Nothing happens in politics without ulterior motives, but sometimes one would like to know exactly what they are. On Tuesday morning, Markus Söder’s Twitter channel sent a photo showing his master having breakfast with his counterpart from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Manuela Schwesig. Söder looks so happy as if he were about to throw out a newly devised mess against old party friends. And Schwesig grins so mischievously that it’s hard to believe that the two really only talked about a new liquid gas terminal.
Sure, a breakfast with a Bavarian alpha male and an alpha female from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania – it’s not just Söder and Schwesig who think of Stoiber and Merkel. Both laughed at first in Wolfratshausen, but finally only one. And as the saying goes: best too.
In general, the combination of “Bavarian man and East German woman” is often toxic, as people like to say nowadays. Especially for the man. But a popular one: The Oktoberfest, which will soon be celebrated again, arose from the marriage of the then Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig to Therese, Princess of Sachsen-Hildburghausen. It is said that Queen Therese was very popular with the people, while Ludwig I had to abdicate because he had behaved in a way that in Bavaria was casually said: “The whole Bua a Depp!” circumscribes.
The Bavaria statue on Munich’s Theresienwiese: a woman from Prussia
Incidentally, the eighteen-and-a-half meter tall monumental statue of Bavaria commissioned by Ludwig on the Theresienwiese also has something to do with an East German woman. The sculptor Ludwig Schwanthaler used her to immortalize a married woman from Berlin named Cornelia, with whom he had fallen madly, but also unhappily, in love, as he revealed shortly before his death in 1848. The Bavarian national allegory, a woman from Prussia – nothing comes to mind.
The relationship of the Bavarian man to the East German woman is thus a tricky one, and the man does not necessarily cut the best figure, as history teaches. The consequences of the meeting between Söder and Schwesig cannot be foreseen today. Not only in terms of energy can be said: Markus can dress warmly!