Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder turns 80 today. Hardly anyone from his party will congratulate the Social Democrat. The SPD has distanced itself from Russia’s ruler Putin because of his friendship.
The power man, the first media chancellor and currently the most controversial social democrat Gerhard Schröder is celebrating his 80th birthday. However, his party is unlikely to officially congratulate him today. The SPD and Schröder have been at odds since his refusal to distance himself from Putin and his Ukraine course. The Basta Chancellor of yesteryear probably didn’t care much about that.
“I’m still waiting today for the headline: Thank you Chancellor.” This was the typical Schröder sound. Despite his 80th birthday, Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder may once again be waiting in vain for this “Thank you, Chancellor”. But maybe there will be singing Cossacks again like on his 60th birthday. Back then, 20 years ago, Vladimir Putin appeared with a Cossack choir in Hanover, Lower Saxony.
“Of course it’s better to have praise than criticism”
But times have also changed. Putin is unlikely to appear at the 80th. He is on the wanted list as a suspected war criminal and Schröder has been on the index for a long time, at least in parts of an SPD that, like Bundestag President Bärbel Bas, feels more pity. “I just find it sad to end up destroying a political legacy,” said the Social Democrat.
But even on his 80th birthday, Schröder probably doesn’t care much about what others think of him. At least that’s what Schröder once said in one ARD-Documentation when asked whether it was important to him how other people would see him: “Not necessarily. But of course people would much rather have praise than criticism. No question. But that doesn’t determine my life,” says Schröder.
His life is now divided into a before and an after. At the latest after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the respected agenda chancellor, the no-to-the-Iraq-war socialist, the Kosovo and Afghanistan war chancellor became a supposed person who understands Russia.
He remains true to himself and Putin
Schröder recently described his SPD as a sheepfold. It smells a little strong from the outside. But it’s nice and warm inside. However, the former chancellor is now the black sheep of German social democracy.
Schröder doesn’t care, at least publicly. He remains what his friends call determined and his critics call stubborn. He remains true to himself and Putin.
“It must be up to me. After everything I’ve been through, it doesn’t surprise me much.” Schöder once said in an interview with Reinhold Beckmann about both praise and criticism. This Gerhard Schröder is not someone who says he never changes. “That would be strange if people didn’t change over the course of a long life.”
The Agenda 2010 Chancellor
October 27, 1998 was also a date when Schröder from Lower Saxony and his world changed permanently. “Gerhard Schröder is the new Federal Chancellor. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” read out daily News-Speaker Ellen Arnhold on the day of the swearing-in at 8 p.m.
Since then, the ladies and gentlemen of this republic have experienced a creator of the Hartz laws, the Agenda 2010 Chancellor, a man of power who knows his Brecht well and also the story of Mr. Keuner, to whom a friend once said that he had no idea changed. “Oh, said Mr. K and turned pale,” Schröder quotes the Brecht story.
“Of course a person changes over the course of their life. Me too,” says the trained lawyer, who once grew up in poor circumstances.
Despite everything, not a bad word to say about the SPD
But the one constant that remains with Gerhard Schröder is his friendship with Vladimir Putin. For his 70th birthday, Schröder traveled to Saint Petersburg and was celebrated there by his Russian business partners and Putin.
And even then, either stubbornness or stubbornness shone through. “This is one of those points where I don’t allow myself to be told what to do and what not to do.” That’s it, he could have added more.
Despite everything, Schröder himself hasn’t said a bad word about his SPD, which made him chancellor in 1998, later banished him, tried to exclude him in vain, no longer invites him to party conferences and doesn’t celebrate him today.
Typical Schröder praise for Scholz
But this Schröder, as the Lower Saxon and companion Sigmar Gabriel once said, definitely has another, a very soft side. “When you realize that he didn’t become a social democrat because of his career.” For example, when Schröder talks about his origins, his homeland, his childhood. Then, says Gabriel, a completely different Schröder appears than the one we know from the public.
For example, Schröder publicly praises Olaf Scholz, his Social Democratic successor in the Chancellery. Like him, Scholz showed his absolute will to become chancellor. And have the ability to convey what he thinks very calmly and prudently.
When a Scholz biography was published some time ago, there was typical Schröder praise: “You can read the book in an hour and a half. You learn a lot about Olaf. You don’t need to know anything else.” To the audience’s laughter, Schröder then said laconically: “That’s right.”
Celebrate in Berlin with friends
That’s how he is, the former chancellor, whom Franz Müntefering once called the “master of the moment” and who likes Rilke, the master of words, so much and whose poem “Autumn Day”:
Sir: it’s time. The summer was very big.
Put your shadow on the sundials
And in the corridors let the winds loose.
Schröder once recited it 20 years ago in the ARD-Beckmann broadcast. Now, in the autumn of his life, the former chancellor is celebrating his 80th birthday. Later this month, Schröder’s fifth wife Kim So-yeon will organize a celebration with friends for her husband in Berlin.
Saskia Esken, the SPD co-leader, will probably not congratulate. Schröder shouldn’t care. “I don’t know Ms. Esken. But nice,” Schröder once said dryly when asked about the SPD co-leader.
In the end, the last verse of Rilke’s poem, as he wrote it back then, probably also applies to the football fan, social democrat and seventh chancellor of this republic ARD-Television free lecture:
If you don’t have a house now, you won’t build one anymore.
Anyone who is alone now will remain alone for a long time.
Will read, write long letters
And back and forth through the avenues
Wander slowly as the leaves emerge.
Georg Schwarte, ARD Berlin, tagesschau, April 7th, 2024 8:48 a.m
You can find out more about this topic in the ARD story “Off duty? The Gerhard Schröder Story” in the ARD media library.