Status: 15.01.2024, 14:44 PM
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Ties Rabe, Hamburg's Senator for Schools and Vocational Training, speaks to journalists. © Paul Zinken/dpa
Germany's longest-serving Minister of Culture is taking his hat. After about 13 years in office, Hamburg's Senator for Education, Rabe, has surprisingly resigned. The SPD politician is thus following the advice of his doctors.
Hamburg - Angela Merkel (CDU) has done it, her successor Olaf Scholz is doing it and Hamburg's Senator for Education Ties Rabe (both SPD) also regularly addresses his audience via video. Except that he doesn't call it a disdainful "video message". His channel, intoned by children's voices, is called "Ask the Raven!" and is currently in issue 90 dealing with the new round of registrations for primary and district schools as well as for grammar schools. In Hamburg, there is free choice of school.
However, there will no longer be a 91st broadcast. And Rabe will not find out in his office on the 16th floor of the Ministry of Schools and Vocational Education and Training whether this year's registration round has worked out. Because the 63-year-old resigned from office on Monday completely unexpectedly.
After about 13 years as Germany's longest-serving Minister of Culture, Rabe is stepping down for health reasons. People close to him say that he is following the advice of his doctors to cut back considerably. He is doing well, but he now has to take it easy for several months to keep it that way. Accordingly, he will not accept his citizenship mandate, which has been dormant since he took office.
Rabe, born in Hamburg-Bergedorf and a member of the SPD since 1992, is a high school teacher of German, history and religion; passed both the first and second state examinations as the best of the year with a grade of 1.0. However, he did not work much as a teacher.
Because there was hardly any need for teachers at the time, he first worked as a journalist and then moved to the party headquarters in Kurt-Schumacher-Allee in 2002 as state manager under Hamburg's SPD leader Scholz. In 2006, however, he left it again after disagreements with the then SPD leader Mathias Petersen - to be hired as a teacher of German, religion, history and social studies at the Luisen-Gymnasium in Hamburg-Bergedorf.
In 2008, he made the leap to the Hamburg parliament as an SPD member of parliament, became school policy spokesman and chairman of the school committee. However, the government was formed by the CDU and the Greens - at that time still called GAL - and under Mayor Ole von Beust (CDU) they wanted to overturn the right of parents to vote in schools, to introduce a six-year primary school instead of the four-year primary school and to bundle the Hauptschule, Realschule and Gesamtschule into district schools. In 2010, however, the black-green coalition failed with its plans in a referendum by the opponents of the reform.
What remained were the district schools with the possibility of the Abitur after nine years and the Abitur after eight years at the grammar schools. After the early parliamentary elections in 2011, in which Scholz won an absolute majority as the top candidate for his SPD, Rabe became a school senator - and during all these years managed to continue the school peace agreed in 2010 by the SPD, the Greens and the CDU, most recently extended until 2025.
"With Education Senator Rabe, we were able to conclude a reliable school peace for our city, and even if there are differences in the details, you have to acknowledge his contribution to Hamburg's school landscape," says CDU parliamentary group leader Dennis Thering.
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In 2012, Rabe became President of the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) for one year and in this function regarded it as a success above all that the ministers were able to agree on educational standards for the Abitur and equally difficult examination tasks in German, mathematics, English and French.
In his hometown, he pushed ahead with the expansion of all-day programs, hired numerous teachers, launched a billion-dollar school construction program and improved educational standards. In this way, he managed to make Hamburg significantly better in the ranking of the federal states, for example in fourth place in the Education Monitor 2023 of the German Economic Institute.
Rabe, father of three grown-up children, is known as a straightforward speaker who likes to deal with statistics and figures often. Critics, however, often accuse him of only giving Sunday speeches and always picking out only those dates that suit him. Especially during the Corona pandemic - schools in Hamburg also closed for weeks in mid-March 2020 - there was a lot to discuss. After all, it showed above all the state of digitalization in Hamburg's schools.
"As a school board, we also want to work to ensure that the quality of all schools is as high as possible and that you therefore do not have to worry if you choose the school around the corner," the senator said in the last episode of his video podcast, in order to dispel the concerns of parents in the search for the best school.
Ksenija Bekeris, deputy leader of the SPD parliamentary group, state party vice-president and designated successor to Rabe in the high-rise building on Hamburger Strasse, must now take care of this. Like her predecessor, she is a teacher and has been working as a vocational school teacher at a vocational school for social pedagogy for more than eight years. The 45-year-old mother of one son has been a member of the SPD since 2003.
"Anyone who knows her knows that Ksenija Bekeris has not only been a vocational school teacher for years and knows Hamburg's schools from practice, but is also passionate about educational and equal opportunities," says SPD parliamentary group leader Dirk Kienscherf. "These are optimal conditions for a school senator." dpa