Visiting Karl Lauterbach’s constituency: from professor to health minister
Cologne. Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (58; SPD) is certainly one of the winners of the Corona crisis, if one can speak of winners at all. The pandemic has brought him to the goal of his political dreams, at least that’s how it looks with Norbert Fuchs (73).
And he should actually know: he is not only a party member of the minister, He is also mayor of the Mülheim district of Cologne, a significant part of Karl Lauterbach’s constituency. Fuchs has ruled there for 32 years. Lauterbach was assigned to the constituency 17 years ago. Fuchs was there before and paved the way for today’s minister.
“I didn’t want the mandate,” remembers Norbert Fuchs. The Leverkusen-Cologne IV constituency, which includes the Cologne district of Mülheim and the city of Leverkusen, had become vacant. The previous mandate holder Ernst Küchler (77; SPD) resigned his mandate on October 15, 2004 when he took up the post of mayor of Leverkusen.
“Then let’s try it with the Tünn”
Fuchs would have been the logical choice for the successor, he was reliably re-elected locally. Why didn’t he take over? “I never wanted to be a professional politician,” he says, “I never wanted to be dependent on the party. I always just wanted to be district mayor and otherwise do my job, which I always enjoyed a lot.”
Before retiring, he held a managerial position in the pharmaceutical industry. “That’s why I knew Karl,” the personal address is common among comrades, “even before he came to our constituency.” Professionally. “From lectures and scientific work.” When it came to the constituency successor, the then Cologne SPD chairman and current member of the state parliament Jochen Ott (47) suggested something else under Karl Lauterbach.
They would have met in the beer garden of caterer Helmut Zoch directly in front of the district town hall on the central square in Vienna. “I listened to what his themes were. At that time he still wore his bow tie and spoke very unctuously. A university professor.” But so convincing that Fuchs makes his judgment about the candidate: “Yeah, I said so,” the district mayor uses the dialect with a grin, “then let’s try it with the Tünn.”
Lauterbach’s heart topic: Citizens’ insurance
At the same time, however, he had great doubts as to how this was supposed to work in the election campaign. “I had imagined: Karl standing on Wiener Platz with his bow tie in the middle of simple workers and explaining the citizen insurance to them.” That was Lauterbach’s heart issue: the end of the dual system in health insurance, no longer private and statutory health insurance, but one insurance for everyone.
Fuchs shakes his head as he talks. He sits in a meeting room right next to his office in the district hall. The concrete wall of the department store opposite can be seen through the windows. The secretary has switched on the CO₂ measuring device in line with the pandemic, everything is freshly aired, a smiley lights up green. An overview map of the district hangs on the wall: nine districts belong to it, 149,564 inhabitants live in the area, which extends over 52.23 square kilometers, so big is the legendary Scottish Loch Ness or the Schleswig-Holstein district town of Bad Oldesloe.
“He could campaign”
The electorate originally included many workers because many industrial companies had settled in the Mülheim district. In addition to the Felten & Guilleaume cable works, there was, for example, the Rheinische Walzwerke, the Mülheimer Hütte, Klöckner Humboldt Deutz created the Otto engine, and the suspension railway (including a 100-meter test track) was on the premises of the van der Zypen & Charlier wagon factory. “Mülheim,” Fuchs analyzes, “was always a bank for the SPD because we were the workers’ party. Anyone who got the constituency here had a secure ticket to the Bundestag.” Despite or with Leverkusen.
And Karl Lauterbach fit in: “He surprised me in 2005,” reports the party friend, “he could campaign. He can really explain citizen insurance to the workers on Wiener Platz. They thought he was a bit peculiar, but they respected him.” And voted.
In 2009, however, for the first re-election, the current Federal Minister of Health has to tremble at first. The CDU had put up a strong opponent: Thomas Portz (56), who was born in Leverkusen. And he would have stolen the direct mandate from Karl Lauterbach.
Lauterbach was the oddball with the bow tie in the capital
Portz remembers an “election campaign at the highest level and on an equal footing. It was based on mutual respect. It was great fun,” says the executive of a US pharmaceutical company. At the time, he had “succeeded in showing that the constituency for the CDU can probably be won if you have candidates who are rooted in both parts of the constituency, i.e. in Leverkusen and in Cologne”.
An important point, agrees Norbert Fuchs. While Leverkusen, as the location of Bayer AG, has always been closer to the CDU, the Christian Democrats have had to fight for the votes of the SPD-friendly clientele in the Cologne district of Mülheim. Portz succeeded very well. This was also due to the fact that Karl Lauterbach made a mistake at the beginning, “which all his predecessors also made: As soon as they were elected to Berlin, we hardly saw them there anymore”.
Portz was the local man, Lauterbach the oddball with the bow tie in the capital. Makes 35.43 percent of the votes for Thomas Portz and 37.07 percent for Karl Lauterbach, a razor-thin margin of 1.64 percentage points. But that didn’t happen again to today’s minister. In the Corona election campaign last year, he got a remarkable 45.6 percent, the CDU candidate Serap Güler (41) came in second with 20.4 percent.
