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DB Logo: Rescue as a matter for the boss
Photo: Hauke-Christian Dittrich / dpa
On Thursday afternoon at 2:23 p.m., the Deutsche Bahn press office sent out one of their usual jubilant messages: "DB board members are getting younger and more female."
In it, the railway announced two new male and one female board member, as if this relationship had anything to do with complete equality.
But all of that faded into the background less than two hours later.
Because another press release had to be written in no time at all.
The head of the supervisory board, Michael Odenwald, angrily threw in the towel.
When SPIEGEL found out about the personal details, the message wasn't even ready.
That's how hasty the chief inspector's departure was.
There has been chaos on the rails at Deutsche Bahn for a long time, and now this situation has also spread to the corporate headquarters on Potsdamer Platz in Berlin.
Because the resignation is collateral damage from an offensive with which Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing is trying to get the dramatic situation at the state-owned company under control.
At a press conference on Thursday, together with Deutsche Bahn boss Richard Lutz, he presented a "construction site concept" with which entire rail corridors, hundreds of kilometers long, are to be completely renovated in one go.
Wissing wants to stop the patching up of his predecessors on the 34,000-kilometer rail network.
Everything is to be repaired in one go: from the overhead line to the track bed, from the edge of the platform to the planting on the slope.
It is his hope that this is the only way to make the ailing system manageable again.
This strategy is correct.
But she is also dangerous.
Because Wissing has now made the rescue of the train a top priority.
Not on the matter of Bahn boss Lutz, but on the matter of the minister.
The head of the supervisory board left because Wissing had set up a "coordination office" in his ministry, which is nothing more than a control office with which he wants to monitor the implementation of his construction site concept.
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Probably out of anger at Transport Minister Wissing: Bahn Supervisory Board Chairman Odenwald resigns by Christian Reiermann and Gerald Traufetter
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The supervisory board is actually responsible for such control questions.
A long-planned strategy meeting of the supervisory board was cancelled, but Wissing held a press conference with a new strategy.
Odenwald obviously felt offended by Wissing's step.
Then he gave up.
But that also means that all responsibility now lies with Wissing himself: If the track remains a mess, then it's his fault.
The Free Democrat could easily have prevented that.
He could have fired Bahn boss Lutz and said: Look, I've demonstrated leadership.
The successor would have served as an excuse for the transport minister for at least two years if the chaos hadn't improved.
The departure of the head of the supervisory board, on the other hand, increases the pressure on Wissing.
He has to fix it.
The Department of Transportation, it seems these days, is at least as dangerous an ejector seat as the Department of Defense.
The authority is unpredictable.
There is a constant threat of new setbacks because of the ailing infrastructure in Germany.
Before the train it was the Autobahn bridges, soon it could be the ship locks, almost certainly the failures and intolerable conditions at the airports, just in time for the travel season long awaited by millions of Germans.
The railway's punctuality statistics are threatening to become an indicator of Wissing's popularity.
If it goes further down, the Liberal is likely to remain one of the most unpopular cabinet ministers.
Wissing is pursuing a bold strategy, perhaps too bold.