State elections are personal elections. After the SPD benefited from this twice recently – in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in Saarland – it is now the turn of the Christian Democrats. In the federal state between the seas, Prime Minister Daniel Günther won an all-round convincing election victory with 43.4 percent (plus 11.4 points)., who also silenced the intrigue artists of his party. CDU leader Friedrich Merz has little to do with success.
Daniel Günther is spoiled for choice when it comes to the coalition issue. Most likely is a pact with the second winner, the Greens. With 18.3 percent (plus 5.4 points) they hung from the SPD, which only managed 16 percent – and fell by more than eleven points.
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One thinks of the former Kiel SPD star Jochen Steffen, who once said to Siegfried Lenz: “Well, if you asked me… to choose between faith and truth – I would always choose the truth, no matter what freezing cold and which one terror she can bring.”
The truth of the Kiel disaster may feel cold as ice for Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, to whom his party gives as little warmth as he does to the SPD. Apparently his Federal Press Office had the idea of having yesterday’s TV speech on May 8, 1945, the end of the Second World War, broadcast by ARD and ZDF at 6 p.m. It would have been an act of “agenda-breaking” given the anti-SPD prognostications to be expected at the time.
Scholz’s state-supporting speech, which reported the state of affairs as precisely as it was unsurprising, was then distributed in bite-sized pieces via the Internet from 6 p.m. It ran in full at 6.45 p.m. (RTL), 7.30 p.m. (ZDF) and 8.20 p.m. (ARD).
Scholz showed understanding for all those who are worried about the spread of the war, but also concluded: “Fear must not paralyze us.” One cannot commemorate 1945 without seeing: “There is war again in Europe. Russia unleashed this war.”
The fact that President Vladimir Putin equated his “barbaric war of aggression” with the fight against National Socialism was “false history and infamous”.
(Photo: Getty Images)
The Russian warmonger Putin will present all the weapons with which Ukraine is to be conquered today on Red Square in Moscow at a large military parade to mark the victory over Germany 77 years ago.
It is the “common duty to prevent the rebirth of Nazism,” Putin wrote to the governments of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and other ex-Soviet republics: “As in 1945, victory will be ours.”
In view of the ongoing violent war, there can hardly be any talk of a victory parade at the Moscow Arms Show. The Ukrainian general staff is already reporting that the Russian troops stationed in Transnistria are preparing for battle – and possibly annexing the small Republic of Moldova. Neo-Stalinist imperialism does not appear to be coming to an end.
The Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, also wants to benefit from the success in Kiel. Daniel Günther’s success shows: “The CDU is back on track and is now even feeling a tailwind again.” That’s what Wüst says in an interview with the Handelsblatt.
In the event of a gas shortage, he wants to help local industry – with a faster expansion of renewable energies, a later shutdown of lignite-fired power plants and a new partnership with Flanders to import more gas from overseas via Antwerp and Zeebrugge. The politician is energetically campaigning for a minimum wage of twelve euros: “Rampant inflation makes it necessary to take this step when the minimum wage is reached.”
(Photo: IMAGO/Kay-Helge Hercher)
Some political careers failed because of an old doctoral thesis, which showed nothing but plagiarism and scientific nonsense. Now the CSU General Secretary Martin Huber, who has just been introduced with a loud trumpet blast, has to defend himself against attacks by the plagiarism hunter Jochen Zenthöfer.
He claims to have found 25 quotes with no or incorrect source on the first 26 pages of Huber’s dissertation on the old West policy alone: ”Mr. Huber should not have received his doctorate with this work,” said Zenthöfer of the “Bild am Sonntag”. Martin Hagen, head of the Bavarian FDP parliamentary group, asked the CSU general not to use the doctorate for the time being.
Axel Springer boss Mathias Döpfner, a musicologist who has been the subject of constant scandals, is also suspected of plagiarism. Expert Stefan Weber speaks of “structural plagiarism” and lists 28 suspicious passages in the Döpfner dissertation. The Frankfurt Goethe University is examining the facts.
Until the result is available, we occasionally listen to the great Georg Kreisler (“music critic”): “But today every newspaper finds / Greater distribution through music critics / And so I also have the honor / And now make a career as a music critic. “
And then there’s the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in Berlin, which is apparently plagued by power struggles like the Ewing family of Fiesling JR in the series “Dallas”..
Board member Stefan Liebig gave up in frustration in April and settled the bill in a letter that is available to our editorial team. The working atmosphere is characterized by “a lack of trust, constant arguments, interventions in the scientific work and ultimately also a climate of intimidation”. Liebig felt he was being held back by the “Socio-Economic Panel” he headed.
The allegations are likely to be discussed at length at today’s DIW Board of Trustees meeting. Incidentally, they apply in full to DIW President Marcel Fratzscher, whose contract was recently extended until 2028.
The director of the institute says that he is not interested in power, but in preventing expensive undesirable developments. However, the DIW business cycle department was probably so deserted after staff departures that the winter forecast had to be cancelled.
The aphorist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg stated for forecasters: “You can live by telling fortunes, but not by telling the truth.”
I wish you a good start into the week.
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor