Chancellor’s wife
Britta Ernst – wife of the Chancellor and Minister herself
Britta Ernst with her husband Olaf Scholz. Photo: Peter Kneffel / dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
It means “everything” to him. She comes from Hamburg and has been a politician herself for many years: Britta Ernst is Olaf Scholz’s wife. She has something in common with Angela Merkel’s husband.
When Olaf Scholz was elected Chancellor, his wife Britta Ernst watched from the stands in the Bundestag. She sat between Scholz’s mother Christel and the so far last SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who had come with his wife Soyeon Schröder-Kim.
Olaf Scholz’s father said on Wednesday before the vote that he believed his son would do a good job. “He’ll do it with solidity,” said Gerhard Scholz. It is a special day for him as a father.
Such words are not to be expected from Britta Ernst. She has been in politics for many years. She is the education minister of Brandenburg and has never commented on her husband’s ambitions for the chancellery.
Role model Joachim Sauer
Germans are used to something similar. Joachim Sauer, Angela Merkel’s husband, stayed in the background for 16 years. Britta Ernst always politely but firmly blocks questions about her private life. The 60-year-old wants to prevent her work as state minister from being brought into any connection with her husband’s politically prominent position.
In the social networks she shows every now and then that she likes to explore her hometown Potsdam and the surrounding area, on foot and by bike. Then the social democrat posts landscape and nature photos, such as a walk on a gray November Sunday in Babelsberg Park and on Griebnitzsee. Or occasional visits to the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, which was the couple’s home until 2018.
Born in Hamburg, she came as a surprise to Brandenburg as Minister for Education, Youth and Sport in 2017 after her predecessor Günter Baaske withdrew for private reasons. Before that, she was Minister of Education in Schleswig-Holstein from 2014 until she left the cabinet after the state elections in 2017 because her portfolio in the government of Daniel Günther (CDU) fell to the Christian Democrats.
Potsdam as a new base
Ernst and Scholz have been married since 1998. She is an early riser, he sleeps late when he can. Both like to cycle. In private, the childless couple had a new base in Potsdam from the spring of 2018, when Scholz moved from office as First Mayor in Hamburg as Federal Minister of Finance to Berlin. In the Brandenburg state capital, the couple first moved to the dignified suburb of Berlin and then to the old market, which was rebuilt in the Renaissance style, in the immediate vicinity of the Barberini Museum and the State Parliament Palace.
In the series of talks “Brigitte live”, Scholz once gave an insight into his emotional life: “I believe that I would be a completely different person if I weren’t married to Britta Ernst.” It was also his wife who at some point gently urged him to lose weight and thus jog. On his website he writes that his wife means “everything” to him. And in the “Spiegel” he said: “The most important thing in life is love.”
Often a difficult situation
North German reserved, pragmatic and calm – this is how Ernst appears as education minister of Brandenburg and current president of the conference of ministers of education. As education minister in the corona pandemic, she often has a difficult time with the opposition in the state parliament and the associations, which repeatedly accuse her of mismanagement of the measures to combat infection in schools. Ernst says nothing about calls for resignation like the state parents’ council – he just tirelessly repeats the measures currently being taken at schools, such as corona tests and wearing masks. The Christmas holidays are also brought forward in Brandenburg. They start on December 20th instead of December 23rd.
When asked about her husband’s new role, she becomes very tight-lipped. Because as a minister, she doesn’t want to be associated with her husband. This may have to do with the fact that she had to retire from Hamburg’s citizenship in 2011 after her husband took office as First Mayor. She had been a member of the state parliament since 1997. “In no area is it right that changes in one partner are accompanied by the waiver of the other,” she wrote at the time.
And Scholz too reacted indignantly in the federal election campaign when he was asked whether his wife would continue to work if he won the election. His wife is a great politician, he said in the series of talks “Brigitte live”. And on another occasion he called the question, which in his view would not be asked of a Chancellor’s husband, “completely out of time”.