The social democrat did not only campaign for equality for women in the party and in the Bundestag.
(Photo: picture alliance / ZB)
Berlin The former Federal Minister of Justice Herta Däubler-Gmelin (SPD) is to defuse the controversial issue of “expropriation of housing groups” in the capital. According to identical reports, the SPD, Left and Greens have agreed on the personnel. The daily newspaper “taz” reported first.
The responsible Senate administration announced on request that there should be a Senate decision on the matter next Tuesday. The personal details were not confirmed “because silence has been agreed”.
There was great excitement when a majority in Berlin last September voted in favor of the referendum for the socialization of apartments owned by large real estate groups. The initiator was the group “Deutsche Wohnen & Co. expropriate”.
Because the topic is so sensitive and at the same time the referendum is not legally binding for the Senate, the red-green-red state government had agreed to set up an expert commission to examine the “possibilities, ways and conditions” of implementing the referendum.
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With the 78-year-old Däubler-Gmelin, a lawyer who not only has decades of experience in dealing with controversial issues, but also has the tools to resolve conflicts, is now taking over the delicate post.
“Swabian sword gosch” at work
The social democrat, once referred to as the “Swabian sword gosch” by the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, not only campaigned for equality for women in the party and in the Bundestag. She was also the first woman since the founding of the SPD to become deputy party leader.
Classified as too left-wing and “too political” by the Union faction, however, she did not make it as a judge at the Federal Constitutional Court.
Däubler-Gmelin has several points of contact with the matter of expropriation. After the collapse of the GDR, as deputy chairwoman of the German Bundestag’s Committee for German Unity, she initiated a debate on the question of property issues, with the keyword “return instead of compensation”.
When Chancellor Gerhard Schröder brought her into his cabinet as Minister of Justice in 1998, she pushed through a tenancy law reform with a lower cap on rent increases and new notice periods in favor of tenants.
In 2001, she set up the “Corporate Governance” commission under Gerhart Cromme, which was tasked with developing rules of conduct for the management and control of listed companies in Germany. The reason was the insolvency of the construction group Philipp Holzmann due to mismanagement.
Sensitivity in complicated situations
She has repeatedly demonstrated that she has a sure instinct in difficult situations. As a lawyer, she worked in the field of conciliation, arbitration and conciliation boards.
She also worked as an arbitrator. In 2007, for example, she prevented the air traffic controllers from going on strike. In 2015, together with the current CDU chairman Friedrich Merz, she was involved in the arbitration of the wage dispute between Lufthansa and its flight attendants.
Even after Däubler-Gmelin left the Bundestag in 2009 after 37 years as the longest-serving member of parliament at the time, she remained busy to the point of uncomfortable.
In 2012, together with the Leipzig constitutional lawyer Christoph Degenhart, she submitted a constitutional complaint to the Federal Constitutional Court on behalf of the citizens’ alliance “More Democracy” on the permanent euro rescue package ESM and the European fiscal pact and managed to get the judges in Karlsruhe to set conditions for the ratification of the EU treaty.
So now Däubler-Gmelin, as chair of the expert commission, is supposed to get the charged situation in the expropriation debate under control.
The initiative that launched the referendum is also involved in the committee. She is committed to the expropriation of housing groups with more than 3000 apartments in Berlin, but cooperatives should not be affected. According to the initiative, more than 240,000 apartments are to be transferred to an institution under public law.
According to reports, most of the commission members have already been determined:
- Michael Eichberger, former judge at the Federal Constitutional Court
- Christian Waldhoff, Professor of Public Law and Financial Law at Berlin’s Humboldt University
- Wolfgang Durner, Professor of Public Law at the University of Bonn
- Christoph Möllers, Professor of Public Law, Constitutional Law and Legal Philosophy at Humboldt University
- Florian Rödl, legal scholar at the Freie Universität Berlin
- Isabel Feichtner, Professor of Public Law and International Economic Law at the University of Würzburg
- Thorsten Beckers, Professor of Infrastructure Economics and Management at the Bauhaus University in Weimar
- Ann-Kathrin Kaufhold, Chair of Constitutional and Administrative Law at LMU Munich
The commission should draw up a recommendation to the Senate within a year, which will then decide on how to proceed.
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