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Annalena Baerbock: Your book will be published just in time for the election campaign
Photo: Sean Gallup / Getty Images
Politics books are not an easy genre.
They are seldom a great pleasure to read, neither linguistically nor in terms of content.
The authors always consider their works to be the expression of particular intellectual depth, but behind pathetic titles there is often a boring collection of clichés that only serves one purpose: self-marketing.
Annalena Baerbock has now also written a book, just in time for the hot phase of the election campaign.
It is 240 pages long, the title: “Now.
How we renew our country «.
The book was created in collaboration with the author Michael Ebmeyer, who also worked on a book by SPD Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
Baerbock recently stated that she had extensive conversations with Ebmeyer in December and January, and that she then wrote her book on the basis of these transcribed conversations.
What can you learn from the work about the green candidate for chancellor?
An overview:
1. The programmatic
Initially, the book does not reveal much that is new about Baerbock's political positions and demands. Most of it has already been heard from the head of the Greens and her party in one way or another - in her speech at the party congress, in interviews, in the election manifesto. Baerbock often remains cloudy: "We should give the youngest generation in our country, the children and young people, a new, high priority in our society." Sounds good - but what exactly follows from this remains unclear.
In other places it becomes more concrete.
For example, when it comes to raising the minimum wage, which is to be raised from 9.50 to twelve euros.
Or the suggestion of a secure ID wallet that would enable citizens to store documents such as ID cards or driver's licenses on their smartphones and promote the digitalization of the administration.
Or the idea of establishing citizens' councils as a participation format in Germany.
Above all, however, Baerbock wants to reassure people, to take away their worries about too much change.
She repeatedly links her demands with the perspective that what is tried and tested will remain.
So when the chancellor candidate describes her idea of a socio-ecological transformation in the economy, she quickly adds that this does not mean "questioning the market." When it comes to higher CO2 prices, the reference must not be missing that the income should flow back to the people as energy money. And when Baerbock advocates that some countries in the European Union should join forces to take in refugees from the camps at the EU's external borders, it does not do so without emphasizing that borders must also be controlled according to the rule of law.
In order to pick up voters, every request for renewal should also be followed by a promise of security - the chancellor candidate has obviously internalized this principle.
The Greens as the center of society, that is the message that is congruent with the green narrative of the past few years.
A party that doesn't just scold the "dirty coal companies", but offers everyone involved perspectives and social security.
The description of this new center party also includes calling the Greens “constitutional patriots”.
Her co-boss Robert Habeck devoted an entire book to this constitutional patriotism eleven years ago.
2. The personal
In the book, Baerbock often uses her own biography and family history as a template for her political positions. The professional development of her mother, who studied social pedagogy on her second educational path, explains why Baerbock is in favor of further education BAföG. According to Baerbock, the "incredibly proud, self-confident and above all life-affirming" Grandma Alma and her war experiences are one reason why she has developed a passion for international law. And she thought of Grandpa Waldemar, who came to Frankfurt an der Oder as a Wehrmacht officer while retreating, when she witnessed the symbolic opening of the border between Germany and Poland on the Oder bridge.
In order to bring the readers closer to the people Annalena Baerbock, she lectures stations in her life. The Green politician describes childhood in a village near Hanover, "a bit of Bullerby in North German", with an extended family, a garden and chickens. Her parents gave her an old VW Polo, which she used to drive grateful friends around and which was nicknamed the "race tracker". Her father taught her and her sisters how to change tires with the words: "You don't want to stand stupid on the side of the road and hope that a man will help you."
The trampoline career that was prevented also occurs: when she was about to take part in the German trampoline jumping championships, she suffered a rubble break in her foot - participation in the tournament burst, there were tears in the hospital. Sport, writes Baerbock, taught them "to vacillate between winning and losing, between exulting as high as the sky and saddened to death." Possible parallels to politics? Will probably only be drawn after the election in September.
Again and again Baerbock writes about her role as a woman and a young mother, which is how she stands out from the chancellor competitors Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet in the reality of her life.
Baerbock writes about how she and her colleagues had to change their babies in a prayer room at a special session in the Bundestag on the euro rescue package because there was no other place to do so near the plenary hall.
She tells how she took her daughter to the Paris climate conference and how she cried when she visited a refugee camp because she was so moved by the fate of Yezidi women and their children.
Baerbock doesn't want to be a tough professional politician, but rather to appear human and approachable.
This is not unimportant in personalized election campaigns.
But there is a very measured closeness that Baerbock allows in her book.
3. The craftsmanship
Annalena Baerbock has no government experience, which her competitors and opponents like to hold against her. Is that why your suitability for chancellor is in question? It is probably not by chance that Baerbock rolls out her previous political experiences in the book.
Of course, when she emphasizes the importance of the Paris Climate Agreement, she mentions that she herself attended the climate summit. When it comes to the United Nations' Global Compact for Refugees, it is not without telling that she was in New York while it was being drawn up and met there with the Special Representative on International Migration, among other things. She tells how she traveled to Iraq as a member of the Bundestag and visited Yazidi women there, for whose rights she then campaigned politically. How she met with workers in oil refineries and with coal miners to talk about a socially acceptable climate policy. The message: I've seen a lot in my political career - even without a government office.
The idea of a renewed Germany and a government »that jointly and interdepartmentally develops the necessary dynamics to shape future issues such as climate protection, digitization, social cohesion, children and education as well as a common European policy«, Baerbock has very deliberately with its own political career and biography linked.
Baerbock poses as a woman and a young mother who tackles, plays football and changes tires.
And as an experienced politician with international experience.
In this respect, the book is not a surprising statement in terms of content.
It is a sketch of how the candidate for chancellor would like to be perceived on the political stage.