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CDU politician Armin Laschet, SPIEGEL editor Lukas Eberle on the trip to Paris
Photo: DER SPIEGEL
I accompanied Armin Laschet while trying to become chancellor. For a year and a half I went to his press conferences and background talks, conducted interviews with him in his office or on the phone, heard his speeches at party events and in the state parliament, followed him in Jerusalem and Paris. I tried the french fries in his favorite snack bar in Aachen. Some articles that were written together with colleagues landed on the SPIEGEL cover.
We printed a title that featured Laschet as an overweight Majestix.
The title line: "Chief Willsonix".
When Laschet and Markus Söder argued about the candidacy for chancellor, we released a cover that showed Laschet with a damaged nose.
On another SPIEGEL magazine he covered his mouth, and underneath it said: “Oops!
The five mistakes of Armin Laschet and the consequences for Germany. «Our criticism was harsh but appropriate.
Our relationship in three phases
I shouldn't have cared about the consequences. But they weren't. In retrospect, the relationship between Laschet and me can be divided into three phases. Phase one: At the beginning he countered the articles with sarcasm. "Who reads DER SPIEGEL?" He asked me and laughed. Later, in phase two, he decided on the blocking technique. He answered some of my questions with "No" even though I hadn't even finished them. In mid-September, shortly before the federal elections, we had probably reached phase three: I was at a campaign appearance by Laschet in Delbrück-Steinhorst, East Westphalia. Before that, I had officially registered as a journalist.
Two policemen came up to me, one said, "Show me your ID, please, and I'd like to look in your backpack." I asked him why. The policeman replied that Laschet's bodyguards had hired him to check on me. In their eyes I would look "suspicious". It was those bodyguards who had seen me on numerous appointments with Laschet in the months before. Later I called a spokeswoman for Laschets and asked for an explanation. She apologized that it was probably a misunderstanding, she said, that the matter had nothing to do with our reporting. Maybe that was true. To this day I still don't know what to think of the action. What is certain is that the relationship between Armin Laschet and me had reached its lowest point on that day in Delbrück-Steinhorst.
