Two weeks before the mayoral election, Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck came to Frankfurt on Sunday evening to support Green Party candidate Manuela Rottmann in the election campaign alongside the Hessian Green Economics Minister Tarek Al-Wazir at Palais Frankfurt in the city centre. But Habeck's visit was more than a routine back-up for the candidate in Germany's fifth-largest city. Habeck knows and appreciates Rottmann as a "politically consistent, strong woman," as he later admitted.
Mechthild Harting
Editor at the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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Although the Greens were once founded out of the crisis, they are no longer a party that wants to move from crisis to crisis. Instead, it is about taking responsibility. Especially with a view to the past year, in which, according to Habeck, "so many difficult decisions had to be made that were not negotiated in election programs," he was proud of how the Greens had proven themselves: "It is a coming of age, a desire to shape reality," which now makes the Greens special, and there is a woman "who stands for it like no other, and that is Manuela Rottmann."
Habeck did not miss the opportunity to point out anecdotes that connect him with the doctor of law, member of the Bundestag and former Frankfurt city councillor, who became a committed member of the Green Party at the age of 19. He recalled times when there was an internal party think tank with the working title "Realism and Substance". Rottmann had swung the big speeches there.
Habeck once wanted to recruit Rottmann
"What can want more for Frankfurt than a politician with this goal," said Habeck, who confessed that in 2012, when he became environment minister in Schleswig-Holstein, he wanted to recruit Rottmann as state secretary. "I would have liked to have had such a consistent, strong woman by my side." But Rottmann had refused with reference to her family situation, her son was still small at the time, because she could not contribute one hundred percent. Such a self-assessment alone speaks for a "great quality," said Habeck.
And Rottmann always seeks dialogue with everyone, even where it is hard political work to convince others. Anyone who understands Frankfurt as a city in which people should talk to each other across all borders, who wants Frankfurt as a large regulars' table, "she is the right person for them."
Previously, Habeck had recalled the events in Hanau three years ago. At the time, it was quickly said that the murders were an "attack on all of us". However, the Green Minister advised greater differentiation. Because it was quite a targeted attack out of hatred on a group of people who had wanted to exclude from society.
"The power of solidarity"
Only when one perceives these attacks as such, "can one use the power of solidarity" against them. Even with regard to the war in Ukraine, one cannot simply demand peace without differentiating what is meant by this. For him, peace for Ukraine means being able to live freely and self-determined.
At the beginning of the evening, the Hessian Minister of Economic Affairs, Tarek Al-Wazir, addressed the approximately 500 spectators who wanted to take a closer look at Rottmann, but also the two top politicians of the Greens at federal and state level. Al-Wazir described himself as the "opening act for the wonderful Manuela Rottmann." With her, Frankfurt could get a city leader in two weeks or in the run-off election on March 26 who "takes responsibility." Recently, it had been "somewhat complicated" to work with Frankfurt in a trusting and reliable manner.
Frankfurt faces "incredible tasks"
Frankfurt, like other major cities, faces "incredible tasks". The fact that Frankfurt must also become climate-neutral will completely change the way "we live, how we produce and how we move, in a short time," said Al-Wazir. With Rottmann you have a guarantor at the head of the city, who not only talks about it on Sundays, but works on it Monday to Friday and acts accordingly.
According to Al-Wazir, one of the challenges is the question of what the city does, for example, with the power plants that are powered by fossil fuels. Is there also a perspective for them to become climate-neutral? Rottmann would certainly make an answer to this question her task, Al-Wazir said. Above all, "it does not fall over when it feels a headwind." He has known Rottmann for 30 years and praised the candidate: "I don't know a more persistent person."
And Rottmann himself? She reported how surprised she was that her central campaign theme of actually making Frankfurt climate-neutral by 2035 provoked so few discussions with the other candidates: "I thought we were arguing about how to achieve the goal." She had been waiting for it, but there were no suggestions, no concepts. "For 30 years, I have been kneeling into the topic of how to achieve implementation and what obstacles there are," said Rottmann and announced: She wanted to "finally create affordable housing, ensure that Frankfurt becomes cleaner and safer.
In addition, she could even be enthusiastic about the "stinking boring topic" of modernizing the city administration in order to remove obstacles to political decisions: "Because that's the key."