When you reach Claudia Stamm on the phone, she has just had to send a cancellation – for the “Carnival in Franconia” this Friday. It’s not possible, not yet, for emotional reasons. For her mother Barbara Stamm, the former president of the state parliament who died in October, Veitshöchheim was a home, she loved the spectacle there and the carnival people loved her.
In the main post Claudia Stamm, former member of parliament for the Greens, just told of the immense public sympathy for the death of her mother, “sometimes I had the feeling that her death pictures were treated like little saints”. And news: The “Barbara Stamm Academy” in the Maria Bildhausen monastery near Münnerstadt, “a kind of gas station for body, mind and soul for full-time and voluntary nurses”, is to go into partial operation this year under the patronage of Prime Minister Markus Söder. A legacy.
But there was another message in the interview. Claudia Stamm is interested in politics again. The 52-year-old mother of two feels ready for new challenges, possibly a mandate, perhaps at the local level. And she can imagine a commitment to her mother’s party, would stand up for the CSU, the former political opponent.
In 2008, Stamm came to the Bavarian state parliament for the first time as a replacement for the Greens, and again in 2013. She later broke with her party, which she accused of turning away from once green principles, for example in refugee policy. Stamm was then a co-founder of the “mut” party, which won 0.3 percent in the 2018 election. Last year she became a research assistant with CSU MP Hans Ritt, researching topics and writing speeches. Political design behind the scenes.
So the SZ asked Claudia Stamm. Isn’t that a blatant turnaround, wouldn’t you find a lot less green principles in the CSU? First of all: You can feel your interest in politics immediately, you chat about queer politics or migration. “The CSU has visibly developed and become more modern in my key issues, social, social and equality policy,” says Stamm. “When it comes to important content, I like to contribute.”
A commitment also does not rule out that the development does not go far enough “and one also says so. My mother was also known for criticizing certain tones of the CSU in refugee policy, sometimes louder, sometimes quieter”. She doesn’t have a “master plan at which level I want or can get involved”. In short: close contact, details unclear. What is clear: “I am a thoroughly political person, I got that with my mother’s milk.”