Election of the Federal President
A Steinmeier and three counting candidates
By Hubertus Volmer
2/12/2022, 4:14 p.m
There shouldn’t be any surprises in the presidential election. After all, the event marks a historical novelty: Among other things, the youngest candidate ever proposed for the office is up for election.
At least she made it to the first page. “Stefanie Gebauer is a candidate,” headlined the “Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung” on Wednesday. The 41-year-old from Kremmen in Brandenburg is running this Sunday as a candidate in the election for the Federal President.
It is obvious that she has no chance: incumbent Frank-Walter Steinmeier is supported by the three traffic light parties and by the Union. The SPD, Greens and FDP alone have almost 53 percent of the votes in the Federal Assembly. The CDU and CSU weigh in at a good 30 percent. Even if the Union were to decide spontaneously in favor of a fundamentally oppositional path on this issue as well, the majority should be safe. Article 54 of the Basic Law stipulates that an applicant only needs an absolute majority in the first ballot. In further ballots, a simple majority would also suffice.
This means that Stefanie Gebauer and the applicants from the left and AfD have the status of counting candidates: they start, nothing more.
A medic
The left have the social medicine doctor Gerhard Trabert set up. Among other things, the 65-year-old initiated an outpatient clinic for the homeless and a polyclinic for people without health insurance. The father of four also worked as a doctor in crisis areas and refugee camps in various countries and in sea rescue in the Mediterranean.
Trabert justified his candidacy by saying that the issues of social disadvantage and poverty had “not played a major role” with Federal President Steinmeier. He also said that social inequality had increased in Germany and was the “mother of all problems”. Trabert recently caused irritation with a comparison between the fate of the poor and refugees and the Holocaust. “Just as many Germans knew what was happening to the Jews back then, today we know what is happening to people who have fled in the Mediterranean, in Libyan and Syrian camps. We know how poverty is increasing, we know about the increased poverty Mortality rate of poor people here in Germany too.”
The candidate later wrote on Twitter that he was not concerned with a “historical equation”. “But the tendency to look the other way must be clearly criticized.”
A kick out
The AfD also put forward a candidate that caused a stir in the run-up to the election. The 57 year old Max Otte sent an email from his own email account on January 24, which said that the Union of Values, an association on the far right of the Union, congratulates Friedrich Merz on being elected CDU leader and proposes its chairman, the long-standing “CDU member Prof. Dr. Max Otte” as a candidate for election to the Federal President.
The proposal was not taken up by the Union, which was not surprising given that Otte was even controversial in the Union of Values. Less than 24 hours after the mail, the economist from the German Press Agency said when asked whether he would run for the AfD: “To be offered the candidacy for Federal President is one of the greatest honors that can happen to you.” The office offers the opportunity “to heal, to reconcile, to admonish”. He’s thinking hard about it.
Otte has since resigned from the presidency of the Union of Values. The CDU has initiated a party exclusion procedure against him.
A woman
The Brandenburger Stefanie Gebauer was set up by the Free Voters. She is an astrophysicist, works for the Free Voters faction in the Potsdam state parliament and is the chairwoman of the city council of Kremmen in the Oberhavel district north of Berlin.
In the federal election, Stefanie Gebauer ran as a direct candidate in her home constituency and received 4.3 percent of the votes.
(Photo: imago images/Reiner Zensen)
With the 41-year-old, the party is “sending a clear signal for more diversity and choice in the election of the German head of state,” explained the Free Voters. She is not only the only woman in the candidate field, but also the youngest candidate ever proposed for the office.
However, the Free Voters only have 18 out of 1472 votes in the Federal Assembly. And despite the title of her home newspaper, Gebauer’s level of awareness is likely to be limited: she was only on the first page of the local edition for Oberhavel.
The incumbent
The fourth candidate is incumbent Frank Walter Steinmeier. The Social Democrat was also supported by the Union, Greens and FDP in his first election in 2017. During his political career, the 66-year-old was, among other things, Head of the Chancellery under Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister under Angela Merkel.
As Federal President, Steinmeier wanted, as he said in his inaugural speech, to call for “courage”. “We need the courage to keep what we have. Freedom and democracy in a united Europe – we have to defend this foundation together. It is not invulnerable – but I am firmly convinced that it is strong. ” A few months after taking office, one of his key achievements was convincing the reluctant SPD of the need to rejoin a grand coalition – exploratory talks between the Union, the Greens and the FDP had previously failed.
In the Corona crisis, Steinmeier also campaigned to defend democracy. “When so-called ‘walkers’ babble about a ‘corona dictatorship’, then it’s not just contempt for state institutions. It offends us all,” he said in a speech in January. He could repeat something similar on Sunday.