Sometimes in this cultural state, everything comes together in a very amazing way. Like last weekend. Markus Söder (CSU) was not personally at the 500th anniversary of the Bavarian State Orchestra in the opera on Sunday, but left a lasting impression with a video message. This brought him boos, “embarrassing” calls and applause. The latter in exactly the place that Söder intended for a laugh: politicians and prime ministers are interchangeable compared to a cultural institution like the celebrated one. yes my
The audience was large, the National Theater was fully occupied with around 2000 spectators, many deserving citizens invited to the subsequent state ceremony, including Minister of State Claudia Roth (Greens), board members of the listed Munich companies, general directors of the state museums, composers, current and former state directors. The ceremony was also broadcast on the radio.
But where was Söder actually live and in color at that time?
A few hours earlier, on Saturday evening, Söder was still in the Munich Künstlerhaus, which is a five-minute walk from the opera. He celebrated there – together with Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann, Ilse Aigner and Minister of Art Markus Blume (all CSU), ex-Federal President Christian Wulff, ex-Söder adversary Armin Laschet and Saxony-Anhalt’s MP Reiner Haseloff (all CDU) along with many non-politicians like the painter Markus Lüpertz – the 70th birthday of a single man: Leslie Mandoki. And he also gave an all-round successful, somewhat humorous speech about this busy music producer, all-star band leader and ex-pop hero with a Genghis Khan past. Yes, as you know, he can do that too.
The next day, however, he frankly admitted that he would not be at the Staatskapelle’s 500th anniversary celebrations. He already suspected the “bad comments”, he laughed, but he had to have a cabaret dialogue.
And that led Söder to Wargolshausen, while 500 years of music history were being celebrated in Munich, from Orlando di Lasso to Wagner and Strauss and beyond. There he was the surprise guest at a morning pint entitled “Brezel, Bier un domm’s Gebabbel” by Fredi Breunig. He brought the Bavarian Order of Merit to the cabaret artist, who was quite unknown in southern Bavaria, to the Rhön in Lower Franconia. Wargolshausen has 450 inhabitants, from babies to old people.
So what does that tell us? But not that Markus Söder prefers a handful of sure voters in his Franconian homeland to an opera full of uncertainties in the National Theater? And that he has long since given up the state capital as a battlefield for his campaign tour? That would not be sporty – or at least: not nice.