Horst Müller (62, CSU) has been responsible for economic policy in the city of Fürth since August 1998. A conversation about zero point situations, a subway as the work of the devil, gratifying economic data and a stuck city image.
SZ: Mr. Müller, how was your first contact with Fürth?
Horst Müller: Absolutely fine. I used to be the “Wallenstein” in the Altdorf festival, and as such you take part in the Fürth church consecration procession. A second contact wasn’t bad either: B-Youth from FC Altdorf, we played at the Ronhof in Fürth. Of course, it was in a deplorable condition at the time.
The Fürth Economics Advisor Horst Müller has been in office for 25 years.
(Photo: da kapo/City of Fürth)
Which brings us closer to the meaning of the initial question.
My first day at work? It was raining, it was gloomy, gray and desolate. There was absolutely nothing nice about it. My room was an official shack in the worst sense. Eight square meters including a cupboard, which I prayed every day not to kill me.
But it sure went up soon.
How you take it. On the second day, the property office chauffeured me through the outskirts of Fürth.
They’re beautiful.
Absolutely. Only straw dolls hung everywhere, on the gallows. Did I allow myself to ask what that is? Answer: That represents my predecessor. There were problems with a smoldering system. A planned business park in Knoblauchsland was also moderately popular.
Hanging straw dolls, nice.
Third day in Fürth, walk through the city center: a sight of misery.
They exaggerate.
At first I saw the danger myself: So here comes Herr Müller from tranquil Altdorf and he’s taken aback. To be on the safe side, I got numbers. A serious study about major German cities, for example, labor market data from 1993 to ’97. Fürth came in 82nd out of 83 places. Only Pirmasens was worse, the shoe industry had just collapsed.
Well, at least there isn’t much room for improvement.
Is correct. Especially since the CSU, my party, in this situation – Grundig descent, 15,000 US soldiers away from Fürth – thought it would be good to dissolve the economics department in 1996. We did have vacancies in Fürth. Entrepreneurs told us: Of course we need space – but we don’t want “Fürth” on the letterhead.
After all: Since August 1998, Fürth has had an economics department again. And the winner was: Horst Mueller.
The advantage of this zero point situation was that I was able to hire new people and the fluctuation was then non-existent. Nevertheless, in the beginning I often toyed with the idea of simply running away. Just like the third day. That’s when I said to my wife in the evening: “I won’t stay in the nest for half a year.”
Congratulations on the ability to predict.
There is a sentence: “Fürth doesn’t attract, but it holds.” I found it completely absurd at first. Today it fits my biography exactly. Another sentence that I always heard at first: “The devil’s work for retail in Fürth is the subway to Nuremberg.”
Because it deducts all purchasing power?
Supposedly yes. To which I replied: The essence of every subway in the world, from my observation, is that it runs in two directions. It depends on the offer. Quite simply: the offer at Comödie Fürth is right – people come to Fürth.
Only 20 years ago, Fürth’s shopping streets actually looked desolate. Today, retail sales in Nuremberg are falling, while in Fürth they rose by 14 percent between 2008 and 2022.
I admit that certain numbers make me happy. In 2009, the source bankruptcy, Fürth had 14.9 percent unemployment. Today we are under 5. Fürth has around 52,000 employees who are subject to social security contributions. 25 years ago: 38,000. The trade tax was around 25 million euros. Today: 95 million euros. In terms of population, we are also the fastest growing regional authority in northern Bavaria. 13.2 percent growth in ten years, an increase of 15,639 inhabitants.
Is not always pure joy for cities.
And not a quality criterion per se, that’s true. Only: In the past, people didn’t want to register a business or live here. Has changed.
What actually happened in Fürth that everything is so different now?
A portrait of Ludwig Erhard hangs on the wall in my office. Of course I’m a supporter of the social market economy. But I am also deeply convinced that a city must make structural policy. She must! It must not leave everything to the market.
Says a man who is not at home on the left in party politics.
We were so devastated, we only had two alternatives: either we surrender – okay, we’re just a purely residential city at best, you can also shop elsewhere. Or we say: there is purchasing power, it just mustn’t be allowed to drain away all the time. So you need niches. We also had a little Dusel with us. In the case of the “Neue Mitte”, for example, an investor jumped out of us. In retrospect, that was good: A closed shopping center would have destroyed a lot in the public space.
The city then bought many of the houses in the “Neue Mitte” itself.
Very unusual, but that was the only way we could decide for ourselves. A commercial building model was realized – and today many do not even recognize the “Neue Mitte” as a shopping center. That’s exactly the joke. And because that’s the case, we were then able to revitalize the former “City Center” in the neighborhood, today’s “Flair”, which the SZ rightly found to be exceptional. That’s just an example. Luck is also part of it. As the icing on the cake: Our weekly market, which everyone envies us for, and which won the Bavarian City Marketing Prize.
Fürth’s new shopping center, called “Flair”, was inaugurated in 2021.
(Photo: Olaf Przybilla)
The weekly market of Fürth, award-winning, was opened in 2019.
(Photo: Olaf Przybilla)
In retrospect, was it lucky that some things took so long, the “City Center” for example?
Should be like that. Because we were so far behind, we now have a lot that fits the times. A weakness becomes a strength. Another example: Fürth was hardly destroyed and has too small areas for chain stores. So we actively take care of small, owner-managed businesses with our own city center officers in the economic department. It is precisely these that make up the flair of a city.
During the Second World War, Fürth – like the Hornschuch promenade here – was hardly destroyed.
(Photo: Olaf Przybilla)
But somehow an image always remains. recently has a card game provided amusement, in which Fürth is counted among the ugliest cities in the republic. And when a FAZ reporter in Fürth wanted to watch Mr Gauck as the future Federal President in 2012, he apparently got off the wrong note: “A working class town that has become poor, in whose old town only Normas and Backexpresse and Asian snacks are open, in which the pubs are lit by neon lights tiled and empty and without a kitchen, dark and dead and gloomy in the evenings.”
That probably goes under “historical image”, exactly. That was wrong to ridiculous in 2012 and even more so today. gift. Can we laugh about it?