1. The Union is looking for a new leader
The members of the strongly decimated Union parliamentary group have been meeting in the Bundestag since 5 p.m.
They want to elect a group leader - but in truth they are voting on the fate of Armin Laschet.
Enlarge image
CDU chief Armin Laschet
Photo:
Martin Meissner / AP
Should the candidate for chancellor and CDU party chairman fail to form a Jamaican coalition and the Union ends up in the opposition, the post of parliamentary group chairman would be one of the most powerful in the Union. Laschet announced yesterday that he wanted to propose that the previous chairman Ralph Brinkhaus (CDU) should be the parliamentary group leader "in the phase of these coalition negotiations". This caused resentment at Brinkhaus, who, as usual, had wanted to be elected for a year. But possibly opposing candidates from Jens Spahn, Friedrich Merz, Norbert Röttgen or Carsten Linnemann should have been expected.
Allegedly, Laschet, Söder and Brinkhaus want to present the members of parliament with an "amicable solution", as my colleague Veit Medick learned shortly before the meeting.
Perhaps they can now turn a candidate for a fight for the parliamentary group chairmanship of the Union.
According to SPIEGEL information, a compromise provides for Ralph Brinkhaus to be elected for six months.
The exciting question is also whether the gentlemen, after the descent on election evening to 24.1 percent of the vote, still have enough authority to make regulations for the members of the CDU and CSU (Markus Söder would of course speak of an "offer").
"The parliamentary group is the center of power in the Union, in which many fights have been fought in the ranks of the sister parties," write my colleagues Florian Gathmann and Kevin Hagen.
"Now that the conservatives have built up a lot of frustration over the past few months, the parliamentary group could be the place where the anger discharges." de facto disempowerment.
Incidentally, at the press conference before the parliamentary group meeting, Markus Söder dropped a sentence that should not make Armin Laschet's political survival any easier: "The best chances to become Chancellor are currently Mr Scholz."
Read the full story here: Why Laschet is threatened with disempowerment today
Follow the events live here in the news update for the federal election
2. The Greens want to move away from staff debates
Incidentally, the newly elected Bundestag has become more feminine.
The proportion of women rose slightly from 31 percent to around 35 percent, which is due to the gains made by the SPD and the Greens.
Enlarge image
The Greens chairmen Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck
Photo: FILIP SINGER / POOL / EPA
I mention this because in the last few days you could easily get the impression that only men are allowed on the playing field of the current power monopoly.
Milena Hassenkamp and Marcel Pauly describe in their text, among other things, the picture of the FDP election party on Sunday, which caused ridicule and anger on social media: »The section showed the stage in the party headquarters while Christian Lindner gave his speech - surrounded of white, older men.
Only when you broadened the image did you see two women. "
When Merkel's power is distributed and rearranged, Annalena Baerbock is currently only circulating as a single female name.
And that is often used in combination with Robert Habeck, who is supposed to be Vice Chancellor.
At the meeting of the Greens parliamentary group this morning, Robert Habeck announced that he and Annalena Baerbock would conduct the coalition and exploratory talks "with great togetherness, great unity and great strength". The party and the parliamentary group are "120 percent" behind Baerbock. "All questions" have been resolved between them, but it is not appropriate to have personnel debates now. He expects a "spirit of recognition, respect and solidarity" from "all of us".
My colleague Valerie Höhne writes that the green dual leadership would like to end the personnel debates quickly.
"Especially since the Greens are a party that promises transparency to their voters, separates ministerial offices and federal executive positions."
The agreement has already been criticized for the first time: the former parliamentary group leader, Jürgen Trittin, told SPIEGEL that personnel issues were decided by "the party, not just two people in personal talks."
Read the full story here: Habeck calls speculation about vice chancellor post "completely irrelevant"
3. Democracy cannot be taken for granted
The Afghan transitional government consists of almost 50 members - all men from the Taliban environment.
The Islamists reject the previous constitution, which is considered to be one of the most progressive constitutions in the region due to the rights and freedoms enshrined in it.
Therefore, the Taliban now want to temporarily apply the constitution from the royal era.
Enlarge image
Taliban fighters in front of Taliban flags in Kabul
Photo: HOSHANG HASHIMI / AFP
The "Ministry of Women's Affairs" has renamed the transitional government the "Ministry of Vice and Virtue".
"These muscular, self-proclaimed heroes who took power immediately abolished anything that would suggest that there are women in Afghanistan," writes Sima Samar in her Kabul Diary column today.
In 2001 she was appointed Afghanistan's first woman minister.
Samar built it up, she looked after it.
Her ministry initially consisted of a room, a chair, a desk and a computer donated by the UN, she describes in her text.
When a Swedish diplomat brought her two heaters, Samar thanked the woman and said: "But there is no electricity in this building!"
