Robert Habeck is a repeat offender, and now co-party leader Annalena Baerbock is also doing it.
Just in time for the hot election campaign phase, the green candidate for chancellor publishes a book.
Berlin - Even if the word is in the title: Annalena Baerbock's book “Jetzt.
How we are renewing our country ”contains little new - at least for readers who have browsed through the green election manifesto.
But Baerbock doesn't just want to present concepts on 240 pages.
She writes about herself, childhood memories, encounters and beliefs.
Youth in the village
“A bit of Bullerbü in North German” is how Baerbock describes his childhood in the village of Schulenburg an der Leine near Hanover. Her parents and relatives bought an old house there and renovated it for years, she writes. "I grew up with my two younger sisters and my cousins on this construction site with four hectares of overgrown garden." The longing for the village remained, she writes, "which is why my commitment to phasing out coal was always a struggle for the villages of Lusatia ". Today she lives with her family in Potsdam near Berlin.
The author Michael Ebmeyer supported her in her work. With him, who also worked on a book by SPD Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, she had extensive discussions in December and January, as Baerbock says. On the basis of these transcribed conversations, in turn, she wrote her book. Some stages in her professional and political career, the misleading presentation of which caused so much trouble for the author in the end, are touched on, but without giving precise key data.
"There is a lot of personal information in there," said Baerbock of the German press agency.
Because she believes that politics is only possible out of inner conviction, with a view to the realities of people's lives and as part of their everyday life.
She wanted to make it clear "what such bulky topics as a socio-ecological market economy specifically have to do with the people in our country." And with her and her experiences.
Pragmatism instead of slogans
The Greens have long since internalized that ecological restructuring will not find majorities without social security and that exchanges with bosses and trade unionists outside of the solar industry are necessary. Their explanations on the subject of services of general interest (health care, transport links, schools, sport) are correspondingly detailed. The Greens used to make it pretty easy for themselves, writes Baerbock. "The slogan of the" dirty coal companies "was well received at every party congress, but less so with the employees in Lusatia."
The deepest dichotomies in the book are in foreign policy.
In foreign policy there are moments "when you have to decide between plague and cholera," writes the Greens leader.
What is meant are decisions for or against the use of armed force to save human lives.
For Baerbock, this is not excluded: "It is not about a morally clean conscience, but about reducing suffering and saving lives through concrete action."
No fear of emotions and enthusiasm for sport
Baerbock is not afraid of feelings.
“Tears ran down my cheeks.
When they write, they still do that today, ”she reports from a visit to Iraqi Kurdistan, where in 2019 she met Yazidi women who had been kidnapped and raped by the IS terrorist militia.
The strongest passion beyond politics flares up when Baerbock writes about sport.
“When I think of sports, I think of full power, soaking wet jerseys and mud fights on the soccer field.
And double somersaults on the trampoline.
Sport was my life when I was young. "
Then it almost goes through a little with the Greens boss.
For four pages she describes the ups and downs as a young competitive athlete on the trampoline.
In 1994 she smashed her ankle just before the German championships.
“I know pain, but I wanted to be German champion in a week,” she said to the doctor in the hospital, who was surprised that she didn't stop crying.
Of course, there are also political lessons in these memories; Rules on the football field as an exercise for democratic coexistence. She is irritated when people try to show strength by not accepting defeat. “You'd be out on the pitch.” Dpa