Retirement from office: When politics makes you sick

As of: October 12, 2024 11:49 a.m

Be accessible, explain defeats, show strength: the everyday life of a politician is hard. Now Kevin Kühnert has retired for his health. Insights into a world that can make you sick.

Gabor Halasz

It’s just a few days before his resignation: Kevin Kühnert is sitting in Markus Lanz’s talk show chair. He starts to greet him and tells Kühnert to explain the election results again. The SPD politician already seems tired when he says “hello”. General Secretaries always have to give answers. In the morning Morning magazine and in the evening daily topics. The day is always too short and there is never enough time.

“So the 40 hours are up on Wednesday,” says someone who should know. Peter Tauber was also General Secretary for a good four years for the CDU. This is not a “nine to five job”. There is usually no weekend. “Someone says something stupid. Someone lights a fire. You can’t say today is Saturday.” You always have to be available, says Tauber. And today he honestly says that he missed the moment and ignored warning signs. “In that respect, Kevin was smarter than me.”

“It didn’t work anymore”

One morning at three o’clock Tauber was lying at home in severe pain and had actually been scheduled for an interview at six o’clock. “It didn’t work anymore. I have to call the emergency doctor.” Peter Tauber has severe intestinal inflammation. Hospital and several operations follow.

Today he has completely withdrawn from professional politics. And from a distance, some things seem strange to him too. Especially election nights.

Favorite example: The Berlin round – when he has to explain defeats. “You don’t sit down and say: wrong candidate.” After all, people were campaigning on a voluntary basis and he couldn’t punch them in the nose in front of the camera. “But then you say, they fought well. And I thank our members, even though the election results are disastrous. Every outsider says: What is he saying?”

Peter Tauber (photo from 2020) was CDU general secretary for about four years – today he has retired from professional politics.

Keep explaining election results

Ricarda Lang should also know a feeling like that. She is still the head of the Green Party and she has recently had to repeatedly explain poor election results – for example for her own social media channels. “And I stood there in front of the camera and said to the team: ‘To be honest: I don’t feel like standing here now and saying: We just have to do 1, 2, 3 and then everything will be fine again’,” she says in one ARD-Documentation.

Admit it’s not easy. Ricarda Lang can do that now. A short time later she announced that she was withdrawing from the Green Party leadership.

Fear of losing power

Show weakness, be sick. Many fear that this can cost power. In 1989, the then Chancellor and CDU leader Helmut Kohl had to fear for his power. A coup is underway against him at the party conference in Bremen. Kohl should actually go to the doctor, but he endures the severe pain and wins the power struggle. It probably didn’t work in his eyes to admit that he was sick.

Peter Struck, the Federal Defense Minister from the SPD, later saw it that way. He suffered a stroke while in office, which he initially kept secret even from Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Merkel’s tremors

But the fact that there isn’t enough strength can’t always be hidden. In 2019, Chancellor Angela Merkel received Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Military honors in front of the Chancellery. As the German anthem plays and the cameras are trained on Merkel, she begins to shake. She’s fine and there’s nothing to worry about, she says shortly afterwards. The topic is ticked off until the Chancellor trembles again and remains seated during the anthems.

It was only years later – when she was no longer in office – that Merkel explained: She was exhausted after her mother’s death and didn’t drink enough. “And in the end it was a kind of fear: if such a situation ever occurred again.”

Persuader in politics

Manuela Schwesig was also sick. She is retiring from federal politics in 2019 because of cancer. And remains Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Kühnert’s resignation doesn’t leave her unmoved. She speaks in the ARD-Broadcast maischberger of persuasive people in politics. “You have to imagine it like a football club. Maybe not in terms of content, but in terms of feeling.”

The persuasive person was the CDU politician Tauber. He also says that anyone who goes into politics has to be robust. But he admits he didn’t really know what was coming. “It would have helped me if, when I was first elected to the German Bundestag, someone hadn’t just shown me where the copier was.”

Honesty would have been better. To say: How much time the job as a professional politician costs and that you are constantly being watched. “You have to learn to give yourself breaks because politics doesn’t take breaks,” he says. It is important to take care of yourself. Tauber did that. Leads a different life today – beyond politics. He has no plans to return to the front row.

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