2024-04-09 20:06:31
Gerhard Schröder is turning 80, and there are a thousand good reasons to ignore it. Nevertheless, the ex-chancellor continues to captivate people. Why is that? An attempt at an explanation.
Sometimes you do things and wonder why you’re doing them. There would be more and better reasons not to do it than to do it. And yet you can’t help it. You keep doing it anyway.
For example, watch the new documentary about Gerhard Schröder on his 80th birthday. A good hour about a man who tore down his own monument as chancellor because he placed his male friendship with the Russian dictator and warmonger Vladimir Putin above all else. And so do his business interests as a lobbyist for Russia. A fall that is unprecedented in German chancellor history (not even Kohl’s slush funds can keep up).
And yet you look and you look and you look. Schröder on the golf course. Schröder in the church, Schröder in his office in Hanover. Schröder in China. Schröder in the old days. The Basta, the no to the Iraq war. The agenda speech in the Bundestag. The tears in your eyes when you resign as SPD chairman. His Rumpelstilziade in the elephant round after losing the federal election.
One sentence that explains everything
Why is that? Because this man as a person was, is and remains fascinating. Because he is once again attacking everyone and everything, Kevin Kühnert, Annalena Baerbock and whatever else, from his point of view, there is shrieking and shrieking going on in the Social Democrats or in the federal government. The relevant sentences are already running up and down in the agencies and in the reviews of the successful film.
The actually central sentence, however, is quoted comparatively rarely and sounds completely harmless. He falls at the beginning, and again at the end. “I am,” says Schröder, “sometimes a little different than others.”
That’s the way it is. And that’s it. That’s why we’re still watching it. Because he’s a guy. A type that no longer exists in politics today. Olaf Scholz, Angela Merkel, Christian Lindner, Robert Habeck, Friedrich Merz. All streamlined as if in a wind tunnel. Pebbleround. No corners, no edges. Like something out of a test tube. Markus Söder is perhaps the only active top politician who still has nearly as quicksilver shimmer as Gerhard Schröder once did.
Rugged charm
But that’s also district class or Bayern league against this primitive animal, this roughneck who has worked his way up from the humblest of circumstances. Who can switch from meanie to greatest charmer from now on. Still. The documentary’s reporter also experiences these rollercoasters all the time. And despite all his demonstrative distance, Schröder cannot completely resist Schröder’s appeal if his impressions are not misleading.
Schröder captivates. Max Weber would probably have spoken of charisma. He has a tremendous presence. And a unique apparent approachability.
It’s always been like that. Memories from a reporter’s life. First encounter with Prime Minister Schröder at the main train station in Hanover for page three about him in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. In the ICE bistro he takes all the time for the young jumper. From the first moment he gives the person he is talking to the feeling that there is only him, that his entire attention is focused on him. There is no strangeness and seemingly no facade behind which he hides.
A man comes into the Zug Bistro, sees him, speaks to him familiarly, with a slight Mediterranean accent: “Gerd, when will you finally become chancellor?” he asks in a mock-theatrical manner. “Yes, I wonder that too!” Schröder replies with a laugh. A union man? A party friend? The obvious question after the man leaves is: How do you know him? “I don’t know him,” replies Schröder, “never seen him before.”
In swimming trunks in Lake Maggiore
That could have been a lie. But years later at a big event in Ascona, political celebrities were there: Peter Sloterdijk, Wolfgang Schäuble, Margarete Vestager, Norbert Röttgen, Christian Lindner. The only one of the illustrious guests who shows up on the hotel beach on Lake Maggiore in big, baggy swimming trunks is Gerhard Schröder. Stands in the water up to your stomach. And within minutes I delve into a conversation with my wife about children and family politics. As if they had known each other forever. As if they had children in a kindergarten together. It is proven that she said “Hello, Mr. Schröder” for the first time in her life while standing in the water of Lake Maggiore.