BERLIN — Smile! Bavaria’s state leader Markus Söder just loves a professional photograph.
The conservative chief’s state chancellery splurged almost €180,000 on freelance photographers in 2022 alone; a huge rise on Horst Seehofer’s final year as Bavarian boss in 2017 during which roughly €11,000 was spent on freelancers.
In total, the spending of taxpayer money on photographers has increased more than twentyfold since Söder’s leadership. On top of the freelancers, more than €36,000 a year is spent on a permanently employed photographer.
The SPD group in the Bavarian state parliament had inquired to the state chancellery about spending on photographers, and the response was seen by German news agency dpa.
The state chancellery said it hires photographers “on an occasion-related basis at an agreed hourly or daily rate … The images were for press and public relations purposes and for documentation.”
Söder, from the Christian Social Union, is not the only German politician who likes to look good, as shown by figures from a parliamentary inquiry in April.
According to numbers provided by Olaf Scholz’ federal government, spending on photographers, hairdressers and makeup artists rose to around €1.5 million in the first full year of the chancellor’s government in 2022. That was nearly 80 percent more than in 2021, the last year of Angela Merkel’s government.