WAs it looks, Gerhard Schröder hardly gets any visitors these days, certainly not invitations, and if he occasionally visits a restaurant, then it remains top secret: Soyeon Schröder-Kim, his wife, who still informed the audience via Instagram in winter informed everything important from the couple’s life together, hasn’t posted a photo of going out together for a long time. She now prefers to give tips on what to cook at home – and that’s not the only indication that her husband doesn’t travel much anymore either.
He only seems to go into his office sometimes – and when the New York Times recently showed photos of Schröder’s rooms, you could see that they are chic, spacious and a bit vainly decorated, with a larger-than-life portrait of Schröder on the wall. Schröder has a lot to do and to write; He has just given up his honorary citizenship in Hanover and, what was perhaps more painful, his honorary membership in Borussia Dortmund. He recently received Katrin Bennhold, the correspondent of the New York Times, and what was newsworthy for German readers in Bennhold’s portrait, which was aimed at an international audience, were Schröder’s confessions that he had no regrets; yes, that “mea culpa” is generally not his motto; and that, while mocking his critics, he drank copious amounts of white wine.