Bavaria: Ex-Minister Kerstin Schreyer talks about dismissal – district of Munich

Kerstin Schreyer comes with her own car. In the past four years, that was rather unusual. The driver was already at the door early in the morning, loaded a mountain of files into the trunk, and the minister started another day full of appointments, usually seven times a week. This is no longer the case, it is day two after the cabinet reshuffle, the Unterhachinger CSU member of the state parliament Kerstin Schreyer has already handed over the office in the Ministry for Housing, Construction and Transport to her successor. You are now liable to an aD. She is a retired minister. That wasn’t her plan. But she says: “I’m at peace with myself. Everything has its time.”

That sounds brave. And if you look closely, that’s it. Because Schreyer also says: “I gave my maximum.” She toiled day after day and often at night as well. First in the Ministry of Social Affairs, and finally in the Ministry of Construction and Transport, a house where quick success is hardly possible, where you need staying power to deliver results, and where you can’t reach your goal if the boss is full-bodied promises the impossible. Anyone who knows how long feasibility studies alone take will understand that. Anyone who calculates how few plots of land are quickly available to build the 10,000 apartments promised by Prime Minister Markus Söder by 2025, too.

Many of her companions cannot understand her dismissal. This is clear from the reactions they receive almost every second on all channels, even two days after the announcement of their dismissal. “I got a lot of warmth from the local association, the voting district, but also from all over Bavaria. Many don’t understand the decision,” she says, “apparently I’ve managed to live the human component. I’m happy that I can see clear signs of the I also got appreciation from people from other parties.”

The opposition speaks of a pawn sacrifice

There was no scandal, the cabinet was neither younger nor more feminine as a result of the reshuffle. In the past, both were often reasons for exchanging ministers. Schreyer’s successor Christian Bernreiter is seven years older, and since the reshuffle in the cabinet there has been one woman less than before. They are “election-strategic” reasons, as they say. The polls are in the basement. “As if pawn sacrifices solve the problems,” said Martin Hagen, the FDP parliamentary group leader in the state parliament, on Wednesday afternoon. Katharina Schulze, the leader of the Greens parliamentary group, put it this way: “It’s a change that says more about the boss.” She accused Markus Söder of seeing “ministers only as better assistants” whom he “can name and dismiss as he pleases”. He is not a team player, but has let the sword of Damocles hover over the cabinet members for weeks and months and deliberately speculated scattered.

Kerstin Schreyer does not want to comment on such statements, but she does not contradict them either. She took it with composure when she was asked to the state chancellery for a dismissal interview. Her name had been mentioned publicly for a long time when the talk came to a cabinet reshuffle. She wanted to go out there with her head held high and, by her own admission, has no thoughts of revenge. She says: “When I decided to go into politics, I knew it was always a temporary employment contract. With the state parliament mandate, it is clear when the question of extending the contract arises: on election night. With the cabinet, it can be any day.” She tries to process the disappointment like this: “I also know because of my very strong belief that where I stand is always right.”

There is only one issue in which she feels a great need to publicly straighten things out, to counteract the rumors with facts. She is said to have crossed paths with the employees in her ministry because she was supposed to clean up there, it was said again and again. It’s an accusation she can’t swallow, one she finds more than unjustified. One day after her dismissal, she therefore made public a letter from the main staff council to the prime minister from December, in which he affirmed that he would follow the change processes in the organization and emphasized that these processes would only succeed if there was continuity at the head of the ministry. The letter ends with the words: “We hope that we will implement this reform process together with our minister.”

Even if the social department was tailored to her as a social worker, Schreyer emphasizes in retrospect: “I enjoyed working in both ministries.” When asked if she would have gone back to her old house if Söder had offered her that, as some of her party friends wanted, she remained vague in the answer: “I didn’t ask myself the question and I would have spontaneously thinking.”

But there was nothing to think about, just packing. And that same Tuesday evening. The driver was supposed to take her to Unterhaching one last time. But he asked to be allowed to drive her again the next day to the handover of the ministry. An offer that Kerstin Schreyer still touches on when she talks about it. A good relationship with all employees has always been very important to her, she says. When Schreyer took over the house, she first introduced herself to the receptionist, the driver and the cleaning staff to express her appreciation.

“I’ll get a little more sleep and have time for family and friends.”

And now? “I’ll get a little more sleep and have time for family and friends,” she says. And for sports. She will be happy not to have the next appointment on her back while she was swimming and not having received a hundred e-mails again as soon as she got out of the water. “Then maybe only ten more,” she tries to see the positive side of the sudden change in her life. The employees in her constituency office told her that she would not be able to endure this deceleration for long. “They give me a week at most. I bet against it.”

Of course she won’t throw it down. “Politics will continue to be fun for me in the role I have,” says Schreyer. At the moment it is only as a member of the state parliament. “I’ll find myself in the bosom of the faction family. They caught me well. Now I’ll be able to do more for the district of Munich again,” she says. “I want to continue doing humane politics. It doesn’t matter what chair I’m sitting on.” Kerstin Schreyer is now 50 years old. So why think about quitting? It is clear to her: “I will be available for another candidacy if the CSU decides to put me up again.” After all the ups and now downs in this tough, sometimes brutal political business, she also says: “I would never sacrifice my honest way for an office. Then I’d rather not be in the office. It has to meet the standards that I impose on myself.”

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