portrait
Status: December 18, 2021 3:51 p.m.
Politics has failed several times. But now Klara Geywitz heads the Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Construction – there are not a few challenges waiting there.
Short haircut, glasses, East German, born in Potsdam, child teacher, active for the SPD in Brandenburg for many years. Klara Geywitz says of herself that she is a simple person from the people who goes to Berlin.
The new Federal Minister for Housing, Urban Development and Construction has to get used to being addressed as “Mrs. Minister”. “I always checked to see if someone was still behind me. I think it’ll take a while,” says the 45-year-old.
“Happy Christian”
Geywitz seems down-to-earth, she is married, mother of three and describes herself on Twitter as a “happy Christian”. Together with Olaf Scholz, she wanted to become the SPD leader in 2019. At that time she said she wanted to be more than a decorative lettuce leaf. She really said it that way, she has a funny streak.
The issue of equality is actually very important to her. She made it clear that the SPD had a dual leadership, and during her time in Brandenburg she worked on the parity law – there should be an equal number of women and men in the Brandenburg state parliament.
However, the law failed at the constitutional court. The administrative structural reform in Brandenburg also failed, it was deliberately abandoned, at that time it was not included in the plans, so she resigned as SPD general secretary. The woman is consistent.
ups and downs
Geywitz knows the ups and downs in politics. In 2019 she lost her state parliament mandate in Brandenburg after three legislative periods. “I rode my cargo bike through the area, talked to everyone in Potsdam that I could meet – then got 2,000 more votes than in the previous election, but the way mathematics is, it was not enough.
After that she survived 23 regional conferences, but she did not become SPD chairwoman either. Scholz and they failed. It just seems to have welded the two closer together. In Scholz’s cabinet she was first acted as education minister, then as development minister or as minister of state for the new federal states. But now it’s the Ministry of Construction.
And here she definitely has experience. Most recently she worked at the State Audit Office for audits in the areas of construction, housing and transport.
400,000 new apartments
Geywitz has already started work like she did rbb revealed: “I’m a planner,” she said. “I’m now starting to make a table with all the tasks that are in the coalition agreement for my department, think about who is responsible, whether my house can do it alone or whether we need someone else.” She is in the sorting phase, so to speak.
The studied political scientist has a clear goal: 400,000 new apartments are to be built every year. This is what the coalition agreement says. To do this, it wants to build up more construction capacities, tackle the shortage of skilled workers in the building trade and help the municipalities to put building sites out to tender. With the cargo bike, she will probably not have to drive past the municipalities – but rather delegate and manage from her desk.