Hekja Werner is the first woman in the German Army to lead a battalion. She is building a new artillery unit in the Upper Palatinate. A visit to a woman who has always loved driving tanks.
When Hekja Werner started in the Bundeswehr, they were not prepared for someone like her: a woman. Where is she supposed to sleep? Where to shower and where – mundane but important – to go to the toilet? When Werner entered the artillery school in Rhineland-Palatinate in 2002, there were no showers for women, let alone toilets. When she had to, she turned over a sign on the door to say there was a woman here now. They showered in shifts; the men were allowed two hours and the women were allowed two hours. And yes, there were one or two superiors who didn’t fully understand what the women were supposed to do. Like driving a tank?