Yesterday, there was an anonymous flyer posted on the door of our institute alleging that the president of our university, the Freie Universität Berlin, Dieter Lenzen, had come out as an "intelligent design" creationist. The first part of the flyer quoted from an article by Lenzen in the Berlin newspaper "Tagesspiegel" (my translation): This article was written just before a referendum on if and how public schools in Berlin schould have mandatory religious education. Hence, it mainly deals with ethics and morals and how to best teach school children morals and ethics. Nothing about evolution in that article. The referendum specifically asked the voters if the current ethics classes should be replaced by religious education classes (the referendum eventually failed and no mandatory religious education was introduced in Berlin). Lenzen is very qualified to write about how to teach children, as he is professor of education science. Taken in the context of the whole article, the quote may seem a little unfortunately worded, but hardly any evidence of underlying creationism.
In addition, creationism in Germany is quite a non-issue. Most people I talk to have never even heard the term and ask what it means. My own students don't really believe me, when I tell them that people still actually believe in creationism until they see some US websites (after seeing them they ask: do they also believe the earth is flat?). Any public voice that happens to have picked up some US-based rhetoric and regurgitates it in Germany is usually quickly laughed into oblivion. However, the flyer's second part cited from minutes that student Sebastian Schneider had written down from memory after a session of the "Academic Senate" of which Lenzen is the head. According to the flyer, Lenzen had confirmed his statement in the article with the following words (again my translation): This statement is much less ambiguous. However, this quote comes from a member of the AStA, a general student council which is elected once a year by the student parliament and administers the affairs of the student body. In a press release which cites Schneider, the AStA calls for the resignation of Lenzen, because of his alleged creationism. At least parts of the student body are also actively seeking to oust president Lenzen and have staged public protests against him before.
From these accounts it all seemed highly unlikely that Lenzen is a creationist. The quote is ambiguous and out-of-context. The alleged statement in the senate from a student body known to oppose Lenzen, even asking for his resignation. Still, it appeared from his position on the referendum (his article argued for the introduction of mandatory religious education in public schools) that Lenzen might be religious. Furthermore, he is well-versed in the humanities, which sometimes (but by no means necessarily) comes with a certain lack of scientific understanding. It was thus conceivable that he could have picked up some IDiotic blurb somewhere, which has found its way into his article. Thus, despite the admittedly low probability, but because I thought it was an important enough question, I asked for a less ambiguous statement from the president of my university. Today I have received a very unambiguous answer from his press spokesman (paraphrased): Well, I guess that solves that issue. The question now is: who goes around posting anonymous accusations on the doors of our institute?