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80th birthday: Former Chancellor Schröder celebrates with Kubicki, Gysi and Ramsauer

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80th birthday
Former Chancellor Schröder celebrates with Kubicki, Gysi and Ramsauer

Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder turned 80 at the beginning of the month. photo

© Michael Kappeler/dpa

Gerhard Schröder celebrates his 80th birthday in the middle of Berlin with old companions. Some active politicians are also there.

Former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder celebrated his 80th birthday in the Berlin celebrity restaurant Borchardt. His guests also included active politicians such as the deputy FDP chairman Wolfgang Kubicki with his wife Annette Marberth-Kubicki as well as the Bundestag members Gregor Gysi (Left) and Peter Ramsauer (CSU). Former party leader and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel with his wife Anke Stadler and Hanover’s former mayor Herbert Schmalstieg from his own party, the SPD, were there in the restaurant on Gendarmenmarkt.

Also among the guests: Schröder’s former Minister of State for Culture Michael Naumann as well as his former government spokespersons Béla Anda and Thomas Steg, ex-Bild editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann, the painter Markus Lüpertz and the management consultant Roland Berger. The former SPD and left-wing leader Oskar Lafontaine actually wanted to come with his wife Sahra Wagenknecht, with whom Schröder had only reconciled a few weeks ago after many years of radio silence. According to his own statements in a “Spiegel” interview, he had to cancel because of an appointment in France.

Schröder turned 80 on April 7th. Because he maintains his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite the Russian attack on Ukraine, he is ostracized by the SPD leadership. After all, party leaders Lars Klingbeil and Saskia Esken as well as Chancellor Olaf Scholz had congratulated him in writing on his birthday. To this day, Schröder works for the majority Russian companies on the Nord Stream pipelines through the Baltic Sea. From 1998 to 2005 he was chancellor of the first red-green government at the federal level.

Guest list secret until the end

The party was organized by Schröder’s wife Soyeon Schröder-Kim. She kept the guest list secret until the end. On the occasion of his 70th birthday, the SPD honored its former chancellor and former chairman in 2014 – a few days after the Russian annexation of the Ukrainian Crimea – with a ceremony in the Berlin art museum Hamburger Bahnhof. In his laudation, the then SPD leader Gabriel called Schröder “one of the most unusual social democratic politicians.”

The city of Hanover also organized a ceremony for its then honorary citizen, Schröder. The ex-chancellor has since resigned his honorary citizenship after proceedings to revoke it were initiated against him.