“The awardee is silent,” says Volker Kauder. And this reluctance is typical of how the long-standing leader of the Union faction has behaved since leaving the Bundestag: He is hardly ever seen in Berlin. But now he will be in the limelight again. The Federal President wants to award him with the “Great Cross of Merit with Star” this Monday, and the Federal Chancellor will also take part in the ceremony. Kauder does not want to say anything about the award ceremony. But if you ask him what he’s been up to since he left politics, he starts talking.
From 2005 to 2018 – longer than any of his predecessors – Kauder was head of the Union faction and one of Angela Merkel’s most important pillars over the years. His deselection in September 2018 was also seen as a sign of the chancellor’s decline in authority in the Union. A month after Kauder’s defeat, Merkel announced her withdrawal from the CDU presidency.
Kauder is now committed to the Paulskirche and the Kohl Foundation
Kauder is now 72 years old. He is now head of a commission of experts on the future of the Paulskirche and chairman of the board of trustees of the Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl Foundation, says Kauder. He is currently preparing an exhibition in Berlin with the Kohl Foundation. It should not only be about the memory of the former chancellor and his major political decisions. They also want to carry Kohl’s core thesis, “Europe is a peace project,” into the present day.
Kauder says his work for the Paulskirche in Frankfurt is about showing that democracy has to be fought for and defended again and again. “Our democracy is a very purist democracy – it has very few opportunities to present itself.” Places in the history of democracy such as the Paulskirche are therefore important.
The Paulskirche has been a fairly simple meeting place since it was rebuilt after the war. Visitors are therefore often disappointed, says Kauder. It is now a question of how best to change the building. In addition, a “House of Democracy” should be created next to the Paulskirche, in which there are also rooms for seminars and much more. In the coming year, the commemoration year of 175 years of the German National Assembly, the Federal President will also come to the Paulskirche.
Steinmeier’s and Kauder’s political paths crossed again and again
This Monday, however, Frank-Walter Steinmeier will first award Kauder the Great Cross of Merit with a star at Bellevue Palace – this is a high level of the Federal Cross of Merit. Last year the Federal Cross of Merit was awarded 1111 times, but only 24 times at the level that Kauder is now to be awarded. At the ceremony, Steinmeier will also address the former Union faction leader. The Federal President will be able to draw from the full. Because the two have known each other for a long time, their political paths have crossed again and again.
In 2005, as CDU general secretary, Kauder was responsible for his party’s federal election campaign. At the time, the Union wanted to replace the red-green federal government, in which Steinmeier was head of the chancellery. After the election, the two found themselves in a joint coalition – Steinmeier as Foreign Minister, Kauder as Union faction leader. After the federal elections in 2009, they parted ways: Steinmeier became SPD faction leader – and thus leader of the opposition against a black-yellow coalition in which Kauder continued to lead the Union faction.
After the federal elections in 2013, the two were again in a coalition: Steinmeier again as foreign minister and Kauder still as parliamentary group leader. In 2017, during Steinmeier’s first election as Federal President, Kauder explained that Steinmeier was “with full conviction” also a candidate for the Union – and he firmly assumed that Steinmeier would be elected in the first ballot. That’s how it happened. Since then, Steinmeier has been Federal President.