It’s just after eight in the morning and the Winke robot is still practicing. The prime minister is coming soon, everything has to work. “High-tech agenda” is written on the flag that the machine is supposed to wave. It would be doing the inventors an injustice if the purpose of the machine were reduced to greeting Markus Söder. It’s a kind of household appliance, a learning machine arm designed to enable seniors to live longer at home cleaning the sink or, as one scientist explains, shaking cocktails at a cocktail party.
At the start of the semester, however, he waves to Söder. What is the beginning of learning for the students at the Technical University in Garching is like the start of the election campaign on university terrain for Söder.
But first Brendan Mance explains the moon rover Larss in the foyer, developed by a group of students. Larss is reminiscent of the vintage moon car from the 1960s, but is a 3D printer on wheels. He has a lens with which he focuses sunlight so precisely onto a point and heats it to 900 degrees that all sorts of shapes can be made from moondust. Houses, for example, Mance explains, or streets. “I think it’s great,” says Söder, the science fiction fan.
The lecture hall continues with the performance show that Söder and his Minister of Science Markus Blume know how to use for themselves. TU President Thomas Hofmann mentions the 199 new professors who have started in the past three years. And Wolfgang Wall, whose lecture on numerical mechanics is about to begin, explains that they are in a league with the university in Stanford.
Söder thinks it’s all great. He translates the professor’s technical terms in such a way that even the brightest minds can understand them: “The TU is one of the coolest universities there is, really.” The audience applauds. “What you are doing, technology, is the opportunity for all of us in the future.” He composes a hymn to the TU from keywords: high-tech, artificial intelligence, supercomputing, aerospace. “What do I mean by that?” Söder asks at some point. The honest answer would be: that his state government and his CSU and he himself are the best because they support the TU so well. “We’re fans of TUM,” says Söder in the pluralis majestatis, giving the competition from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Uni a note: “LMU is bigger, it’s also great, but TUM is a very sleek boat.”
Söder pushes the housing issue to his minister – and away from him
Too bad there is a problem. Student housing. Thousands of dormitories are missing in Munich, in the student town in Freimann 1300 places have been empty for years because the houses are so dilapidated. For the question and answer session, the topic of housing made it to the top of the online ranking: Does the government have a strategy for making housing reasonably cheap? “Your topic,” says Söder, pointing to his employee Blume. He pushes the causes of the housing misery away: The city of Munich must also do something for students, and he invites companies that are so happy to settle in Munich to do something too.
He also blames the main responsibility for the disaster on the Studierendenwerk: There were “mistakes” and “sometimes also mismanagement”. But now there is a new managing director who came from the TU: “Now we have to move forward with more momentum.” And where is the state government’s housing concept?
And Soeder? Don’t say anything. Other keywords from the list of questions follow, cannabis, 29-euro ticket for students, favorite beer. The politicians will soon be able to incorporate what they say into their campaign speeches. Then there is something from Söder about living in Munich, quite casually, and you can tell that he, who just spoke so fluently, may not be entirely familiar with the misery: “And this … uh … Students … students … um there in Freimann” – something has to happen there, “quickly above all things”.