The “Bavarian SPD legends” have invited media representatives to Munich and Nuremberg – and you literally believe you can hear mockers with a university degree begging each other: whether that should be a well-placed contradictio in the adiecto of Bavarian social democrats, a rhetorical trick – so-called Contradiction in the adjective – as in “black mold”? Or whether they would like to add Wilhelm Hoegner, the Prime Minister of Bavaria in 1945/46 and from 1954 to 1957. An officially certified Bavarian legend – and yes: a social democrat.
No, the “legends” thing is different; and should not be explained by the megalomania of the Socialists that suddenly appeared, but by the simple claim not to perceive politics primarily at the state level. Christian Ude, Renate Schmidt, Franz Maget and Ulrich Maly will take the stage at the legends conference for the state elections on Friday. And yes, yes, the splendor of state political legends – if you associate it exclusively with Bavarian government offices – is kept within very narrow limits. But there is a woman sitting there who, for many, is still the former Federal Minister for Family Affairs. D. is par excellence. Plus a total of 39 years of OB experience in the two large cities in Bavaria. Such a thing would be difficult for the CSU to say the least.
The performance of the four begins humorously in the Nuremberg SPD headquarters, as was to be expected. Munich’s former mayor Christian Ude boldly enters with a formulation in which the coincidence “Upper Bavarian humility” occurs. What exactly the content of his introduction is is somewhat lost in the tumult of the podium, because ex-Federal Minister Schmidt wants to know what that is supposed to be: Upper Bavarian humility. Then the current status of the number of grandchildren of all podium participants is determined. According to a reliable count, there are 32. It must be said, however, that the Bavarian SPD has somewhat expanded the concept of legend. In addition to Ude, Schmidt, Maly and Maget, the former district administrator of Kronach, Heinz Köhler, the former mayor of Coburg, Norbert Kastner, and Klaus Herzog, former mayor of Aschaffenburg, are also present in Nuremberg.
The four of the legends invited – Maly, Schmidt, Ude, Maget – come together for a photo; in the middle is Renate Schmidt from 1994, in which she won 30.05 percent as the top candidate in Bavaria. After that, things soon get very serious on this podium and much more serious than the humorous “Legends” invitation would have suggested. Ulrich Maly manages the unexpected curve most elegantly. He feared that the “news value” of a round in which long-established Social Democrats surprisingly call for the election of the SPD would tend to “near zero”. After all, Maly wants to give the group credit, “we should roughly represent the average age of Bavarian voters”.
But that is not the reason for his appearance. He seriously wanted to ask to be heard – for the urgent request to voters to “pause for a moment” in the upcoming state elections. In view of at least a right-wing populist party that threatens to overtake the oldest democratic party in Germany, he has justified hope that this pausing when going into the voting booth could make a difference. “Nobody sees it – and it doesn’t hurt either,” says Maly.
Coburg’s ex-OB Kastner is the most serious. His father is 94 years old, these days he, Kastner, heard him say: “Norbert, what is happening at the moment reminds me of bad times and scares me.” When asked, Renate Schmidt emphasized: No, as a 79-year-old she couldn’t remember such an appearance – a call for elections by long-time residents of the Bavarian SPD – with the best will in the world: “I’ve never done that before.” But, she thinks, “the Bavarians don’t deserve a strong right fringe”. She initiated the call together with Ude. He says, as an experienced social democrat, he is “deeply concerned and concerned” that “a right-wing extremist, racist party” is on an equal footing with “the oldest democratic party in Germany inside and outside of Bavaria” in current polls. In the most recent surveys in Bavaria, the AfD was between ten and twelve percent, the SPD mostly just below. Ude warns against “repeating the worst mistakes in German history with one’s eyes open”.
Maget, the SPD’s former top candidate, adds a warning. If the so-called air sovereignty over the regulars’ tables means that you take over “the polemics and the lies” of the right-wing populists yourself, then you’re simply doing their thing.