Life is a Journey: Live it (Part 119)

The other autobiography
After SPD major Ortwin Runde left office in Hamburg, the Hamburg SPD plunged into leadership problems. While enjoying our SPD traditional green cabbage dinner in SPD Eimsbüttel office, Ortwin Runde stormed the event late in the evening with the good news he had managed to outmanoeuvre Krista Sager, leader of the party Die Grünen, ensuring most of our election campaign promises in the new coalition had been accepted by Die Grünen, leaving no green mark on the politics for our city, Hamburg. We were all cheerful, shaking his hands. Those glorious days were over when he left, and the party needed to find a new way forward. Not only in terms of party programmatic, but also in terms of personality. Dr Petersen, a General Practitioner with his own medical practice, was elected SPD Hamburg Chairman. He was a medical doctor through and through, yet not qualified for the position to be the Hamburg leader of the party. No one wanted the job as it ment too much work for no benefit at all. Any candidate for this position knew that Hamburg was the city for the SPD, a safe seat, with chances to win the next election and become the mayor of Hamburg, a city and a state in Germany, was almost certain. Ortwin Runde, as a teacher, had not much to lose, while others thought of a career after politics. Hans-Ulrich Klose, a predecessor to Ortwin Runde, became a Member of Parliament on the federal level, while Henning Voscherau returned to his private office as a lawyer and Commissioner of Oath, having served Hamburg as a major for many years. The position among us members was not as popular as many might think. Hands were not raised by most of the possible qualified candidates. Hamburgers have a very specific mentality, unlike people from Munich, Berlin or Cologne. We shy away from glitz and glamour, preferring to go about our daily work more seriously and quietly.

Just after I had left for Ghana in 2012, Olaf Scholz raised his hands and declared his willingness to be the leader of the Hamburg SPD while a Minister in Berlin under German Chancellor Angela Merkel. When the position of the mayor of Hamburg became vacant, he left Berlin to take over the office of the mayor of Hamburg. He married his girlfriend Britta Ernst after fifteen years of relationship and lived with her in their own apartment in Hamburg Ottensen in a humble neighbourhood. Britta Ernst was a member of Hamburg Parliament for the SPD and represented the ideas of education and culture for the party in public and the Hamburg parliament, which qualified her later, while Olaf Scholz was German Chancellor and Minister for Education in the state of Brandenburg, to which they had moved as a family and been elected in the local constituency. They have no children.

The last personal interaction I had with Olaf Scholz was when he was a Minister for Finance under Angela Merkel and on tour around Christmas to visit his old Altona party districts. In AWO Haus in Hamburg, Rissen over coffee, tea and biscuits, he was willing to listen to our individual concerns. Never think people rushed to him like they would have done seeing Willy Brandt or Helmut Schmidt. In fact, it took most party members time before approaching Olaf Scholz. Not to stand idle among us members, he would himself approach people and try to be part of a conversation. I mentioned to him that the German Embassy in Lome, the capital of Togo, refused me entry when I appeared. For years, I had issued invitation letters to potential and existing customers from Togo wanting to meet the person responsible for handling my invitation letters, asking him what more I could do to assist him with his decision. With my Togolese partner, we stood at the beachfront facing the gate of the small Embassy building. A black guard came to us, asking through the metal bars about our reasons for showing up. I explained my situation to him. He made a phone call and came back saying that, without an appointment, coming in and speaking to any German officer would not be possible. Meanwhile, a German with his SUV pulled up, walked over to us, and we explained to him that only a few minutes would be needed and why we had not made an appointment. Before the gate opened for him, he promised to speak on our behalf to the officers inside. Eventually, the guard asked us to leave. I wondered if, in case a German citizen is in distress, possibly illegally arrested, he would need an appointment before the German Embassy would help him? I was very disturbed and angry as I was not allowed for five minutes between armoured glass in Kabul to speak without an appointment to a German Embassy officer, and the friendly lady gave me the much-needed addresses.

I complained to Olaf Scholz about it, and he promised to mention my case to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, later German President, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to take care of the matter. None of the Foreign Ministry ever contacted me. Knowing the attitude of the German Embassy in Accra, I was wondering about the German institutional representation abroad. To me, it's not very convincing.

The time came when Angela Merkel decided to end her sixteen years in office as German Chancellor and the most powerful woman in the world. Olaf Scholz took over from her. Looking back at what Germans said and say about his relationship with them on a human and political level, I conclude he was never loved but respected for what he knows, not necessarily what he stands for. His political career stands on the principle of being available every time there was a problem, and no one else was willing to solve it. He raised his hands, and as he stood idle, people voted for him. It was not his charisma and political vision that made him the Chancellor of Germany. He filled a gap when no one else wanted to burn his hands in times of trouble. Many Germans saw in him an alien walking from disaster site to disaster site, filling microphones and cameras with words of a lawyer`s wisdom, not as a politician carrying the burden of lost lives and futures. He still keeps his childish smile, which says he hopes no one sees his weaknesses, shyness and mistakes. I was always of the view that he would have been a decent German President, but as German Chancellor, close to people and their lives, he was misplaced.

As in any party´s life, currently the SPD is in the deep valley of tears, not lived by most Germans, as you are well aware of. It is a combination of programmatic challenges and missing personalities who can carry the burden and future of the Germans on their shoulders. Political parties are no static form, a living body of people and their time in history. The SPD, like the entire German political landscape, seems to be at a crossroads with no captain able to lead the way. Outside pressure and inside clueless politicians open the doors for extremist parties making noise at the outskirts of politics, and due to a lack of noise inside the political spectrum, the extreme noise will be heard by more and more people, eventually entering the centre stage. New charismatic figures who carry great visions are not insightful. The once who could help Germany and Europe prefer to stay behind in the second row as the gamess which play out at the top of each party, they do not want to be part of it. The enemy of each top politician is not the politician of the opposition, but rather right next to you, sharing the same smile as you with a knife hidden underneath the table.“

„Politics is a dirty job,“ said Susanne Fröhlich, categorically throwing away the stick used to toast her bread.

„Someone has to do the job!“I was holding my thoughts against her.

„Still....politics is a dirty job, “Susanne Fröhlich insisted.

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