This week, the FDP parliamentary group meets in Jena to send a signal from the Thuringian university town into the running state election campaign. On the edge of the exam, the SPIEGEL met a thoughtful, but also militant FDP party and faction leader Christian Lindner.
Last Sunday, the Liberals missed the entry into the Landtage of Saxony and Brandenburg. Now Lindner hopes that the FDP on 27 October in Thuringia makes the leap into parliament and plays a role in forming a government.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Lindner, the FDP has not made it to the Landtag of Brandenburg and Saxony. Is your success story over?
Lindner: Before the general election, we failed twice in the East. The way to the Landtage is longer for us there. The tactical mobilization of the CDU and SPD against the AfD has cost us crucial votes. In Thuringia things are the other way round. There we have ideas for economic progress and education, but also a tactical function. Only with the FDP in the state parliament can the left government be replaced.
SPIEGEL: The FDP is barely noticed. How do you want to become more visible?
Lindner: When we were not in the Bundestag, we were invisible. We just talked directly to the people. Sure, in climate and migration you look at the green and AfD, because they have the corner positions. The FDP is more balanced. Management of immigration, but no foreclosure. Commitment to climate goals, but with technology instead of abandonment or ban. This is not so pop, but just our opinion.
SPIEGEL: You were very vocal with your comment from the "climate professionals" in the debate on "Fridays for Future" - but the echo was not positive.
Lindner: The phrase has opened a stupid flank, yes.
SPIEGEL: You want an empathic FDP. But there was - with all due respect - but the old arrogant FDP in the guise of its chairman.
Lindner: Pity, if the impression arises. The wording was bad, I stand by the thought. It's not about students. The entire policy makes too much small and small in the climate. In parliament, more theologians comment on this as technicians. There are moralizing prohibition debates rather than real solutions. We need to let those who really have the science know how to save the most CO2.
SPIEGEL: That means?
Lindner: Why do politicians decide unilaterally for the battery electric drive? Some even want to ban the combustion engine, even though it is carbon-neutral with synthetic fuels. We destroy such great jobs and key industries. The world laughs about Germany. The FDP wants to combine climate protection with a liberal lifestyle and economic growth. For this we rely on technology openness.
SPIEGEL: Do you sometimes wonder if you have made mistakes personally?
Lindner: I make mistakes every day.
SPIEGEL: Many people think that their biggest mistake is getting out of Jamaica in autumn 2017. Do you find it annoying that Jamaica does not want to pass away?
Bodo Schackow / dpa central image / dpa
Christian Lindner in Jena: "The rule of law must be more consistent."
Lindner: It was clear that there are Threshes for it. We did it anyway. And I still think that's right. We could not have achieved a turnaround. No abolition of solos, no education reform, no digital ministry, no immigration law. In 2009, people were angry that we did not implement anything. They also criticize today that we have not become content-free stirrup holders of black and green. At the next federal election we will advertise that we stand by our word even when it is uncomfortable.
SPIEGEL: The weakness of the FDP has not only since the recent elections to do with the lack of mobilization of the over-60s. How do you want to achieve that?
Lindner: We advise. My feeling is that the over-60s are quarreling about the Jamaica issue because they see us in the classic role of coalition partners.
SPIEGEL: The old Rainer-Brüderle-FDP.
Lindner: We stand by our tradition as governing party. But in fact, young voters have come to know us more as an independent offer. In the "Fridays for Future Generation" we cut the most. There are not only anti-capitalist reflexes, but many who share our desire for technology and digitization, our love of freedom and cosmopolitanism. The fact that we have education at the top of the program is well received.
SPIEGEL: Even for the Greens, the East was not easy terrain for a long time, but they've gained some ground. What do you do better than the FDP?
Lindner: With the climate policy, a big topic these days, they move on their center court. In addition, I have respect for skilful communication. The tax increases from earlier are still in the program, but in public somehow do not fall on.
SPIEGEL: Already in the election campaign you criticized the migration question critical. Is there any need for correction here?
Lindner: Maybe we are sometimes too scared to spell out our position clearly. On the one hand, we want the cosmopolitan and tolerant society, which needs skilled immigration and humanitarian responsibility. But without control and without deportation of illegally arrived people, the order collapses.
SPIEGEL: What do you have in mind to overcome this timidity?
Lindner: The rule of law must be more consistent. The FDP must openly state that it is our right as a receiving country to decide who we take and who we do not. Immigration to Germany may not take place at random. And integration is not only our job, but also an expectation towards all who come.
SPIEGEL: Do you want to flash right-liberal in Thuringia, where AfD politician Björn Höcke is competing?
Lindner: We remain a party of the middle. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the FDP refugee minister has the nation's best figures in the deportations - and at the same time the friendliest rule for the right to stay of people willing to integrate.
Gregor Fischer / dpa
FDP politician Zastrow, Goetz and Lindner after the elections: "The way to the Landtage is longer for us there."
SPIEGEL : Do the successes of the AfD in the East endanger democracy?
Lindner: dramatizations help the AfD. Their success should be an occasion to reflect on political offers in the matter of how to recover their voters. The AfD gets smaller if you minimize the problems that made the AfD big. The rural area is neglected, the people have the feeling that the rule of law is not able to act, that the migration policy is considered only from a bubble in Berlin. And that a certain lifestyle should be imposed on them.
SPIEGEL: A left-liberal lifestyle?
Lindner: There is nothing liberal about wanting to impose your own lifestyle on others. With itself it is so, I drive privately as a resident of the capital hardly with his own car. But I can not tell anyone who has to drive 50 kilometers to work every day in the country. I am for more tolerance.
SPIEGEL: How do you want to fight the AfD?
Lindner: We should not demonize the AFD voters. Moral arrogance does not continue, we have to offer solutions. One should not go to the AfD on the glue, by constantly getting excited about their taboo breaks. In the past, I have chosen AfD candidates for the post of Vice-President of the Bundestag because I do not want to give them the martyr status.
SPIEGEL: But the situation is different now. A quarter of voters in Brandenburg elected the AfD with a leading candidate Andreas Kalbitz, who had contacts in the extreme right-wing milieu. One has to warn against such people.
Lindner: Of course. But it should not give the impression that should be distracted by the warning of the protagonists of the AfD that the voters of the AfD point to real everyday problems. I argue that we should talk as much as possible about the problems that are driving the potential voters of the AfD and less about the organization itself.
SPIEGEL: Are not you trivializing the AfD now?
Lindner: No, but I am for a differentiated consideration.
SPIEGEL: Who would be there?
Lindner: In and outside of the AfD there are real right-wing radicals, then those who support the party out of protest on the merits and third, the homeless followers who feel no longer addressed by other parties. The first group can be fought politically, if necessary with all constitutional means, and the second group can be offered political solutions. And for the third group, the parties must become distinguishable again. When black, red, yellow and green appear as a mush, people are looking for something different.
SPIEGEL: Is the AfD a bourgeois opposition, as Alexander Gauland says?
Lindner: No. Being a bourgeois is a matter of attitude. He who is bourgeois practices tolerance, pays tribute and respects. The commoner wants to strengthen the inner cohesion of a society, but the AfD lives from its division.