Manfred Schilder was born in Memmingen, during his time as Mayor the construction of a new indoor and outdoor pool, the creation of a city-wide climate concept, the start of renovation of the historic city wall, the offensive establishment of Memmingen as a “city of freedom rights” and the resolution for “a Project of the century”, as he calls it: the construction of a new clinic. Manfred Schilder has not been Mayor of Memmingen since Sunday.
The 65-year-old CSU incumbent lost to Jan Rothenbacher, a 30-year-old SPD candidate who doesn’t even live in the city but comes from the Alb-Donau district to the north. That’s what election officials usually call a “resounding slap in the face.” It wasn’t even close on election Sunday: Rothenbacher got 55.4 percent of the votes, while Schilder only got 38.3 percent. The incumbent only won one constituency.
At the CSU, they had a bit of doubt as to whether their candidate might have to go into a runoff election. Nobody really expected that he would have to leave the town hall. Schilder was considered an approachable politician who didn’t do much wrong, see the projects of his tenure above. Still, he hasn’t shed the reputation of managing more than deciding. So maybe he just didn’t do enough right.
Perhaps the people of Memmingen just wanted to heal a historical anomaly with their decision: A CSU-led Memmingen is apparently not planned. In 2017, Schilder slipped into office at short notice in an unscheduled election because the SPD mayor who had been elected shortly before had fallen victim to heart failure. The SPD had ruled Memmingen since 1966, from 1980 to 2016 in the person of Ivo Holzinger, at the time Germany’s longest-serving mayor. The still popular ex-town hall chief had recently advertised for his young successor.
Now Rothenbacher has to prove that he can not only conduct a complex election campaign and shake a lot of hands and talk about digitization of the administration and expansion of all-day care. And he has to show that he knows how to assert himself: the Allgäu district administrators and other mayors of the big cities in the area such as Kempten and Kaufbeuren all represent the CSU and the Free Voters.