It takes more than an end with an announcement to upset Wolfgang Schäuble. Even if the end has something historic about it: the city’s corona crisis management team has met exactly 194 times, with Schäuble at the helm from the start. Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) has now officially dissolved the committee, unsurprisingly, but with a small ceremony in the town hall. Schäuble then said on the phone that he was “grateful” that he could switch back to normal operations. “It went well overall.”
The mayor thinks so too. “I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you again to everyone who has given their all over the past three years, often having to do without weekends or after work. Without you, we would not have gotten through this difficult time so well,” he explained in writing. Reiter also thanked him personally, says Schäuble when asked. One can assume that the mayor also found warm words for him. We all know how much he appreciates Schäuble, the head of Munich’s professional fire brigade. It was not without reason that he entrusted him with the crisis management of the pandemic.
Reiter convened the staff for extraordinary events for the first time on March 2, 2020 – just over a month after the first German corona patient was admitted to the Schwabing Clinic on January 27. The first few months were “very challenging,” remembers Schäuble. Completely new structures had to be created for a threat that was to develop into the worst health crisis of the century. This is how Schäuble classifies the pandemic today.
In the beginning, the crisis team met every day: Schäuble, the city leaders, representatives of the departments concerned, invited guests with important tasks in the city. “Everyone worked concentrated and focused on the topic,” says Schäuble. That remains as a positive finding. The committee mainly had to deal with negative findings. Too few masks, too few medical staff, too few people willing to vaccinate, problems with recording cases – the pandemic created many sources of fire that had to be extinguished. In addition, the questions of who is allowed to leave the house when, who is allowed to meet with whom, whether the country’s rules were sufficient or were too restrictive, whether the city must and may act itself.
The specifications for the city administration also had to be readjusted again and again in the fight against the pandemic. A new version of the service instructions was created 42 times in the three years. Not only the staff, but many employees in the administration had three hard years, said Reiter according to the announcement at the ceremony. “All in all, it was only through the cooperation and commitment of so many different actors that we overcame the crisis well.” The mayor also reminded of the 2571 Munich residents who died as a result of Covid. And he spoke of courage to those still suffering the effects.
Corona has by no means disappeared, says Schäuble, only weakened to such an extent that the regular administrative system can now manage the further procedure. He is also glad that the crisis team is over. In the meantime, he had fared like so many people in Munich. “First wave, second wave, third wave, faster and faster, more and more intense. You get to a point where you ask yourself: Does it never stop?” At least the work in the crisis team is now over. But for Schäuble, that doesn’t mean the end of his special job as the city’s top crisis manager.
It wasn’t until the fall that he had to head a staff tasked with preparing the city for an impending energy shortage. Because of the war in Ukraine, there was a risk of a winter with too little electricity and possible heating shortages. At the same time, the head of the professional fire brigade also heads the crisis management team, which coordinated the arrival and accommodation of people who had fled from Ukraine. For a while, Schäuble headed three crisis teams at the same time. Possibly none again soon. What does that mean for him? A typically calm Schäuble sentence follows. “I can live well without a crisis team. But also well with it. I know how it works now.”