Parity
Become a member

Papers

On the order markets run on.

Markets don't exist in a vacuum. In our Papers, members write about philosophy, politics, law and economics — the ideas and institutions free markets and free societies rest on.

Paper No. 01 · Essay · October 2026

Eine kleine Geschichte des Liberalismus

Eine totgesiegte Ideologie?

Liberalism isn't finished — it's being tested. A walk through two and a half centuries of the history of freedom, and a case for no longer taking its preconditions for granted.

Read the paper (PDF) In brief
Author
Valentin Nau
Published
8 October 2026
Reading time
About 13 minutes
Language
German

This paper is currently available in German only.

In brief

What the paper argues

01

Lived everywhere, defended nowhere

A free press, independent courts, the right to live differently: the idea has won so completely that hardly anyone notices it needs defending.

02

Freedom for its enemies?

Popper's paradox of tolerance and the lesson of Weimar: Germany's Basic Law limits freedom to protect it, and every such limit still has to justify itself.

03

Too successful for its own party

What the FDP demanded in its 1971 Freiburg Theses, almost every party now stands for. The idea's success cost the party its profile.

The crisis is not a refutation but a test. Liberalism is a stance, not a party label.

„Der freiheitliche, säkularisierte Staat lebt von Voraussetzungen, die er selbst nicht garantieren kann.“

“The free, secularised state lives on preconditions it cannot itself guarantee.”

Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, 1964 · quoted in the paper

Inside the paper

From the Bastille to today

  1. 1789Freedom becomes lawThe Enlightenment, the Bastille and the Declaration of the Rights of Man
  2. 1832 – 1933The German pathHambach Festival, the Frankfurt Parliament, Weimar and its end
  3. 1937 – 2017Militant democracyThe paradox of tolerance, party bans and their limits
  4. 1948 – todayLiberalism in the Federal RepublicFrom the Freiburg Theses to the FDP's loss of profile
  5. TodayThe framework and its criticsBöckenförde, Deneen, Mill — and the conclusion

Archive

All papers

Write for Parity

The next paper could be yours.

Papers are written by our members. If you want to write for the series, apply to join Parity as a Papers Author.

Become a member