To be an honorary citizen in Munich is a fine thing. You can ride the tram, bus or subway through the city for free. Your own name will be immortalized on plaques in the foyer of the old town hall, where you can admire yourself in prominent company – from Richard Strauss to Franz Josef Strauss, from Leo von Klenze to Philipp Lahm. Oh yes, and then you can also use the beautiful large hall upstairs for festivities of all kinds. At Christian Ude’s on Friday evening it was a celebratory menu on the occasion of the 75th birthday of the former mayor (which, by the way, is also an honorary title and is not related to age).
It was an illustrious company that gathered at long tables, bowed their heads over the porcini and chestnut soup and raised their glasses to the jubilee. The SPD politician, who set a small record of being mayor for more than 20 years, longer than anyone else, apparently has the best connections in highly decorated circles. Two tables were peppered with other honorary citizens – from the actresses Michaela May and Jutta Speidel, the literature dealer Rachel Salamander, heart surgeon Bruno Reichart to the former mayor Gertraud Burkert. In addition, wife Edith Welser-Ude and the gathered SPD celebrities from the city council and state parliament, in between scattered black swabs, many former members of the Greens parliamentary group – and personally welcomed: Ude’s former CSU antipode Peter Gauweiler. In 1993, the two had fought to become Lord Mayor and exchanged little or nothing. Now something of a respectful approach has emerged from it. “You can argue that things will fly. But then you can become companions and write books together, that’s only possible in Munich,” said Christian Ude happily during the welcome speech, which was short by his standards.
Anyone who has become real friends over the years as boss in Munich City Hall can also be seen at the other tables, where Simone Rethel, actress and widow of Johannes Heesters was sitting, Mercedes and Dieter Hanitzsch, Florian Post, who had left SPD, and Christian Scharpf, who started out as a personal assistant in Ude’s office and has since made a career as mayor of Ingolstadt.
In any case, SPD mayor Verena Dietl said in her birthday laudation that “the Ude era was a stroke of luck for Munich” and that it was thanks to the jubilee that we had a “diverse urban society”. When there was a really long, rhythmic applause in the hall, the honorary citizen Ude became very quiet and later said: “As a guest, you have to let yourself be celebrated in silence.”