Sauerlach - Axel Horn has been a member of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen on the Sauerlach municipal council for 18 years.
In an interview, he explains what that means.
Mr. Horn, what do you have to bring with you to work in the local council?
One should not be put off by the fact that there is, shall we say, an average age in the parties that is striving upwards.
The willingness to help shape would be good - and not just the desire to sell likes on the Internet.
For example, I always wanted to have bike paths.
And that is also clear: local politics is what makes federal politics possible.
Because their resolutions, for example regarding the energy transition, have to be implemented somewhere.
How and when did you get into local politics?
It started very early for me.
Shortly before I graduated from high school, around 1980, I was very interested in political work.
I wanted to know what options there are to get involved locally.
To do this, of course, you first have to attend the meetings to see how local politics actually work.
I later came to the Greens in Sauerlach through the Association for Nature Conservation.
You don't have to be a party member to run for the local council, but I thought to myself: if you do, then yes.
Incidentally, I started together with Anton Hofreiter 18 years ago.
He then moved to the Bundestag.
My political career was a little less excited.
What has changed in local politics in your three legislative terms?
In the local council it once changed that the CSU was initially authoritative and decisive.
At that time, politics was still made, and above all, in the “Schmuck” inn.
You couldn't do much with two Greens and there was a lot of contradiction for us.
It's a little different today because the majority ratios are different.
Was that a difficult learning process for you back then?
Absolutely, that wasn't always nice.
But it teaches you to endure other opinions and still defend your point of view.
That is then already taken note of - and that is worth something.
Sometimes I was able to make a difference, simply because I had the relevant council documents and was aware of certain things in good time.
Why should one get involved in local politics in the local council?
When you suffer from bad decisions, you have better opportunities to exert influence as a local council than if you are not on the local council.
If only because information is available in good time and something can possibly be changed before the public is involved.
Because many decisions have already been made at this stage of the process.
How important is party affiliation in local politics?
I think it works more indirectly.
So that you are with a certain party because you basically have certain views, want the world to be one way or another.
And of course that makes itself felt with certain topics, for example whether you want to have a speed limit - or not.
To what extent does the desire to be right play a role as motivation?
In fact, I often stand there as the know-it-all (laughs), and that certainly annoys some people a lot, not just in politics.
But I am definitely not the great leader and I also do not try to narrowly push my opinion through.
Sometimes I don't even have an opinion.
Is the cooperation in the municipal council more shaped by interpersonal relationships or by party politics?
We all don't have a big problem with one another as interpersonal relationships.
But of course you also notice that personal sympathy is not always beneficial when it comes to tackling certain things together.
That is sometimes irritating.
On the other hand: The world will not end if I cannot prevail in a vote.
And then you always find allies on certain issues across the parliamentary groups, which sometimes gets wildly confused.
An example: Without my intervention at the time, the local museum in Arget would only be heated with fossil natural gas today.
And Willi Berthold from Arget, who is now also a member of the local council for the UBV, has made it possible for the majority of the heat to come from a wood chip heating system in a climate-neutral manner.
Which topics are you annoying?
I think it's a shame that in the past 18 years there has been no willingness in the municipal council to plan a new building area as an ecological settlement project.
The topic of artificial turf also annoys me.
I consider it an absolute anachronism to pour massive amounts of plastic - no matter how environmentally friendly it was produced - into the landscape for insane money to let children run over it, who can also move about in nature in other ways.
There are other great sports besides soccer.
And I think it would be great if, for example, there was a natural swimming pool in Sauerlach, which would also be cheaper to operate than a common pool.
Then children in Sauerlach could learn to swim again!
I think that's very important.
Is there a lack of money for this?
If you spend money on football and high school and road clearance services and build even more roads to open up new settlement areas, then it is no longer enough for the swimming pool.
Then the children go under.
How much working time do you invest in your local council work?
There are at least three rounds: parliamentary group, committee and municipal council meeting. A committee meeting can be over after about two hours, but it can also last until midnight. Basically, at least one and a half working days per month are gone. The actual opinion-forming usually takes place beforehand in one's own parliamentary group. The new media have meanwhile also brought a lot of dynamism into the work: In the past, you had huge mountains of paper as a basis for discussion. And if the mayor has said something wrong, you laboriously looked for the relevant point in the documents for the counter-argument, if you then found it at all. Today it is possible to use a tablet to quickly look up a law or to call up other important information. This is very helpful.
You are self-employed with your engineering office.
Hand on heart: does municipal council membership bring benefits for a company?
No, there is no direct connection between my job and my political work.
But whether someone has a field and perhaps wants to have it designated as building land and therefore sits on the local council - that can only be guessed.
In my experience, those who sit on the local council tend to be more interested in creating something.
This is where I see the main motivation for political commitment and not with one's own economic advantages.
You just feel good when you have a positive effect.
For example, I am happy when I walk through Sauerlach and can say that we have already done this and that.
That's how people tick.
Municipal councils in Bavaria
According to the Bavarian State Office for Statistics, there are currently 2,056 municipalities in the Free State of Bavaria.
As part of the municipal and district elections, the municipal council members are elected every six years.
Most recently, 32,810 mandates were to be awarded - 31,638 of them in municipalities belonging to a district and 1,172 in urban districts.
The number of parish council members depends on the size of the parish.
This is regulated in the municipal code for the Free State of Bavaria and there in Article 31. The minimum is eight representatives (up to 1,000 inhabitants).
The largest municipalities have 60 councils (200,000 to 500,000 inhabitants).
The municipal council in Sauerlach currently consists of 20 members.
The following parties are represented: UBV (seven seats), CSU (6), Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen (4), SPD (2) and FDP (1).
Mayor is Barbara Bogner (UBV).
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