A few months ago, Franz Josef Strauss traveled to Albania. Not the real CSU father, of course, but a statue made of plastic, almost a meter high and true to scale of a decent width, jet black like the attitude of the politician who died in 1988. It was a gift that Prime Minister Markus Söder had with him on his trip to Albania, where the main focus was on recruiting skilled workers. In any case, Prime Minister Edi Rama, who received the gift, was very happy, as he promptly imitated the ostrich gesture of the statue for a photo, raising his right hand like a bowl, as if he were plucking a juicy apple from the tree. Or maybe to support the rhetoric, you don’t know.
The background: A square in the capital Tirana is named after Strauss, who visited the communist country on a private vacation in the eighties and thus ennobled it. A Bavarian head of government always makes foreign policy and is always on duty. “It is his vision, his relationships that we are still pursuing,” said Premier Rama. The Picture-Zeitung even formulated: “Söder’s predecessor is something of a hero in Albania.”
The Greens in the state parliament wanted to know exactly what to do with the “dwarf statue” by Strauss, as they call the gift; about a query in the state parliament, the answer to which has now been published. How many copies were made by whom or are planned, how did the order go? And the costs – “please break down by artist fee, production, material, transport”? The answer, however, is unspectacular. According to the State Chancellery, there is no special production, no order. Instead, the thing was “purchased from existing, serially manufactured pieces”. Namely with the artist Ottmar Hörl, who offers many well-known people, such as Richard Wagner or Karl Marx, in miniature. Package price for the bouquet: 500 euros; once bought in Albania for “gift purposes” and from Hörl because of its unique selling point.
One might think that the overly critical questions asked by the Greens are a non-starter. The faction was already there as small-minded when they inquired too meticulously about the delivery of 4000 white sausages that Söder donated to the US troops in Grafenwöhr. On the other hand: Strauss tributes of all kinds are still considered good manners in the party and state government. And the CSU fan shop not only lists a “Markus Söder cotton bag”, but also a “Franz Josef Strauss pin”. It could not have been ruled out that there was a clandestine state production facility for ostrich statuettes somewhere in order to provide the interested people at home and abroad with the devotional item. “Something like a hero” is not only in Tirana.