baselbieter cantonal constitution he had drafted. The then trade director Hans Rudolf Gysin, with whom he and others had previously founded the Baselbieter youth parliament, opposed the set of laws because of the “less protection of the property guarantee”. He was then “the first to invoke the new constitution – just to promote property ownership”.

“Rhinow has committed itself wholeheartedly
committed to liberalism.”

DThe book begins with a chronology of Rhinow's school and training years, moves on to his legal and finally political career, which reached its peak with his presidency of the Council of States in 1998/1999, and examines in detail his humanitarian commitments as president of the Swiss Red Cross, the Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Alzheimer's Association of both Basel, as well as his legal publications.

DThese activities also took the general staff officer out into the world, occasionally even into the world of the beautiful and famous. But they did not always end in success and lasting friendships – like his work on the Volker Committee, which had to administer unclaimed Jewish assets from the Second World War.

SSince his early youth, the honorary citizen of Seltisberg has devoted himself wholeheartedly to liberalism, and he has devoted a great deal of space to its theses. Contrary to a widespread view, “political liberalism is not per se hostile to the state,” he writes. Rather, it is “the modern, democratic constitutional state that also protects freedoms and creates the basis for a variety of freedoms.”
Use of freedom”.

AUsing the example of Markus Somm, the former editor-in-chief of the “Basler Zeitung”, Rhinow describes it as “disastrous when liberalism is defined primarily in terms of anti-state attitudes”: For Somm, “liberal thought is reduced to a position against the state, garnished with polemical-populist aversions against an unspecified elite”. Liberals, however, are “often faced with the more complex question of when and where the state is needed to safeguard freedom today and tomorrow and which state is capable of doing so”.

AAt the recent book launch in Basel, the author also warned that it is not enough – as bourgeois parties are fashionably quick to do – to simply attach the liberal label to the party name: “Liberal values ​​can only be preserved if they are also lived.”

RWith the exception of the rather dry legal explanations, hinow's notes are a breeze to read. “Everything in moderation” offers a valuable way of thinking for a society that increasingly seems to be seeking its ideals in excess.

René Rhinow: “Everything in moderation – thoughts and stories from the life of a border crosser”, Reinhardt-Verlag, Basel.

* at the vernissage on 9 May 2019 in the foyer of the UBS in Basel

Learn more about the author

14 May 2019

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