'German Leitkultur' recently became a matter of vivid public debate again. It seem's to be an evergreen of German public and political debate, flourishing each time more and more. Since it first evocation in the 1990s, many opinions have been prepetually aired on the pros and cons of that concept.

In our online journal Entangled Religions, the renowned sociologist Hans-Georg Soeffner discusses the emergence of pluralism in an article last year. He directly refers to 'Leitkultur' in his line of argument and points out how the call for it may be opposed to legal equality:

'Repeated attempts in Germany by a section of the political elite and those intellectuals who sympathise with them to find a "German Leitkultur" (defining culture) are based on a similar reflex. This reflex replaces the defence of legal equality, within the framework of a social contract as defined in a constitution, with the desire for a visibly shared ethos: instead of a culture defined by law there is one defined by attitude.'