The Making of a ‘58er 41
capitalist basis or a socialist democracy. Drafted by the Parliamentary
Council in 1948, the Basic Law’s Article 20, Section 1 refers to a
“democratic and social federal state” (demokratischer und sozialer
Bundesstaat). Article 28, Section 1 of the Basic Law begins: “The
constitutional order in the states (Länder) must correspond to the
principles of republican, democratic and social government based
on the rule of law (sozialer Rechtsstaat) within the meaning of the
Basic Law.”^60 Article 79 dictated that no future change to the consti-
tution could overturn Article 20. Because of their formidable claims
to legitimacy, the Sozialstaat clauses generated great controversy.
Wilhelm Grewe, a prominent legal advisor to Adenauer, spoke
for the majority of conservatives when he mocked the idea of a
“social state” as a “substance-less blanket-concept.”^61 Schmitt pupil
Ernst-Rudolf Huber wrote that the constitutional provisions con-
tained only the vaguest notion that economic freedom be sub-
jected to the principle of social justice, that is, the guaranteeing of
an existence worthy of human life; there were no implications for
a particular form of social or economic organization.^62 Forsthoff
shared this view, adding that “no word has a more ambiguously
plural meaning or is easier to misuse.... The danger of a bound-
less expansion of ‘the social’ according to political wishes is already
appa rent.”^63 Schmitt similarly complained that political parties in
postwar Western Europe had merely “decorated” their names with
the adjective “social.” Schmitt’s hostility to social democracy was
captured in his assertion that “... the word Sozial remains a foreign
word in German.”^64 He claimed that the word “social” had always
had the polemical connotation of an insurgent society besieging the
state. For a statist, this was problematic. In 1953, Schmitt wrote of
(^60) Das Bonner Grundgesetz [1949]. Translations taken from Kommers,
Constitutional Jurisprudence, App. A: “Provisions of the Basic Law,” 508–9.
(^61) Cited in Hans Zacher,“Das Sozialstaatsziel,” in Handbuch des Staatsrechts
der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, eds. Josef Isensee and Paul Kirchhof, Bd. I
(Heidelberg: 1987), 1087.
(^62) E. R. Huber, Wirtschaftsverwaltungsrecht, 2 Aufl., Bd. I (Tübingen: Mohr,
1953 ), 25.
(^63) Ernst Forsthoff, “Verfassungsprobleme des Sozialstaats,” [1954], in idem,
Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Sozialstaatlichkeit: Aufsätze und Essays (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 163.
(^64) Schmitt, “Nehmen, Teilen, Weiden: ein Versuch der Grundfrage jeder
Sozial- und Wirtschaftsordnung vom Nomos her richtig zu stellen,” [1953],
in Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Sozialstaatlichkeit: Aufsätze und Essays, ed. Ernst
Forsthoff (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 104.