Before writing this wake-up service, I asked myself for a long time whether it should be another corona traffic light block at the beginning. Since the topic remains with us, the choice fell on a different process: the likely imminent overthrow of Volkswagen boss Herbert Diess.
He kept himself up with the warning shout “Tesla! Tesla! ”As well as scenarios for shedding 35,000 jobs in Wolfsburg as the Rumpelstiltskin moves the car industry through workshops and offices. The questions were justified, the answers poor, the methods mediocre.
After intensive debates, the top supervisory board members of the Porsche and Piëch families and the top staff of the state of Lower Saxony and the employee bank could not agree on a compromise on the 63-year-old’s stay, our cover story reveals. It looks like Diess will ride from the battlefield with his head held high, a few splatters of blood on his armor.
The ominous VW supervisory board meeting on September 24th caused a drama – material for a drama:
The chairman of the supervisory board: Ladies and gentlemen, please block the meetings for 2022 and 2023. Is there anything else? We’re done, time for a little lunch.
The CEO: I am deeply moved, also because of yesterday’s meeting with the Bureau. I was asked about my plans to cut 35,000 jobs. Everyone knows that the renovation is not going quickly enough. Time is valuable.
(Icy silence).
Supervisory board Stephan Weil: The Supervisory Board approved every sensible proposal made by the Management Board. But this? Is styleless. You can’t treat each other like that.
The head of the works council: What kind of way is it to make such preparations behind the back of the supervisory board?
Supervisory board Bernd Althusmann: Mr. Diess, you’d better deal with China’s cluster risk.
The chairman of the supervisory board: Mr. Diess, please have a seat outside.
(The board of directors goes on talking for a long time. It is decided that the number 35,000 must not be disclosed under any circumstances. The meal is canceled.)
(Photo: picture alliance / dpa)
After so much business theater now the latest from the “toolkit” of politics for fighting pandemics: The vaccination requirement. Baden-Württemberg’s Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) commissioned an expert opinion from the Oppenländer law firm, from which the “Frankfurter Allgemeine” quotes: “A general compulsory vaccination can be introduced constitutionally permissible. The federal government has the legislative competence for this. There must be no compulsory vaccination and there must be exceptions to the obligation to vaccinate. ”A violation could be punished with fines of up to 2500 euros.
In an interview with Handelsblatt, Lower Saxony’s Prime Minister Stephan Weil (SPD) explains: “Violations will certainly be sanctioned with fines. A general compulsory vaccination could significantly increase the vaccination quota. ”Incidentally, Weil is happy about the end of the interregnum between Merkel and Scholz:“ A country cannot be ruled between tree and bark. ”
Which brings us to Olaf Scholz, the designer of the hour, the sudden media star who makes old clichés about the “Scholzomat” forgotten. Yesterday he appeared surprisingly and live on the ProSieben jokers “Joko und Klaas”. Scholz spoke lonely and insistently with a fixed look at the camera: “It is important to me that everyone who can get vaccinated. That is the only thing that helps. ”The line of those who were mildly or severely hit by Covid no longer runs between the old and the young, but between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.
He knows that many suffer from loneliness, that life has to start again, with light-heartedness: “Nobody is just doing well in these times. Not me, not you and you. ”The man, who wants to have up to 30 million cans inoculated by Christmas, got a lot of respect with this performance.
In the weekly publication “Die Zeit” he announces a different style of government. He will let the cabinet meetings begin later “in order to have space for a discussion off the agenda beforehand”. And when the occasion arises, he will “always address the citizens directly”. Just do it, not a show. This Scholz strategy could be traced back to Francis of Assisi: “First do what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you do the impossible.”
Foreign minister-designate Annalena Baerbock will also provide a visiting card. “Dialogue is the central component of international politics. But that doesn’t mean that you have to gloss over things or keep silent, “says the Greens boss of the” taz “. For them, value-based foreign policy is “an interplay of dialogue and rigor”.
The People’s Republic of China can therefore be prepared for harsh tones, no longer for this “eloquent silence” that Baerbock saw in previous China policy. It even proposes import restrictions for the European domestic market for products from regions such as Xinjiang and a diplomatic boycott of the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing.
She wants to leave the party-internal dispute over ministerial offices behind her as soon as possible and announces that parliamentary group leader Anton Hofreiter will “play a strong role in the Bundestag”. Perhaps this post was more for the satire side: A little later it became public that the Hofreiter, who was part of the left party, was withdrawing from the leadership of the faction.
The explosion of an old US aircraft bomb from World War II near Munich Central Station turns into a case for the police. It is examined whether the usual explosive ordnance probing was carried out before the dredging and drilling work and whether it was intensive enough. The Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) is surprised: “Normally, on such construction sites, there is always an intensive sounding out beforehand, where duds could still be hidden.”
In the incident – 110 kilograms of TNT exploded – four people were injured, one of them seriously. Deutsche Bahn declares that it will apply the “highest safety standards” to all construction work.
For many investment bankers, 2021 was a very good year. The yields gushed. The only question is whether the year after the distribution of the bonus money is also viewed positively. The quarrel over the loot has begun in the financial institutions, especially at Deutsche Bank. The premiums could rise by 10 to 15 percent, according to the analysis of my Frankfurt colleagues from the finance department. But the crucial question is whether that’s enough to keep the best talents and high flyers.
In 2020, the European Central Bank asked for moderation because of the corona crisis. But in the end, the “German” had granted bonuses totaling 2.14 billion euros, including holding bonuses. This time there is enormous pressure from the very well-paid US banks, which recently even topped up entry-level salaries for financial “rookies” to more than $ 100,000. A completely different thing, however, is to explain to the public why investment bankers fill their bags far more than others in times of crisis.
And then there is the big tattoo, a resounding farewell for well-deserved political core members, which Chancellor Angela Merkel can enjoy today in front of 200 guests. Conductor and Lieutenant Colonel Reinhard Kiauka complained a little about having only nine days ahead of time, that was “sporty”. It was easy for the staff music corps to play the hymn “Great God, we praise you”, Hildegard Knef’s “For me it should rain red roses” was already more difficult. And “You forgot the color film” turned out to be particularly demanding – with this, Nina Hagen, who initially trained as a pop singer and later became a successful punk diva, landed a hit in the GDR in 1974.
The 66-year-old hadn’t believed herself that the song about summer, sex and the beach on Hiddensee was somehow ripe for a chancellor. But after all, it’s about the early swan song for a country that was also Merkel’s: “You forgot the color film, my Michael / Now nobody believes us how beautiful it was here haha, haha / You forgot the color film with mine Seel ‘/ Everything blue and white and green and later no longer true. “
I wish you a nice day in all colors.
I warmly greet you
you
Hans-Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
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