One day after the election of Dominik Krause as second mayor, the city council alliance of the Greens and the Pink List reorganized its parliamentary group executive board. As expected, the previous chairman, Krause, will be replaced by his deputy, Sebastian Weisenburger, as co-boss alongside Mona Fuchs. This means that a woman and a man continue to have equal rights at the head of the strongest faction in the Munich city council.
Men and women continue to be represented equally on the six-member parliamentary group executive board; there have only been changes at the hierarchy levels. In addition to Clara Nitsche, the second deputy position is now taken over by another woman, the previous assessor Sibylle Stöhr. Christian Smolka was elected to take their place. David Süß sits on the committee as before.
“It has been a major upheaval for all of us in the past two weeks,” said Weisenburger after the special meeting of the 24-member green-pink parliamentary group on Thursday. The withdrawal from politics announced by Katrin Haben Schaden on October 11th caused turbulence for the Greens. The excitement has now subsided and the succession arrangements have largely been made. Now he is looking forward to the task “in a great management team,” said Weisenburger when he took office.
Weisenburger wants to continue the work of his predecessor
The 40-year-old announced that he wanted to continue Dominik Krause’s work. He experienced him as “willing to compromise, very pragmatic and much less ideological than you might think.” Weisenburger mentioned climate protection, local public transport with safe cycle paths and school routes, education and “the ongoing topic that has always been affordable housing” as particular priorities. This is also important to the coalition partner SPD/Volt. Together with him and the city leaders, he wanted to “continue to make very good politics for Munich,” he promised: “We have a lot to do.”
In this respect, Weisenburger was the obvious decision as parliamentary group leader because he has significantly more political experience than his deputy colleague Clara Nitsche. The 23-year-old came to the city council for the first time in 2020. Weisenburger has been involved with the Greens since 2007, and he took on his first mandate a year later when he was elected to District Committee 18 (Untergiesing-Harlaching). He served as spokesman for his parliamentary group until 2014; He has chaired the committee since the last local elections in May 2020.
In the meantime, Weisenburger also took on party offices, initially in the Giesing-Harlaching local branch (2009 to 2011). He then served as city chairman of the Munich Greens for three years, in a dual leadership role with Katharina Schulze, now parliamentary group leader in the state parliament. After Gülseren Demirel won the direct mandate for the state parliament in the Giesing district in 2018, he replaced her on the city council. Since May 2022 he has been a deputy on the parliamentary group board of the Greens/Pink List.
The Karlsruhe native came to Munich twenty years ago to study. He studied philosophy, political science and communication science at the Ludwig Maximilians University and briefly in Padua. His most recent professional position was at the Technical University, in the Chair of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence.
With Thursday’s appointments, the personnel castling in the green-pink parliamentary group is almost complete. All that’s missing is Gunda Krauss’s substitution for Julia Post. She was recently elected to the state parliament and wants to give back her city council mandate after being sworn in. In the next two weeks, Weisenburger announced on Thursday, the responsibilities in the green-pink parliamentary group will be redistributed: “Then we will decide who goes to which committee.”