The morning after, Ulrike Sänger sounds as surprised as she is dismayed. It wasn’t bad times with the SPD, says the leader of the Greens parliamentary group in Bamberg’s city council. They have done “good work”, pushed projects forward together, but now it’s over – less than two years after the local elections. The twelve Greens in the city council declared the end of the green-red town hall alliance in Bamberg on Tuesday.
This was no longer a surprise after the night session of the SPD parliamentary group – what was more surprising was the result of this session. After the badly battered parliamentary group leader Klaus Stieringer had left office in mid-December in the so-called fake account affair and public opinion had not turned in his favor since then, many assumed that Stieringer would not return to office. After all, the Greens had positioned themselves unequivocally in the meantime and declared that Stieringer had severely damaged the “relationship of trust” through his misconduct. A “trustful cooperation” with the SPD can only exist for the Greens in the future if the SPD does not give Stieringer “another office in the parliamentary group executive committee”.
In Bamberg’s seven-member SPD parliamentary group, however, Stieringer will not only hold a position on the board in the future. He even wants to lead them again. To explain this on Tuesday, the Social Democrats have chosen a group member who is to answer questions alone. The choice fell on a veteran driver of the party, Heinz Kuntke. “Unfortunately,” he says, leaving it open how seriously this is meant. The parliamentary group “took note” of Stieringer’s announcement that it wanted to lead the parliamentary group again with immediate effect. There was “no request” at the meeting to have him voted out, so the attitude of the SPD faction was “uniform”. They also want to continue the cooperation with the Greens, after all there is now a “new status” in the cause. When Kuntke says that, the Greens have long since made up their minds: end the alliance.
The answer unleashes a wave of outrage
A new stand? According to Kuntke, this consists in the fact that Stieringer not only repeated his apology – but is said to have emphasized in the evening session that he had “nothing to do” with several fake accounts that had been talked about. He also wants to hire legal counsel to protect his personal rights – apparently against allegations that he himself is behind those profiles that have since been deleted, with the help of which partisan expressions of opinion were posted online under a false name.
Stieringer was asked in December in the BR magazine “Quer” what he thinks of fake accounts in social networks, which are obviously intended to manipulate public opinion in Bamberg – often in favor of the local SPD and its mayor, especially in the so-called bonus affair in the town hall. “First of all, fake accounts give people the opportunity to move anonymously on social networks under the protection of their personal rights. I think that’s okay,” Stieringer replied – and thus triggered a wave of outrage.
Not least with the Greens. “Shaping politics with fake accounts and influencing opinion-forming is just as unacceptable as approving or accepting this approach,” they stated. Many in the SPD see it the same way. Its subdistrict chairman, Andreas Schwarz, explained that it shouldn’t be “that the SPD is associated with the operation of fake accounts”. That is the “political style of the AfD”, an “absolute no-go for social democracy”.
With Stieringer’s announcement that he intends to actively hold office again, Bamberg’s SPD is likely to face a crucial test all the more. Especially as since Tuesday a letter from Stieringer – that of Süddeutsche Zeitung available – circulated to SPD members in which he branded a “unique media campaign”; and his party antipode Schwarz, who in 2020, as an SPD district council candidate, allegedly asked the AfD to nominate its own candidate – to “improve his chances of a runoff election”. Black reacts stunned to these counterattacks by Stieringer. What he was accusing him of was “absurd” and had long since been refuted by him in 2020 as a “complete construct”.
Starke recommends Stieringer to resign
Stieringer himself does not want to comment on his return to the political stage – but confirms the authenticity of the letter with which he now attacks SPD member of the Bundestag Schwarz head-on. And SPD Lord Mayor Andreas Starke? For a long time he was considered a kind of “boyfriend” of the marketing man Stieringer, but he has now lost a political alliance with which he can govern the city continuously. Starke declares himself in writing. He recommends Stieringer “continue to resign” because his statement in BR is “unacceptable”.
But how should things continue in the town hall? Starke wants to bring all the faction leaders to one table to create an “Alliance for the Citizens”. “Important and possible” is now “cross-party cooperation”, it is “not the hour for sensitivities and vanity,” he explains. In Starke’s opinion, Bamberg should obviously be governed with changing majorities in the city council in the future, an exceptional situation for a large municipality in Bavaria. For the time being, however, this should only apply until the public prosecutor’s office in Hof declares whether it will press charges in the Bamberg Boni affair. It is about allegations of infidelity in the town hall.
How will the Bamberg SPD continue until then? He has “experienced a lot” in his political life, says a party leader. But the fact that comrades are now attacking each other “without any compass of values” shakes him “to the core” – and renders him “speechless”. He looks “absolutely at a loss” about the future of the SPD in Bamberg.