Schäuble turns 80: He doesn’t want to be anymore

Head of the Chancellery, parliamentary group leader, party leader, minister, President of the Bundestag: Wolfgang Schäuble was already so much. He would probably also have liked to become chancellor or federal president. Now he’s 80.

“Respice finem”: Consider the end of everything you do – that’s Wolfgang Schäuble’s motto. It was former Chancellor Angela Merkel who mockingly quoted this recently when she was asked in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” about the now simple MP Schäuble. That Wolfgang Schäuble, who at the age of 79 thought he would have to run again for the Bundestag in September 2021 and then lost his office as President of the Bundestag when his Union lost the election.

“Respice finem” that is. It was not meant in a friendly manner by Merkel, who always respected Schäuble when they were together but rarely sought his closeness outside of work and politics. They both use the formal name – until today. But the chancellor apparently valued the gnarly finance minister’s advice and analytical foresight so much that when Schäuble was absent for weeks in 2010 due to illness, she rejected two resignation offers from the conscientious Baden native.

Bundestag record holder

In December, Schäuble will be in Parliament for 50 years as a member of the Offenburg constituency. No one has done it before him, not even August Bebel. Schäuble likes to talk about a sense of duty. Of the boys asking the old man to pass on his advice and knowledge. Schäuble’s wife Ingeborg has long since resigned after 53 years together. Her husband is most interested in politics, she said. He himself says: “I don’t need anything more. I don’t need to become anything anymore. And I don’t want to become anything anymore either.” Schäuble was already so much: Minister for 19 years. Head of the Chancellery, parliamentary group leader, party leader, interior and finance minister.

“I’m not easy to care for”

But the breaks in his life also tell of what he didn’t become, although he probably wanted to: Chancellor. Helmut Kohl, who stubbornly clung to office and renewed his candidacy, prevented Schäuble. When Johannes Rau left as Federal President, it was Chancellor Merkel who prevented a Federal President Schäuble, also because the FDP and CSU did not really want him. Wounds remained, but so did Schäuble. “I’m not easy to care for. Not easy. But I’m loyal,” he once said.

That is certainly true on the whole, but in the small print of power there were half-sentences from the man that, at the height of the refugee year 2015, certainly scratched the Chancellor and CDU leader Merkel. When a Schäuble says before a CDU election party conference that Merkel will very likely be re-elected, the then camp of Merkel critics pricked up their ears.

I’m over

As Minister of Finance, however, he was the inventor of the black zero. Another Schäuble word that achieved cult status. “Nobel prize winners think I have nothing but a zero in my head,” Schäuble once blasphemed, because science castigated Schäuble’s notorious need to save. But he, who likes to be right and lets everyone feel it, stayed the course. He became the hated figure of a Greece balancing on the brink of national bankruptcy in the euro crisis. “On February 28, 2015 at midnight it’s over,” he once formulated an ultimatum. In Baden English. Greece delivered. But “Isch over” has remained a cult expression to this day.

Suitcase with 100,000 German marks

In 1972 – Willy Brandt was chancellor – the man who wanted to become a lawyer came to parliament through the Junge Union. Schäuble made a career and was seen by many in the CDU in the 1990s as the next star after Kohl. A politician who had convictions, distrusted moods. The fact that he accepted a suitcase with 100,000 Deutschmarks from the arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber as a party donation in 1994 later led to another break in the life of the man, who usually considered himself the smartest. Merkel succeeded Schäuble as party leader, but brought him into her cabinet as interior minister in 2005 and four years later as finance minister.

The East German chancellor and the man who, according to his own statements, as head of the chancellery, had the idea of ​​the standard contract. Since then, Schäuble has also been considered one of the architects of the German stroke of luck. “That was the most moving moment in my political life,” says Schäuble later SWR-Interview. “The wall is going up. The wall is going up. If we do reunification again, we’ll do it the same way again,” says Schäuble. “But not in an election year.”

reunification and assassination

Nine days after October 3, 1990, Schäuble was seriously injured by a mentally disturbed assassin at an election rally in his Offenburg constituency. Two shots put Schäuble in a wheelchair. For Schäuble, reunification and the assassination are forever intertwined. Incidentally, Schäuble later often accused the West Germans of never having been willing to change. And 32 years after reunification, Schäuble demands more respect for East Germany.

But he personally occasionally failed to do so. A press conference on the tax estimate in 2011 gave insight into how merciless this Schäuble can be not only towards himself but also towards others. He paraded his then press secretary on the open stage for several humiliating minutes. Just because the man didn’t have a press release distributed before the start. Most of the journalists in the room laughed at the time. A day later, many were ashamed of them and the Minister of Finance, who is said to have regretted his appearance afterwards.

Schäuble for Laschet

Schäuble then made headlines on a spring night in Berlin last year. The open battle between CSU boss Markus Söder and Armin Laschet, the official candidate for chancellor, raged for the top position. Who can chancellor? The Union was deeply divided. Söder teased, Laschet stumbled. Schäuble, however, made the difference in a late-night crisis meeting. The man from Baden wanted the man from North Rhine-Westphalia. Schäuble considered Laschet to be more binding and more communicable. Söder gave in. Schäuble prevailed and with Laschet the Union lost the election. Some in the party later angrily rumored about old-school backroom politics.

Wolfgang Schäuble, who lost his beloved office as President of the Bundestag with the election defeat, has accepted his new role. Row six in the plenary session of the Bundestag. A place at least with a table. He gave his last speech as senior president of the house. Schäuble opened the constituent session of the 20th Bundestag. “Political leadership requires us MPs to look at the really big tasks,” Schäuble called into the hall at the time. This includes being willing to expect something from people. After all, this is what the mandate obliges us to do. On his 80th birthday, that time of impertinence in the midst of a war in Europe seems to have come.