The proportion of young entrepreneurs in the Bundestag is small. Just 90 out of 709 MPs are self-employed, while 133 are employed by companies. Most MPs work in the public sector, 171 are civil servants, 68 of whom are teachers and academics. The quote from the former FDP politician Otto Graf Lambsdorff endures: “The Bundestag is sometimes full and sometimes empty, but always full of teachers.”
The President of the Association of Family Entrepreneurs Reinhold von Eben-Worlée demands: “The Bundestag should reflect the breadth of the population, and that includes entrepreneurs who bring an important perspective.” Many laws affect the economy, so it is logical to do so also get involved.
Three young entrepreneurs want to be involved: Music manager Joe Chialo, CDU, start-up founder Verena Hubertz, SPD, and physiotherapist Michael König, FDP, are running for the 20th German Bundestag – and want to motivate young people to start a business. We introduce them.
The young entrepreneur Verena Hubertz wants to move into the Bundestag for the SPD of all places. The former Workers’ Party never came in above ten percent in surveys of start-up founders in recent years. Why Hubertz decided to join the SPD, sums it up in a few sentences: When Steinmeier became a candidate for chancellor in 2010, the 33-year-old was working at Burgerking. “I earned EUR 6.13 per hour. Introducing a minimum wage would be good, I thought. ”
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When Steinmeier lost to Angela Merkel, Hubertz became a member of the SPD party – “out of frustration that we couldn’t get anything right”. Today she wants to make the party attractive to young people. With Scholz, the SPD has a candidate for chancellor “whom people can trust in crisis situations” and who exudes “competence and foresight”. She believes the SPD will benefit from Merkel’s defeat in office. “The bourgeois, social center, which felt well represented under Merkel, wavers towards the SPD,” she says.
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In 2017 she supported Martin Schulz in the election campaign. Even after the federal election campaign, she continued to fight. “This 28-year-old wants to revolutionize the SPD,” headlined German media houses at the time. Now she is running for the constituency of Trier and Trier-Saarburg for the Bundestag. She resigned from the management of her start-up “Kitchen Stories” for the election campaign at the beginning of January. “Two hearts beat in my chest: Entrepreneurship and the will to make politics.” Hubertz decided to follow her political heart.
In doing so, she is successful with “Kitchen Stories”. 21 million customers have downloaded the app. Apple CEO Tim Cook visited the founder three years ago, and Bosch holds two thirds of the company’s shares. Hubertz wants to promote entrepreneurship. “With the inventors and engineers, we have a lot of potential to play a role in the front.” Germany must invest in the future, “so that the new Siemens and VWs in the tech industry come into being in this country”.
Michael King
“I come from the middle of society, I know what it means to work a lot.”
Photo: Stephanie Trenz
His résumé could have come from a textbook. The son of Polish immigrants worked his way up: from secondary school to entrepreneur to politician who wants to help young people to realize themselves. “I have to work a lot to make my dreams come true,” he says. “I don’t do things by halves.” The motto determines his private and professional life.
In his youth, the 28-year-old wanted to become a professional athlete. School wasn’t so important back then, volleyball, that was his thing. He had to stop because of a hip injury. At 14 he was looking for career alternatives. “If I want to become something, I have to concentrate more on school,” he said to himself at the time. He completed secondary school and trained as a physiotherapist, like his brother and father. After graduation, he worked in his father’s office – ten hours, seven days a week.
He learned to work a lot from his parents, who came to Germany as Polish immigrants. In 2016, König opened his own physiotherapy practice with eight employees and three bosses – father, brother and König himself. Five years later there are 70 employees, including orthopedists, fitness trainers and nutritionists. In the next year, König wants to set up an outpatient rehab.
“I don’t know a single entrepreneur who is running.”
He is currently a member of the municipal council in Horb am Neckar and chairman of the Freudenstadt FDP district association. A Bundestag mandate would be a career leap. His party colleague Michael Teurer motivated him to run for office. King didn’t have to think twice. “I come from the middle of society, I know what it means to work a lot.” Is the FDP the right party here? “I want to help people to realize themselves,” he says, justifying the decision to join the FDP in 2017.
The party promotes opportunities for advancement, “no matter where you come from”. Election campaign slogans are repeatedly mixed in his formulations: “Work must be worthwhile” and “Independent thinking creates innovation”.
As an entrepreneur, he is particularly suitable for politics. He learned to find solutions instead of talking about problems. “I don’t know a single entrepreneur who is running,” he says.
Joe Chialo
“I would like to depict topics that do not take place in the Bundestag, but mean a lot to society.”
Photo: Chris Heidrich
A week before the general election, Joe Chialo is sitting in the traditional Berlin restaurant Borchert, just a few meters from Friedrichstrasse train station. Ever since Armin Laschet appointed him to his future team, he has been in demand at events. He has just spoken at the summit of young entrepreneurs, and a conversation with the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus and an election campaign event in his constituency of Spandau are about to take place. He hasn’t come to dinner today, he says.
Chialo greets the head of the hall by his first name, and the waiters also seem to have seen him before. He quickly succeeds in building a personal level with people, he explains. He is not at all a fan of formality. “You use the name of two artists among artists. The ‘she’ doesn’t work in the studio. ”
Politics for cultural workers
Chialo is the son of a diplomatic family from Tanzania. He was born in Bonn, went to school there, and moved to Nuremberg to study history. At some point he got hired by the music company Universal. He developed his passion for music as the singer of the band “Blue Manner Haze”. He traveled around the world with Universal: he lived in Munich, Hamburg, Amsterdam, London and New York for a while within a few years.
Eleven years ago, Chialo founded his own company, the music label “Airforce 1 Music Group”. Artists like Santiano and the Kelly Family are under contract with him. He didn’t sleep the night before his first hits were released. “I had to get the coal, that was a hell of a lot of work,” he reports at the summit of young entrepreneurs in Berlin. After all, he had started without outside resources. Today he has ten employees and forms a joint venture with Universal.
If he succeeds in entering the Bundestag, he will, among other things, represent the interests of independent musicians and other cultural workers. “I would like to cover topics that do not take place in the Bundestag, but mean a lot to society,” he says. The corona crisis showed that. His company got through the crisis well thanks to the joint venture with Universal, but some friends had to fight. He is also running for the Bundestag because of his three-year-old daughter. “It may sound idealistic. But with all the crises, I want to make the world a little better. ”
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