Over the years, Lauterbach was also presented in his constituency
“Over the years,” Norbert Fuchs to be precise, “Karl has gotten better and better in the election campaign. And he was also more present locally.” Among other things, he has a constituency office on Buchheimer Strasse, about halfway between the central Wiener Platz and the banks of the Rhine. There, the employees, sometimes Karl Lauterbach himself, take time for the citizens. “I’ve already placed a few people there,” says Fuchs, “they were thrilled with how much expertise he met them with.”
The office last hit the headlines in December when vandals damaged the pane. On the day when the job-related vaccination requirement was passed in the Bundestag. Daily abuse and even death threats are also part of his everyday work on Lauterbach’s Twitter account, and Corona deniers in particular made statements there. But he doesn’t feel threatened, the politician emphasized in an interview with the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” that he was well protected. He felt much more sorry for the local politicians who lived without protection: “They really take the risk.”
Owner Ulrike Schreurs was amazed at the limousines with Berlin license plates that one day arrived on the market square opposite her second-hand children’s shop Die Froschkönigin in the Holweide district, which also belongs to the constituency: “At first I thought they were civil investigators, and I asked myself: ‘Who are they chasing?’” But then the square filled with people, demonstrators gathered. “They fought to keep our hospital alive,” says the retailer.
Video
Lauterbach: Germany has omicron episodes “well under control”
Minister of Health Lauterbach expects the number of new infections to rise to 400,000. ©Reuters
And when Karl Lauterbach finally spoke to those present, she was no longer surprised: “He’s been well protected for a long time.” Christina Hilpisch observed that this was also the case in the election campaign. The architect lives in Dellbrück, where she noticed a police car “in the middle of the Rewe entrance” near the market square. “At first I thought she was looking for a shoplifter, but then I saw Karl Lauterbach at the SPD stand.” Personal security is part of the job for the father of five.
Today’s Minister of Health also took part in a demo
Herbert Linhart (88) also observed this at Holweide. Because the retired chemist took part in the demonstration. “My first demo in Cologne,” he says and laughs. At 88? “Yes, why not?” he asks back. “I thought that was right.” He used to take to the streets in his Ukrainian hometown of Gelsenkirchen, but only in Cologne with Lauterbach. “He’s committed to us,” believes Herbert Linhart. “While I don’t know how much he can actually do, he not only spoke at the demo, he also marched with us to the hospital. I liked that.”
The Holweide hospital has 407 beds and is best known for its obstetrics clinic, with around 2,000 births a year. The oncology clinic also enjoys a good reputation. It is also what connects Herbert Linhart to the hospital: his wife was treated for colon cancer there for three years before she died. And this hospital is to be closed according to a decision by the Cologne City Council. Mayor Henriette Reker (65; independent) would like to merge the university clinic with the clinics of the city of Cologne, without the house in Holweide, which would bring about great losses.
“Absolutely absurd,” raved district mayor Norbert Fuchs. “In a district with a good 150,000 inhabitants, it should be possible to run a hospital economically. The district council is clearly opposed to the decision of the city council. CDU faction leader Thomas Portz was confirmed. And Karl Lauterbach also said on Radio Cologne in October: The need for the hospital is undisputed, Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine is one of the least supplied urban areas. The hospital should stay. At the demo, he also spoke out in favor of receiving it.
Can a health minister no longer interfere in the day-to-day business of his constituency?
Herbert Linhart: “He said we should fight because once the hospital was gone, there would never be another one. This directness appealed to many people.” Fuchs now receives that his party colleague should repeat Dess’s demand: “Because if he were to say that now as Federal Minister of Health,” he calculates, “then it would have weight.” What Thomas Portz sees more pessimistically: “The Minister can hardly interfere in such a matter of day-to-day business, even if it is his constituency.”
The commitment to the hospital, standing up against the party members in the city council and potentially also against his employer, after all Lauterbach is still director of the Institute for Health Economics and Clinical Epidemiology at the University Hospital Cologne, be for the owner of the constituency Leverkusen-Cologne IV, Companion Norbert Fuchs thinks: “If he finds something right, then Karl will do something about it.” What the former adversary Thomas Portz said: “Karl is a man of conviction who will not be deterred.” What the health expert often did during the corona pandemic has proved enough.
“I think,” judges CDU man Portz, “that Karl Lauterbach is the ideal minister at the moment because of his expertise in the health sector and his ability to interpret scientific studies himself.” The health economist already has two to three hours a day every day Fuchs remembers reading studies when he came to the constituency. And wishes? “That we’ll soon be eating fish together again at the Scampino on the Rhine. Without salt. Just tuna and broccoli. Also – for Karl.” The district mayor likes salt. But he also respects Lauterbach’s ascetic way of life. And would like to know from him what it’s like to have fulfilled your dream of becoming a minister.