Election campaign in Frankfurt: Where the wild bees grow
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fromGeorg Leppert
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Thomas Stillbauer
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An empty club room in the community center, a full Römerberg, CDU posters with strange stickers and a somewhat strange vote in the FR: observations from Frankfurt after six weeks of election campaigns.
Sleep one more time, then it’s the federal election. It will be exciting, and the parties really fought for every vote. Sometimes with somewhat strange means, as the last few weeks in Frankfurt have shown …
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The CDU set up its campaign stand on a Saturday at the Frankfurt Hauptwache. A good place. May. Lots of people come by there. You get into conversation with the electorate. On that Saturday, there were a particularly large number of people on site because the “Mietwahnsinn” alliance had announced a rally opposite the Christian Democrats, only ten meters away. Interesting contrast. One speaker denounced that the housing market has long been about profit maximization and no longer about the well-being of tenants. Mainly the big housing companies are to blame – “and their lobby, which is over there”. At the CDU information stand. Laughter. Direct candidate Axel Kaufmann can only be seen on posters during the demo. Both sides take it with humor. The Hauptwache, a premium location for the election campaign. May.
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The Römerberg is also an excellent election site. The best in Frankfurt. That is why all parties want to go there to present their top candidates, both local and nationwide. It was like this decades ago, it has always been like this. Some are more successful, others less. The greens manage to fill the space to the brim. Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck just move. It gets tight around the central stage next to the fountain of justice. The old phenomenon: Wherever you stand, you always stand exactly where the stream of people who want from Paulsplatz to Mainkai and vice versa leads. “Are you having fun?” It shouts from the stage. As much fun as you can have when you are wearing face-to-face protection where people are plowing through the crowd with cargo bikes but without a mask. Election campaign and Corona, a very special topic, and not an easy one – as Olaf Scholz’s appearance also shows. As befits a young, modern candidate for Chancellor, the SPD man has chosen a cool place: the Long Island Summer Lounge on the Börse multi-storey car park. It’s tight there and many people don’t wear masks.
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But it always depends on the time. The FDP will raise the mood three days before the election and will also go to the Römerberg. The cast is good. Not Lindner, who was there a few weeks earlier. But at least the general secretary. And the Hessian state chairwoman. And Nicola Beer, he knows the man in Frankfurt. You should be able to hope for encouragement? The truth is sobering. A few dozen people get lost in the square. And why? Because 11.30 a.m. is an impossible time to campaign. After all: The next day the free democrats can read in the newspaper that only twelve (in numbers: 12) people came to a community center for the CDU. And that was in the evening, and the Hessian Interior Minister was invited.
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Was an election poster allowed? Some say: a lot, even call for other parties to hang, others say: little, and certainly nothing in front of my house. The Mainz comedian Sven Hieronymus, for example, has something against the fact that the AfD has hung its poster (“Germany. But normal.”) On a street sign directly on his house wall – with contact to the house. “Because you are so stupid and you hang your posters on my wall,” he says in a short film on Twitter, “may I take them off” – snipping the scissors – “take them off.” The poster slips down the pole. This is the only sensible use for AfD posters, says Hieronymus, “just agree”. And offers: “Dear AfD members, I’ll keep the poster, it belongs to you, and you can then pick it up at my home. Then at least I know what a fool that was hanging there. ”There must have been a reason, believes the joker with the long blond mane: It is the only right-wing poster in the whole street. Granted, the scene doesn’t take place in Frankfurt, but we didn’t want to withhold it from you. She is just too beautiful.
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What an election poster shouldn’t do either is: cover up other election posters. There have been serious disputes in the past, especially about the best places and which poster works best where. But friends of other symbols are also quickly angry when their messages are imposed. On the way to Frankfurt’s old airfield, an election poster on Kalbacher Terrain slid over a Eintracht Frankfurt sticker, of all things. You have to be careful there. Eintracht fans don’t like that at all. In the end, this could even influence the voting decision. This time we are still hiding which party did it. Just this much: it is not a good basis.
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And again election posters. The Wesselmanns (if we had written that in this election campaign) of the CDU look so different one morning. A huge sticker is pasted over it. Looks like one of those clues on the cigarette packets. Just oversized. It says: “The CDU is endangering your future and the future of your children. On September 26th Choose real climate protection. ”It takes a few days, then the stickers are gone again.
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Some parties give away miraculous miraculous seeds in the Frankfurt election campaign, which are put into the ground and then bees grow – said a party politician of the FR. His correction followed immediately: flowers naturally grow. In the election campaign you can briefly lose sight of the overview or lose your nerve. On Leipziger Strasse in Bockenheim, a man roars his anger when he is stranded on his bike in the daily mess at the Markgrafenstrasse / Kurfürstenstrasse intersection because three cars are blocking the road in front of the zebra crossing. “Only cars and election posters in this country!” He shouts. “Hopefully it’ll be over soon!” The one with the posters, yes. About the cars – it depends.
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“Grab Egyptian geese by the eggs”, the FDP once advertised for the local elections. Not that long ago, it was March. Difficult slogan, anatomically speaking. Probably to be understood poetically. The Egyptian goose phenomenon hardly plays a role this time, it is about the broader context. And as I said, the best place for election advertising needs to be carefully selected. The Green Youth did well there. “Solidarity means anti-fascism” she posted in Bockenheim, within sight of the Excess café. Fits. The green adults promise a lot to Andersorte the size of a football goal: “Come on, let’s change politics,” it says. “A lot of people have already bragged that,” says a walker to his dachshund, “come on, darling.” But politics remained as it was.
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Dialogues are always good in election campaigns. Find the left, and that’s why the top candidates: Janine Wissler and Dietmar Bartsch hang signs around the neck of the bull and the bear in front of the stock exchange. “Bull, why is your share price rising?” The bear asks the bull. “Because I’m speculating with vacancies, bear,” the bull replies to the bear. We do not know how the conversation continued.
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Election campaigns everywhere you look. Also in the Frankfurt city parliament. Only last Thursday did they agree that sexism does not belong in politics. But after the joint declaration, the unity is over. Then Martin-Benedikt Schäfer, a dashing man in his mid-thirties who probably still wants and can achieve a lot in the CDU, switches to attack mode and says clearly who is important to security (his inner party) and who is not (everyone else). Perhaps he could have given the speech on the abolition of the voluntary police service a little less aggressively, but well, there will be elections on Sunday. The city council of the Greens and the SPD then point this out several times, for example when it comes to the admission of refugees. And at the end of the evening you ask yourself: do these parties ever work together?
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Finally, an evaluation from the FR series about the direct candidates in Frankfurt. We asked them who their favorite politician was. People from their own party were not allowed to be named, however. The SPD won with five votes (two of them for former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder). The Greens got four mentions, the CDU managed one mention.