Puchheim has been able to call itself a city for ten years.
At that time, of all people, a Gröbenzeller played a very important role: the CSU MP Reinhold Bocklet.
However: Really not everyone can make friends with the attribute.
Puchheim
- In the long history of Puchheim it is practically only the blink of an eye.
The settlement near the Parsberg is at least 1050 years old, for almost 200 years the village was an independent municipality and it was only ten years ago that it became a city.
But had it really become a city or was it just a magnanimous administrative act that made it so?
And is Puchheim at least after ten years what its name promises to be?
Ceremony in the PUC cultural center
At the recently celebrated anniversary in the PUC, a corona-intimate ceremony with a few dozen Puchheim online guests, there was a lot of talk in the speeches and greetings about how justified the title was then and even more so today.
As if you had to justify yourself against inaudible criticism or convince the Puchheimers who are only moderately interested in how much better it is to breathe in city air.
Two of the guests of honor from Eichenau and Groebenzell thought the rating was more than appropriate.
Groebenzell remains in "sham idyll"
The former mayor Herbert Kränzlein (SPD), now at home in Eichenau, compared Puchheim with a politician whose many years of beneficial work (community) would now also be recognized with the Bavarian medal of merit (city).
The man will remain the same, but his lifetime achievement will be recognized.
Reinhold Bocklet, a former member of the CSU state parliament living in Gröbenzell, saw “the Puchheim brand” strengthened by the town elevation, but at the same time made no secret of his apparently persistent anger.
Puchheim and - also in 2011 - also Olching would have taken the chance courageously instead of sticking to a "sterile lingering in the pseudo-idyll".
The Gröbenzeller had decided by referendum to want to remain simple community citizens.
Kränzlein was the driving force behind the city idea.
In the PUC he told the anecdote of the little dispute with the then Munich treasurer Ernst Wolowicz in the finance committee of the city council.
The newcomer from Puchheim introduced himself and then his community, which took up the Munich rubbish earlier and finally created living space for commuters to the city.
And although only a municipality, Puchheim is financially better off than the metropolis.
"Then it'll just be a city," Wolowicz is said to have joked back.
It may be that this was the decisive indication, it may be that there was a small town survey fashion in Bavaria at the time.
Protest with 1500 signatures
But it is also conceivable that above all “the ego of the city tour at that time had to be satisfied”, as Johann Aichner of the Free Voters still does not want to rule out today. Politically, the free people, or at least their board members, were the only local opponents of the project. The association “Lebensraum Puchheim”, which is close to them, collected 1,500 signatures for the preservation of the community. A referendum was declared inadmissible for formal reasons and the two FW municipal councilors did not even want to apply for a petition. When they were accused of being a mayor in a letter to the editor in the local press, they left the Free Voters.
But the further way to the Puchheim town elevation only paved the Gröbenzeller Bocklet.
"No social democratic mayor can ignore the local CSU member of the state parliament if he wants something from the state government," says Kränzlein.
And this MP not only got involved in the idea if Gröbenzell and Olching were also involved, but also actively promoted the project to the responsible interior minister.
The party friend should take a look at the area, because something lively and independent is growing up there, independent of Munich - that's what Bocklet claims to have argued at the time.
“I kept trying to teach him,” he told the PUC.
Whether out of insight or to have peace and quiet: Joachim Herrmann finally agreed to the triple development of the city.
It is undisputed that of the three communities Puchheim is the closest to deserving the new rating.
The high-rise estate has an urban feel, companies operate internationally, the cultural offerings have a reputation beyond the boundaries of the district, and the social infrastructure is broad.
But was there such a thing as an urban attitude towards life among the people of Puchheim or has it developed in the meantime, and if so, what is it actually?
District Administrator Thomas Karmasin, one of the greetings speakers in the PUC, spoke of a certain sense of togetherness, “that one greets each other at the Green Market”, that Puchheim is not “an arbitrary gathering of many people”.
You never wanted to be like Grünwald
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City survey in May 2011: Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann and Mayor Herbert Kränzlein.
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Bocklet, on the other hand, emphasized the “openness to the world”: “The diversity of people makes up the wealth of Puchheim.” Kränzlein used the term “multi-ethnic city”, integrating, social, with a healthy sense of economic necessities. You never wanted to become the “Grünwald of the West”, he said later.
Kränzlein's successor as mayor thinks that the city attribute describes better what makes Puchheim what it is. Namely “innovation, dynamism, diversity.” Not to isolate yourself behind a “Dahoam is dahoam”, said Norbert Seidl (SPD) in the PUC. Not to be satisfied with oneself, not only to appreciate local things, clubs, tradition, but to take on an active role, he later specified to the daily newspaper. However, he does not want to deny that the Puchheimers as community citizens could and can do this. And that Puchheim-Ort still does not see itself as a city, that many Ortlers still have to nibble on the term, he also admits.
In Puchheim-Ort, however, one seems to have found one another in the immutable. It's like the euro, explains Johann Aichner. For years, people had thought of converting into D-Marks, but in the end they used the name of the new currency. For him, a real city is always something else: important functions for the surrounding area, such as a court or clinic, a long history that can also be read in the buildings, and not least a center, as Puchheim still wants to create. But Aichner believes that the Ortler can live with their existence as townspeople despite all the separatism. “It didn't hurt either. It doesn't hurt that we're a city now. "