Now the ministry doesn't even exist.
How lucky we are in Germany to be able to live in a democracy.
Samar writes: "It makes me so sad to see how the dream of millions of women fade away, who only want what all people all over the world want: freedom."
Read the full story here: What the abolition of the Ministry of Women means for Afghanistan
(Would you like to receive the »Situation in the evening« conveniently by email in your inbox? Here you can order the daily briefing as a newsletter.)
What else is important today
Public prosecutor's office has Johannes Kahrs house searched:
In connection with the Cum-Ex scandal, investigators searched Johannes Kahrs (SPD) house.
The public prosecutor's office in Cologne is investigating two other accused because of the initial suspicion of beneficiary.
The Russian judiciary is launching a new investigation against Navalny:
Alexei Navalny has been in custody in Russia since the beginning of the year.
The authorities are now accusing him of having "founded an extremist organization".
A conviction could significantly extend his sentence.
AfD apparently fell for an invented flyer service:
More than a million election campaign flyers of the AfD have apparently not been distributed.
Now the Center for Political Beauty claims to be responsible - and even speaks of five million.
EU chief negotiator blames Brexit for the fuel crisis:
Michel Barnier sat as EU chief negotiator in the Brexit talks and is now taking over: The British would have to "
face
the consequences of leaving the EU."
My favorite story today:
The daycare mothers
What comes to your mind when you have to name the most revolutionary political idea of the past 16 Merkel years?
Probably not the introduction of the legal right to a daycare place in 2013. Or the invention of parental allowance in 2007. Both measures had very far-reaching effects.
The special election issue of SPIEGEL, now digital and at the kiosk
"The realignment of family policy in the Merkel era has changed the everyday life of far more families far more profoundly than the nuclear phase-out or the end of compulsory military service," write my colleagues Susmita Arp, Jan Friedmann and Miriam Olbrisch.
Your text, which you can also read in the special election issue of SPIEGEL published today at the kiosk, deals with the family-political revolution that our country has gone through in the last ten years.
When you read that the then CSU regional group leader Peter Ramsauer described the newly introduced father months during parental leave with amusement as "wrap-around traineeship" and the Augsburg Bishop Walter Mixa warned that they wanted to tear the children away from women and reduce them to "birthing machines." «, One imagines in the Middle Ages.
The quotes are from 2007.
However, there is not only reason to be happy, write my colleagues from the Germany department in their very readable story.
"Social change was faster than the expansion of childcare places," they sum up, for example.
In many places, fathers and mothers still cannot find shelter for their children.
Places in well-equipped, high-quality day-care centers are particularly scarce.
And there was a lack of educators almost everywhere.
Read the full story here: The day care mothers
What we recommend today at SPIEGEL +
"The FDP and the Greens cannot make demands on the moon":
The ballot papers are counted.
And four parties have to sound out the composition of the new government.
The scientist Dorothea Kübler explains the smartest way to negotiate.
The most important judgments of the Federal Constitutional Court:
from KPD ban to crucifix, from abortion to "soldiers are murderers".
The long-time SPIEGEL correspondent Rolf Lamprecht leaf through the key decisions from seven decades.
Green and liberal - this is how it could go:
To form a government, the FDP and the Greens have to pull together.
That could go faster than many believe.
What a sensible solution could look like.
Which is less important today
Enlarge image
Cannabis plants on a plantation (symbolic image)
Photo: ABIR SULTAN / picture alliance / dpa
The most widely read story of the day is not one of the articles about the unresolved Chancellor question, but this message: 91-year-old grows marijuana in a retirement home.
The employee of the Krumbach senior citizens' home discovered a cannabis plant on the balcony of a very old but unsuspecting resident and called the police.
The officers immediately confiscated the crop because it was a narcotic drug.
Happy Germany that the police in this country apparently have nothing better to do.
Typo of the day
, corrected in the meantime: "The party urgently needs a fresh start - but what should it look like?"
Cartoon of the day:
great moments of democracy
And tonight?
On election Sunday, around 32 million viewers watched television at times.
That emerges from a viewer analysis of the AGF video research around the federal election.
Enlarge image
The »Feminat« of the Greens (1984): Only women at the top
Photo: Malte Ossowski / Sven Simon / picture-alliance / Majestic Filmverleih
How about if you turn off the TV today and go to the cinema?
I recommend the film "The Unyielding", which is not about the members of the Union who terminate their allegiance to their party leader Armin Laschet.
But about the entry of women into German politics.
One of those portrayed in the film is the Nuremberg social democrat Renate Schmidt, 77. It is thanks to her and Ursula von der Leyen that the country's fathers and mothers introduced parental allowance and the right to care for children under three.
A lovely evening.
Sincerely,
Anna Clauss
Here you can order the "Lage am Abend" by email.
