Katja Meier and Josefine Paul
They want to become the first ministerial couple
Katja Meier and Josefine Paul will soon become husband and wife.
© IMAGO/Wolfgang Schmidt
The Green Party ministers Katja Meier and Josefine Paul have been a couple for five years. Now they want to celebrate their love by saying yes.
The two Green Party politicians Katja Meier (44) and Josefine Paul (42) want to enter into marriage. The ministerial couple confirmed this in an interview with the magazine “Bunte”. “Yes, we want to get married,” said Paul in a double interview with her partner. “Because it’s nice to confess to each other. It’s less about the political gesture. Love is the foundation.”
However, a specific date has not yet been set, says Katja Meier, who is also the Green Party’s top candidate in Saxony. “But we don’t know exactly when yet. This is a certain challenge for me in the election campaign year.” Meier is currently Minister of Justice and Minister for Democracy, Europe and Equality in Saxony. Her partner is the Minister for Children, Youth, Family, Equality, Flight and Integration in North Rhine-Westphalia.
They met “normally like so many other couples” at work. “We were both members of the state parliament in our federal states and at the same time also members of the presidium of the Federal Women’s Council, essentially the highest women’s policy body for us Greens,” Meier tells “Bunte”. It was love “at second sight”.
“In the Federal Council we wink at each other”
The two women have been together for a total of five years. During this time, despite their long-distance relationship, they established common rituals in everyday life. “We drink coffee together via FaceTime every morning at 6:30 a.m. We talk on the phone again at least in the evening before we go to bed,” says Meier. “Of course we also accompany each other at official events,” adds Paul. “And in the Federal Council we wink at each other. I sit on the Sachsen-Bank and Josefine on the one from NRW,” said Meier.
If the two say yes, they would be the first ministerial couple in Germany. “Homosexuality must be visible, even on the street. We are also encouraging people here, role models that society needs. At the time, both of us only had Anne Will and Ulrike Folkerts, the ‘Tatort’ commissioner, as role models .”