Söder is coming to Regensburg! Scholz is visiting the flood area in Reichertshofen. Aiwanger is in the flood area! These were some of the headlines that ran across the tickers or could be read on news websites last week. Sometimes with an exclamation mark. Often very short and sweet: Söder is coming! It doesn’t matter where, the main thing is that someone comes to the little people. And then looks at the water. These appointments are usually no more productive, neither for the residents nor for journalists.
For politicians sometimes. Whole elections have been won with such visits, depending on the performance of the politician in rubber boots – or not, see Armin Laschet, who unfortunately laughed in the disaster area at the time.
:The Visitation
Cellars are filling up, families are being brought to safety, and there is once again talk of a “flood of the century.” We must now “dedicate much more attention to the climate crisis,” says Markus Söder. The question remains as to what will be left of this sentence in a few months.
The genre “Politician XY visits the common people” (and the subcategory “Politician XY looks at the water”) naturally has its roots in the flood in Bavaria experienced a new edition. With rubber boots again, of course. Söder also wore a rain jacket with the Bavaria coat of arms.
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on the other hand, is not waiting until things get tough and there is mud and dirt everywhere. He is moving his entire official residence to wherever people live in Germany, unless it has to be Berlin or Munich: He is coming to Weiden in Upper Palatinate on June 25th and will stay for three full days.
Things have remained relatively dry in Weiden, and Steinmeier doesn’t have to be elected right now. “Local Time Germany” is the name of this series, in which Steinmeier has already resided in various places in Germany that probably not everyone knows, or as the press office puts it: “Places that shape social and economic change and are therefore not constantly in the public spotlight.” In other words, all places that are not Berlin or Munich. That’s good!
But then it gets a bit confusing: The visits are “not a presidential flying visit,” his press people say, there are always several “meetings” on the agenda, including “spontaneous” ones, in order to find out what “is bothering people.” So anyone who thinks that this is a three-day visit instead of a one-hour visit to the flood area is very much mistaken.
What it is exactly, however, requires a whole video from the head of protocol at the Federal President’s Office. The official residence of the Federal President is Bellevue Palace in Berlin, the place where Steinmeier does his work. Steinmeier will therefore set up camp in those places and the standard at Bellevue Palace will also be taken down and hoisted in the respective city.
Loosely translated: Steinmeier is bringing his work laptop with him to Weiden.