Editorial
Editor-in-Chief
Gregor Peter Schmitz about an uneasy feeling during the Scholz interview and the current star
Suddenly torn apart: In the current star Children of separation talk about their experiences
© star
The plain-text interview with Chancellor Scholz has triggered strong reactions. star-Editor-in-chief classifies the voices and gives an insight into the new issue.
We journalists conduct interviews so that they can be read. That’s why we were happy that the star-Conversation with Chancellor Olaf Scholz (“I don’t tend to cry”) triggered violent reactions. However, I felt a bit uneasy when our cover photo even appeared in the politician’s This is the first step star-Conversation.
It is not journalistic whining if this leads to the concern that we might have created too much of a stage for the Chancellor. But that wasn’t the case, the conversation was conducted just as critically as any other politician interview, perhaps even more critically, Scholz is, after all, the boss of the whole thing.
But his team has apparently recognized two points: a head of government who speaks in understandable sentences is heard more. And: Scholz and the SPD may not be particularly popular with voters right now. But social democratic demands that the interview revolved around, such as a significantly higher minimum wage and a generous pension policy, are well received by the population. As a current Forsa study shows, more than 80 percent of Germans want to stick to the “retirement at 63” option.
Can Scholz gain ground again in the election campaign with socialist demands, especially against his rival Friedrich Merz? That is the SPD’s big bet, and that is why we will probably soon see a Chancellor who speaks plainly more often.
Principality of Monaco and Rammstein
Somerset Maugham wrote that the Côte d’Azur is a “sunny place for shady people”, a sunny place for rather gloomy, even windy types. I will leave it up to you to judge what it says about me that I particularly love this region: the light, the sea, the colors, the cities. However, there is one place in the region that I have no affection for, and that is Monaco, the very place for which Maugham coined his bon mot.
Fortunately, our France correspondent Andrea Ritter is more open-minded: she took a look around the principality, where Formula 1 cars will once again be racing through the streets this weekend. She discovered a number of things that justify my suspicions (she wrote to me: “Plain concrete blocks overshadow the pastel-colored palaces of a bygone era, dark-glazed skyscrapers tower into the sky, bright yellow Lamborghinis and candy-orange Mustangs jostle under green palm trees…”). But Ritter also found out why even a billionaire enclave has to think about new business models, such as becoming a clean tax haven and one that is concerned with environmental protection.
The fact that Rammstein singer Till Lindemann – you know: the one with the “Row Zero” scandal, with penis cannons and “Pussy” songs – is a rather shady person is something he himself would happily confirm. His fans are celebrating him again at concerts anyway, and the proceedings against Lindemann have been dropped. Has anything changed at least in the music industry and especially in how stars treat their fans? The journalist Lena Kampf and the journalist Daniel Drepper, both of whom were significantly involved in the Rammstein research, have published a book from which we are printing an excerpt in advance, supplemented by research by my colleague Thembi Wolf, who attended one of the Rammstein concerts in Dresden and my colleague David Baum. In short, your result is: Yes, but…