As of: 08/29/2021 6:18 a.m.
Early risers, cyclists and 100 percent loyal: Söder’s circle of power consists of a carefully selected group of long-term confidants. Who does it belong to?
Text messages early in the morning, lots of new boss ideas and sometimes the odd mood: Anyone who works for and with Markus Söder should be robust. For a good three years now, Söder has been the undisputed number one of the CSU in the double function of Bavarian Prime Minister and party leader – including a circle of closest confidants carefully built by him.
Söder is now also working intensively with people who already held central positions with his long-term internal adversary Horst Seehofer – for example, regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt, the Bavarian parliamentary group leader Thomas Kreuzer or Secretary General Markus Blume. All three occupy important interfaces for Söder in day-to-day business, with the federal level, with the parliamentary group, with their own party. And especially Blume verbally assures his party leader of his support at almost every opportunity, not least during Söder’s struggle for the candidacy for chancellor with CDU leader Armin Laschet in April.
But Söder has been with his really close circle for much longer. Even if he once publicly denied such ambitions: the 54-year-old Söder meticulously prepared his rise to the top of the Free State and CSU.
Prime Minister Söder on the way to the cabinet meeting. Behind him walk Florian Herrmann (right), Head of the State Chancellery and State Minister for Federal and European Affairs and the Media, and Ministerial Director Gregor Biebl (left).
Image: dpa
Gregor Biebl
Gregor Biebl, who holds a doctorate in law, has accompanied Söder since 2007. At that time, Söder became Minister for European Affairs in Bavaria, preferring to describe himself as the “Bavarian Foreign Minister”. At that time, Biebl was already a civil servant in the State Chancellery, where Söder was docked as European Minister – and, according to reports, was received critically by many as a career-conscious upstart. In the years that followed, Biebl Söder joined the Ministry of the Environment and later the Ministry of Finance. Since Söder’s return to the State Chancellery as Prime Minister in 2018, Biebl has acted as Ministerial Director – he organizes, implements and delegates.
Little is known about Biebl himself. The 53-year-old from Munich comes from a family of civil servants and works in the background. Wikipedia entry, social media activity? Nothing. A member of the Bavarian cabinet says about Biebl that he is always at Söder’s side and tries to prevent him from harming him. And further: Biebl would always protect Söder, even if he went down with him.
Tanja Sterian
Tanja Sterian may formally only be deputy government spokeswoman, but she is closer to Söder than any other spokesperson for the State Chancellery or the CSU. The 39-year-old has been working for Söder since 2008, headed the CSU district office in Nuremberg and then moved to the Bavarian Ministry of Finance as spokeswoman. Sterian is in constant contact with her boss and with many journalists. If you want to know what Söder is planning and thinking, talk to her: Sterian is always available and able to speak. And 100 percent loyal to Söder.
Always available and able to speak: Tanja Sterian.
Image: Bavarian State Chancellery
Albert Füracker
Being available from 6.30 a.m. is a basic requirement to belong to Söder’s closest circle – that can be heard from his environment. Albert Füracker also fulfills this condition, the CSU politician has been Bavarian finance minister for a good three years and is thus the direct successor of Söder himself in this office.
The two have known each other a lot longer. When Söder was chairman of the Junge Union (JU) in Bavaria from 1995 to 2003, Füracker was his deputy for four years. Füracker has also been a member of the state parliament since 2008. Later, the trained farmer and long-time local politician Söders became State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance. In the Söder-Seehofer power struggle, he was one of the first to publicly call on Seehofer to resign in favor of Söder.
Is he really a confidante or is it not a “henchman”, as some party colleagues think? Füracker flirted, at least in internal circles, with the fact that he often only found out what Söder is planning from the newspaper. What is certain, however, is that Söder can rely on his former JU deputy: Füracker described himself as “pushed out” when he was promoted to finance minister. By the way: Füracker and Söder also meet privately, for example for cycling, as posts in social networks show.
He also meets his boss for cycling: Finance Minister Albert Füracker.
Image: dpa
Florian Herrmann
Florian Herrmann also goes on bike tours with Söder. As head of the Bavarian State Chancellery, Herrmann keeps his boss’s back free in day-to-day work, defends the politics of the state government in the CSU parliamentary group and, after meetings of the Bavarian cabinet, denies the press conferences in which there is little new to announce (otherwise Söder would speak).
The 49-year-old Herrmann has only been in Söder’s close environment since 2018: He was one of the first Upper Bavarian state parliament members to speak out in favor of the Franconian Söder and against the Upper Bavarian Seehofer in the power struggle. Söder then made the doctorate lawyer head of the State Chancellery.
The man in the foreground keeps Söder’s back free in his day-to-day work: Florian Herrmann heads the State Chancellery.
Image: dpa
Karolina Gernbauer
The 59-year-old Karolina Gernbauer is referred to as the “most powerful” and “highest” civil servant in Bavaria. In the 1990s, the lawyer was the personal assistant to the then Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber. After a scandal over rotten meat, she moved to the Ministry of the Environment in 2007 to clean up there. From 2008 Söder was her boss until Seehofer promoted the public-shy top civil servant to the head of the state chancellery in 2010.
There, at a central power point in Munich and with a view of the magnificent Hofgarten, the native of Lower Bavaria became a continuum in the midst of male centrifugal forces: the minister-presidents changed, Gernbauer stayed. As the “Representative of the Free State of Bavaria at the Federal Government”, she now also spends a lot of time asserting Bavarian interests at the federal level – also in the background at the highest working level between the State Chancellery, Federal Ministries and Chancellery.
She asserts Bavarian interests in the background: Karolina Gernbauer
Image: imago / Stefan Zeitz
What accents does Markus Söder want to set in the election campaign? Where does he see his political future? That ARD summer interview for the report from Berlin with the CSU boss and prime minister as well as the interactive question format Ask yourself! can be seen from 1 p.m. in the live stream at tagesschau.de.