The question is not yet ready, Olaf Scholz has already given the answer. What would he rather talk about, asks a moderator, about getting up or lying down? Before she has said the last word, Scholz bursts out: “Get up.” What else.
Wednesday evening in the Astor film lounge on Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm, a former Ufa cinema with leather seats and a cocktail bar, where film stars from the 1950s were guests. On this evening there are 60 minutes of Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrats’ candidate for chancellor as a kind of star, of whom one does not know whether he has the future ahead of him – or already behind him. As Federal Finance Minister of the expiring grand coalition, the candidate has had a good few weeks behind him.
He was the man with the money during the flood and the German who worked with the US to drive the global minimum tax that is supposed to bring more justice. Actually, very social democratic. The only difference is that the SPD is at most 17 percent in the polls. There is no alternative to getting up and walking on, so to speak, if that should work out with the Chancellery for the SPD and him on September 26th.
The evening is designed in such a way that the candidate should also let out what he thinks, feels, what drives him and what else he does through playful-sounding questions. “Brigitte Live” is according to the magazine Brigitte named, a personal quiz, moderated by two journalists from the women’s magazine. One after the other, the candidates for chancellor made their appearance here. First Annalena Baerbock, then Armin Laschet, now Olaf Scholz. And because Angela Merkel not only gave well-considered insights into her life as a cooking housewife on “Brigitte Live”, but also revealed that she did not want to oppose marriage for everyone, one has since been curious what the evening will bring.
His biggest defeat? The violence at the G20 summit
At Scholz you can learn a lot about his inner workings. Well-dosed like the Chancellor, he grants a few personal insights, you can tell that he has prepared. That he was actually a late riser, but that he rarely got around to it. That his wife ticks the other way around and that he fears that if they are “just a retired couple” in many years’ time, he will probably come to breakfast when his wife has lunch. His wife Britta Ernst, Minister of Education in Brandenburg, appears in every answer. “She made me a different person,” says Scholz. “A better one?” – “Secure.” – “For example?” No, he says, at this point the insight into the private must be over.
The most surprising moment of the evening is when he is asked about the greatest defeat of his long political career. “The most dramatic thing I experienced was the violence at the G-20 summit in Hamburg”. After that he was at many G7 or G20 meetings, but he never had to experience this violence again. To this day, he is depressed again and again that at the time, although he had promised as First Mayor, he “was not able to protect the citizens as I promised”.
A few questions further, he even has a double role: that of the experienced pandemic manager and prudent finance minister. Unvaccinated adults should soon bear the costs for corona rapid tests themselves, says Scholz. Not now, but “in the near future”. It is not possible for the state to continue to bear the costs if there is a “better alternative of vaccination”. However, this should not apply to those who could not be vaccinated for health reasons or for whom – as for children – there is no vaccination recommendation. For everyone else, the tests should be “as cheap as possible” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/. “I don’t think it’s about punishment.”
And shouldn’t anyone say that Scholz has no sense of humor. He is said to be so unemotional? “I am applying to be a chancellor, not a ringmaster.” When asked whether he wants to talk about money or life, he chooses the latter. When the moderator said in astonishment that she would have definitely thought that he would choose the money, he says: “Just because I’m finance minister, I don’t have to run through the world as the undead”.
And then comes the question about his wife
And what is actually Smurfy? Scholz squirms a little. He found it very funny that CSU boss Markus Söder once called his smile: “They are nice people.” And, yes, his smile was probably mischievous.
The moderators do not manage to upset Scholz. But the reverse is true. After a few minutes of the fact that women are still disadvantaged in their jobs and in social life and Scholz has raised the quota question to a question of power “that affects everyone personally”, he is asked whether his wife will still go to work when he does Would chancellor? Scholz looks horrified. What a question, she was a successful politician. At the very end, when the faux pas had almost been forgotten, the moderator suddenly apologized for the “dumbest question” she had asked in a long time. And one wonders if that was really necessary.