Monday, December 6th, 2021
The new head of the Chancellery
Schmidt is the name of Scholz’s confidante
Wolfgang Schmidt has been holding strings in hand for the future Chancellor Scholz for a long time. Now he will head the Chancellery. That he knows his boss well is an advantage. That he supports him with full commitment can be both an advantage and a disadvantage. Because Schmidt has already stepped deep into the breach for Scholz.
“I want to make sure that Olaf Scholz has his back” – this is how Wolfgang Schmidt describes one of his central tasks as the future head of the Chancellery. It is basically the continuation of what the 51-year-old has already done for Scholz for many years. Schmidt’s move to the Chancellery was therefore expected – it is the culmination of his career, but the personality is not undisputed.
State Secretary for Finance Schmidt likes to spread praise from others and positive polls about his boss Scholz on Twitter – when he is not happy about the successes of the Hamburg football club FC St. Pauli. Born in Hamburg, Schmidt completed his law studies at the university there and in Bilbao, Spain.
As expected, Schmidt was now among the selected when the future Chancellor Olaf Scholz presented his team. In addition to the six ministers who will be taking part, Schmidt will also head the Chancellery. He is known for standing behind Scholz with all his might. But that was also his undoing.
Schmidt’s legal training did not save Schmidt from writing a tweet that shortly afterwards occupied the Osnabrück public prosecutor’s office. In the message, which has since been deleted, he had published a court order in September, which involved the search in the Federal Ministry of Finance in connection with allegations against the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) located at customs. The public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation into the initial suspicion of “prohibited communications about court hearings”.
Does Schmidt have to adapt his political style?
He assumed that the allegations could be dispelled quickly, said Schmidt after the investigation became known. With the tweet in question, he wanted, among other things, to counter the false impression that federal ministries were being investigated against employees. So it was, once again, a matter of averting possible harm to his boss.
Some in the SPD found that Schmidt sometimes goes too far in his support for Scholz as early as 2019. At that time, after initial hesitation, Scholz decided to run for party leadership together with Klara Geywitz from Brandenburg. Schmidt, for example on Twitter, vigorously promoted – too vigorously, as some Social Democrats judged.
As head of the Chancellery, Schmidt has to be more diplomatic. The post is an important control point – it is not just about coordinating the work of the federal government, but also about liaising with the Bundestag and the federal states. Scholz called the work in Schmidt’s nomination “the quiet business”.
Active in the background for a long time
Schmidt has been involved in the background at important points in German politics for a long time. From 2002 he was Scholz, who was then General Secretary of the SPD, first a personal advisor and then an office manager. He then held this post for years – during Scholz’s tenure as parliamentary manager of the SPD parliamentary group from 2005 as well as during his time as labor minister from 2007. He knows Scholz well. He recently described him in an interview with ntv.de as follows: “Of course, as a North German he is not the most emotional. You can have a good discussion with Olaf Scholz. He is someone who thinks a lot about politics, society, life. And off Based on this analysis, he develops clever plans. “
When Scholz became vice-chairman of the parliamentary group after the 2009 Bundestag elections, they parted ways temporarily. Schmidt worked as the director of the representation of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Germany. But only for a short time, because when Scholz became First Mayor of Hamburg in 2011, he was at his side again, this time as State Councilor and representative of Hamburg at the federal government. When Scholz moved to the Federal Ministry of Finance in spring 2018, Schmidt became State Secretary there.
In this function he was responsible for “fundamental financial and economic issues, international finance and currency policy” and also for the “management department” – this includes important areas such as the ministerial office, the press office and political planning. So Schmidt already held many important threads in hand. This is exactly what he will do in the Chancellery.