Chicago Journal of International Law Volume 1 Number 2 Article 20 9-1-2000 The Rechtsstaat as the Path Toward Unity in Liberty Rainer Funke Follow this and additional works at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cjil Recommended Citation Funke, Rainer (2000) "The Rechtsstaat as the Path Toward Unity in Liberty," Chicago Journal of International Law: Vol. 1: No. 2, Article 20. Available at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cjil/vol1/iss2/20 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Chicago Unbound. It has been accepted for inclusion in Chicago Journal of International Law by an authorized editor of Chicago Unbound. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. PERSPECTIVES The Recbtsstaat as the Path Toward Unity in Liberty Rainer Funke* In the beginning of the third millenium, Berlin, like so many times in its history, is sparkling with contrasts. Historical allusions and, at the same time, contradictions abound, especially in the city's center. Today's offices and conference rooms of the Freie Demokratische Partei ("F.D.P.") liberal-libertarian members of Parliament and its faction in the Bundestag, for example, are located in the former so-called Ministry of Justice of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik ("GDR"), in a building which, until 1945, was an annex to the German Reich's Ministry of the Interior. As late as the summer of 1989, few people would have envisioned democratically elected representatives of a reunified Germany going about their legislative tasks in the building complex at Dorotheenstrasse 93. Now it has become the site from which those members of Parliament continue to strive for democracy and the Recbtsstaat (rule of law) to make their contribution to reunification.