After three years in office, Mayor Marcus König takes stock. The CSU man emphasizes his leadership role – but also admits that he made false assumptions about a failed pioneering project.
A big city with a castle has the problem that you have to choose between the view over the city and the view of the castle. Or allows the construction of publicly accessible high-rise buildings where this can be combined. The latter, accessible high-rise buildings near the old town, is now available in Nuremberg. And Lord Mayor Marcus König (CSU) would not have received sufficient PR training from a Minister President who also came from Nuremberg if he missed the view from the window of such a building for a mid-term review.
So you look at Nuremberg plus the Kaiserburg – and König says: “It’s worth getting up for every day.” Why a balance sheet exactly on March 29th? Exactly three years ago the CSU man won the runoff and remembers the call from his predecessor, Ulrich Maly (SPD), who congratulated him and threw an “So tomorrow, FüGK” when he said goodbye. König did not know the abbreviation. It stands for Lead Group Disaster Response.
Taking office in the midst of a pandemic may be considered conditionally subject to entertainment tax. The same applies to a balance sheet exactly two days after what is probably the city’s most ambitious post-war cultural project – the interim move of the opera house – before the start of construction postponed for at least 18 months had to become. City councilors have not been sparing with criticism since then. König replies that it is “sensational” to know exactly where you want to go with the replacement venue after years without a concrete perspective: “It doesn’t matter a year and a half.”
Not only in terms of photo motifs, but also in terms of buzzword intensity, König can keep up to some extent with other CSU executives from Nuremberg. The expansion of the “largest pedestrian zone in Europe” falls within his tenure, it is “intelligence instead of ideology”. He committed himself to green in the city, kept his promise “One tree per baby”, initiated the “urban garden show”: “We want to be a feel-good city.” He will not only continue to make progress on the goal of climate neutrality: “I want to be a leader, not a follower.”
The new ICE plant that might not find a place in the Nuremberg metropolitan area after all? It’s just difficult to find enough space, but he still hopes for it. His announcement that Nuremberg would make history as the first major German city with a 365-euro ticket? “I was bold there,” says König. He had hoped that he would lead the way and that everyone in the region would follow him: “That hasn’t quite happened now.” Such is a “learning process”. König had promised that the city would introduce such a ticket for everyone from 2023. was a year ago buried the plan been.