Susanne Eisenmann is supposed to bring the CDU back to the top in Baden-Württemberg despite much criticized politics.
What you need to know about the Minister of Education.
Baden-Wuerttemberg
.
The German politician
Susanne Eisenmann
was born on November 28, 1964 in Bad Cannstatt in Stuttgart and has been politically active since her teenage years.
She is currently Minister for Culture, Youth and Sport in the Kretschmann II cabinet in the state parliament of Baden-Württemberg, but the CDU politician has even higher ambitions.
She wants to bring her party back to the top of government, which has been dominated by the Greens in Baden-Württemberg for years.
In the state elections in 2011, the CDU was still the strongest force in the Baden-Württemberg state parliament before Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, but did not come into government because of the green-red coalition.
In 2016, they even fell behind the Greens and lost a lot of votes.
A Kiwi coalition of the Greens and the CDU was formed in Baden-Württemberg, but the party is not satisfied with its role as second fiddle.
Susanne Eisenmann should change that.
In the upcoming state elections, which
will take place
in
Baden-Württemberg on March 14, 2021, she is the CDU's top candidate
and direct opponent of the Green Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann.
Susanne Eisenmann: Your youth and your way into politics
Susanne Eisenmann grew up in the Heumaden district of Stuttgart, where she also attended school and graduated from high school.
She then studied German, linguistics and political science at the University of Stuttgart and graduated with a master's degree in 1990.
In 1996 she got her doctorate in philosophy with her dissertation on "Sed corde dicemus: the popular element in the German sermons of Geiler von Kaysersberg".
Eisenmann discovered her political interest as a teenager.
At the age of only 16 she joined the youth department of the CDU, the Junge Union,
and ten years later she held her first office.
In 1990 she became a district adviser to Sillenbuch in Stuttgart and in 1991 she took over the post of personal advisor to Günther Oettinger, chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in Baden-Württemberg.
She held this post until 2005, when she became mayor for culture, education and sport.
In 1994, at the age of 29, she had already been elected to the Stuttgart municipal council and from 2004 to 2005 she also assumed the position of chairman of the CDU parliamentary group in the Stuttgart municipal council.
Since the state elections in Baden-Württemberg in 2016, in which the CDU moved into the state parliament as the second strongest force with 27 percent and only 42 seats behind the Greens with 30.3 percent and 47 seats, Susanne Eisenmann has been minister under Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann for culture, youth and sport.
Your policy in this area sometimes causes criticism, but should now decide the election for the CDU.
Susanne Eisenmann: Hope for education policy and your position in the CDU
In 2016, Susanne Eisenmann was initially seen as a great
hope for the CDU and was primarily supposed to promote the state's educational policy
.
As an otherwise exemplary federal state, Baden-Württemberg had sunk significantly in the statistics on matters of education.
The nationwide IQB education study found that there were serious deficits in German, math and English, especially among students in grades eight and nine.
Reading, spelling and listening skills also fell by the wayside, which is why a change should be brought about with Eisenmann as minister of education.
As a doctor of German studies and a long-time mayor for education, Eisenmann brought experience above all to her new position.
In politics, she is considered a tough fighter, who, for example, as mayor for sport, has already vehemently spoken out in favor of stronger doping controls and protested against the participation of certain athletes in the 2007 road cycling world championship.
Above all, however, it should consider educational issues without ideology.
That was what the government counted on.
Eisenmann made her demand to make educational policy an omnipresent topic, and because of the changing society, she urged a stronger differentiation in educational issues.
She wanted her colleagues in government to be more open to the issue.
Her authenticity in particular was a point that spoke a lot for Susanne Eisenmann.
She pursued a relaxed relationship with the Greens and the SPD, spoke out against decisions in small party circles and openly noted that the CDU had to realign itself, be more open and break away from old patterns.
As expected, she met with criticism in her own party, but continued to emphasize that the CDU sometimes lacks credibility.
In February 2020, she announced that she would support Friedrich Merz's candidacy for the federal party chairmanship because, in her opinion, he could raise the party's profile in terms of content.
Today she is again supported by her party, which sees in her hope for the government of Baden-Württemberg.
Susanne Eisenmann and the constant criticism of her politics
Today the CDU relies on Susanne Eisenmann despite the friction in the past.
However, she is almost alone with this, because the politician is
often criticized
in some areas, but above all
with regard to her educational policy
.
In October 2016, the Minister of Education announced that some projects that the previous government had promised could no longer be implemented due to budget cuts.
Among other things, the cutbacks fell victim to the expansion of all-day schools, the inclusion of children with disabilities in regular school life and the introduction of computer science in the lower grades.
In addition, the politician advocates restricting the learning method “write after listening”, which has already met with a lot of criticism from teachers.
In 2017, it also abolished the external evaluation of pupils and the State Institute for School Development and instead wanted to create two new institutions to analyze the quality of education and school in Baden-Württemberg.
Eisenmann is also vehemently in favor of the high school graduation system with eight school years and has long emphasized that parents in Baden-Württemberg are convinced of the system and are satisfied with it.
According to a survey carried out by the working group of high school parents' councils in Baden-Württemberg in 2021 among parents with children at high school, this is not true.
Almost 90 percent of parents would like their children to return to level 13.
Susanne Eisenmann's policy in the Covid-19 pandemic
Even during the
Covid-19 pandemic
, Susanne Eisenmann did not always smear herself with the proverbial fame, because in Baden-Württemberg the reactions and solutions to and for the lockdown were rather mixed and chaotic.
Eisenmann said he had heard a lot of positive feedback about the online learning portal "Moodle", but in reality many students, parents and teachers are dissatisfied with it and the success of the concept varies greatly from school to school.
She also simply overlooked the nationwide agreement to initiate the 2020 Christmas holidays prematurely for a lockdown, although Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann had already agreed.
In January 2021, she also urged the schools to open up quickly with face-to-face teaching regardless of the incidence figures, which even triggered some requests for resignation from the Minister of Education, as well as her single-handed promotion of a new test strategy that was not discussed with her colleagues from the Ministry of Health in Baden-Württemberg .
On January 23, 2021, the former
government spokesman Hans Georg Koch told the FAZ
that he was
leaving the CDU
and justified this with the fact that he could not support Eisenmann's handling of the corona crisis and the lack of resistance against it.
Despite this and other criticism, the
CDU in Baden-Württemberg is now
placing
its hopes in Susanne Eisenmann
.
With her inquisitive nature and, above all, her many years of experience in the field of education policy, she should decide the choice for the Christian Democrats.
Eisenmann counters the general thinking that it is difficult to win elections with educational policy by saying that you have to stand up for the things that are currently important.
Especially during and after the Covid-19 pandemic, she therefore sees education policy as an important issue that is on society at the time of the election.
Susanne Eisenmann: This is how the CDU hopeful lives very privately
About the
private lives of Susanne Eisenmann
not too much is known because the politician considers this rather under wraps.
She is married to Christoph Dahl, the managing director of the Baden-Württemberg Foundation, who had five children before the marriage.
Eisenmann has no children of his own, but is a family man and likes to spend time with her nieces, for example.
Except for special occasions, there are very few private snapshots on her official Instagram account and the politician prefers to use the platform for everyday work.
In her private life, the Christian Democrat likes to be active in sports and, if her job permits, she goes jogging regularly on weekends, for example.