Bundestag election in the district of Munich – Black Land – District of Munich

Anke Riedel-Martiny rushes from appointment to appointment and says that she always refuel at a different gas station – to be seen. It is an election campaign and the 30-year-old direct candidate of the SPD is fighting for popularity in the constituency of Munich-Land-Erding-Freising. In the autumn of 1969 this was not yet a matter of course as a woman, not even for a “militant mother” like her Süddeutsche Zeitung is called – and certainly not in the conservative area surrounding the state capital. Riedel-Martiny – pregnant at the time – did not get the direct mandate, but three years later she made the leap into parliament via the SPD state list in early federal elections.

But actually the history of the Bundestag constituency Munich-Land is a history of men – and the CSU. The district has always been like a black belt around the still somewhat red state capital, which has recently become increasingly green. Only once, right at the beginning, did the Christian Socials fail to get the direct mandate here.

The Bavarian party duped the CSU

In the first federal election after the end of the Nazi regime, the district was initially in the hands of the Bavarian Party, for which Anton Besold was directly elected on August 14, 1949. Besold, born in Weßling in 1904, was a lawyer and did his doctorate on “The Right of Freedom of Expression” three years before the Nazis came to power. He was a radio operator in the war, after which he opened a law firm – before he got drawn into politics. As the first face of the district in Bonn. Later, Besold was to switch to the CSU and move into parliament again; by then the district was already firmly in the hands of the Christian Socialists.

But the district has changed a lot since then and the political landscape has changed a lot. In the first federal election in 1949, almost 59,000 people were eligible to vote – and 75.8 percent went to the polls. Four years ago there were more than 235,000 people entitled to vote; now there are 360,000 inhabitants in the 29 cities and municipalities; And in this high-tech economic wonderland there is no longer much to be felt that the district was once an agricultural country in which it was predetermined to vote conservatively.

In 1953, Anton Besold was followed by Franz Seidl as the winner of the direct mandate, also a lawyer and soldier in World War II. He was to sit for the CSU in the Bundestag for twelve years before Anton Besold took over again for four years. With Albert Probst from Garching, an agricultural scientist followed for eight years. In 1976 Franz Ludwig Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was his successor, son of the Hitler assassin Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. He represented the district in parliament for four years before Josef Linsmeier from Haar successfully accepted the direct candidacy in 1980.

Linsmeier had to experience that the CSU can be tough on itself and on its own people. “The party is showing its cold shoulder,” was the headline of the SZ in October 1989 after the district delegates clearly identified Martin Mayer as the direct candidate for the 1990 election in a vote against Linsmeier. The trigger was Linsmeier’s questionable business conduct with his own company.

Mayer, husband of the later mayor of Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn Ursula Mayer and previously in the state parliament for twelve years, won the direct mandate four times. He embodied the district like no other – down-to-earth, attached to his homeland, also open to ecological issues. The fact that Georg Fahrenschon was to succeed him did not do justice to Mayer, as the later Bavarian finance minister regarded the Bundestag mandate as a stepping stone; four years were then enough for driving already.

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The Christian Socials keep reducing

The constituency has changed its face again and again over the decades: at first the districts of Erding and Freising belonged to it, later the district of Miesbach, then again Erdinger localities or the communities Krailling and Gauting in the Würmtal. Since the 2017 election, the Munich-Land constituency has been identical to the district. And since 2009 the directly elected MP is: Florian Hahn. In the 2013 election, Hahn from Putzbrunn, meanwhile also deputy general secretary of his party, won the absolute majority with 52.5 percent of the first votes, four years later it was 43.5 percent; At the same time, the second vote results of the Christian Socials continued to sag in the district, in the last federal election it was only 37.3 percent (2013: 46.9).

It is, as the state elections in 2017 and the local elections last year showed, that something has started to move in the once structurally conservative district of Munich. In the state elections, the Greens came out on more than 23 percent, in the district election the eco party even got a little more than 26 percent. The CSU slumped in both elections, remaining the strongest force – but far from the 40 percent mark.

Open detailed view

So far, no applicant from another party could pose a threat to a CSU candidate; Otto Schily, the former SPD interior minister, was able to get results of more than 30 percent of the first votes at the beginning of the noughties – but he was far from a direct mandate.

But now the question arises whether the incumbent MP Hahn is threatened for the first time. Firstly, the field of applicants is broad with eight candidates, and secondly, there are polling institutes and election observers who certify Anton Hofreiter from the Greens chances against Hahn. The election.de portal currently rates Hahn’s renewed success as “likely”, but gives Hofreiter a ten percent chance of winning the direct mandate. And these prospects were much better for the Greens than they were in the national polls.

It is more than likely that the state capital will turn green. But the district? Whatever the case, in the end someone will be able to say for sure what Anke Riedel-Martiny said in 1972 without a direct mandate: She is “unbounded” happy that it worked out with Berlin.