Status: 05/25/2022 08:19 a.m
Frankfurt’s Lord Mayor Peter Feldmann is accused of accepting an advantage, after an incident of sexism even his own SPD is now demanding the withdrawal. How could it possibly come this far?
When a politician is asked to resign by his own party, it is arguably fair to say that his days in office are numbered. For the Mayor of Frankfurt, Peter Feldmann, this time came on Tuesday. After an embarrassing appearance during the celebrations after Frankfurt Eintracht’s Europa League victory and after a sexist speech became known on the flight back from the final in Seville, the Frankfurt Social Democrats have finally had enough of their former figurehead.
The board of the Frankfurt SPD asked Feldmann to resign from office. The preliminary climax of a descent that can be summed up in three words: allegations of corruption, unreasonableness, self-importance. Peter Feldmann stands alone. A decade ago he was considered a beacon of hope for his party.
Rise of an underdog
Feldmann’s rise is the story of an underdog. Despite all the initial forecasts, the former social worker managed to assert himself first in the internal party duel for the mayoral candidacy in 2012 and later in the run-off election against the CDU candidate Boris Rhein.
Feldmann’s recipe: a little over three years after the great financial crash, he is backing traditional social-democratic issues: affordable housing, education, participation – and in the March 2012 run-off election he received a total of 57.4 percent of the votes cast.
The result attracted national attention. CDU Chancellor Angela Merkel is nearing the zenith of her popularity, the Greens are at a poll high a year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In this situation, which is anything but favorable for the SPD, their mayoral candidate from the second row achieved a clear victory by putting everything on the socio-political card.
Triumph as turning point
In everyday local politics, the new mayor has to come to terms with a black-green magistrate. Feldmann chooses a confrontational course, withdraws responsibilities from Greens and CDU department heads and takes over some of them himself. But it’s not just his leadership style that’s controversial. Already in his first term of office, allegations were made that Feldmann pushed himself too much into the foreground, that it was too often about him as a person instead of the interests of the city.
The attacks of the political opponent caught little in public. Feldmann’s thematic focus remains the social. So he manages to sell himself as the mayor of the so-called simple people, who is in a permanent clinch with a magistrate of higher earners. The strategy works. In 2018 he was re-elected in the second ballot with 70.8 percent.
The triumph of 2018 is considered by many observers to be a turning point. Irritating performances are piling up. And soon the actually popular mayor has to deal with an accusation that weighs much more heavily than self-importance: corruption.
Entanglements in the AWO affair
From the middle of 2019, new details about questionable salary payments and job shifting in the Frankfurt and Wiesbaden district association of workers’ welfare (AWO) will come to light. Long-time political companions of Feldmann are also affected.
Then in November he covers Hessian radio that Feldmann’s wife Zübeyde – who now lives separately from him – as head of an AWO day-care center earned significantly more than is usual in her position and with her professional experience. Allegations are also made against Feldmann himself. According to this, the AWO is said to have created a lucrative post especially for him before he was elected mayor, which no one had held before or after him.
Feldmann tries to sit out the growing scandal. At first he did not answer press inquiries at all, later only to selected media representatives. The mayor is playing for time and counting on his popularity. A tactic that doesn’t work.
Because in the following two and a half years, more and more allegations against Feldmann are made. Sometimes he is said to have campaigned with the city administration to ensure that the AWO can redesignate a nursing home as refugee accommodation, sometimes it is said that AWO employees raised donations for his 2018 election campaign. Feldmann protests his innocence, apologizes and promises transparency. But the connection to the public has long been torn.
Prosecutor files charges
In March 2022, the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office will bring charges. Among other things, the mayor is accused of having undertaken in return for the campaign donations raised to “benevolently consider” the concerns of the AWO.
There had already been numerous calls for his resignation from the ranks of the opposition. But now the SPD is moving away from Feldmann. In the event that the indictment is admitted, the party asks him to resign. Feldmann wants to continue until the end of his term in 2024, but promises “to exercise a sense of proportion in public appearances and events”.
However, that is exactly what he is becoming less and less able to do.