First session of the new Bundestag: beginning and farewell

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Chancellor Merkel in the stands above the plenary hall

Photo: Christian Thiel / IMAGO

Suddenly everything happens so quickly that even Olaf Scholz is late.

The interruption to the election of the new President of the Bundestag lasted more than an hour, but when Wolfgang Schäuble reads out the results of his successor around a quarter past twelve, many MPs are not even back in the room.

Scholz is still at the level of the government bench, where he will soon take his seat as the new Federal Chancellor, when the applause breaks out for his party friend Bärbel Bas: The Social Democrat was elected President of Parliament with 567 votes, Schäuble announced. After all, Scholz can then prove himself to be the custodian of flowers, he receives the congratulatory bouquets to Bas from the other parliamentary groups in the first row of SPD MPs.

30 days after the federal election, the newly elected parliament will meet for the first time this Tuesday.

This ends the old legislative period, the 20th Bundestag with its 736 members has opened.

279 women and men are represented for the first time, including many young faces.

It is not a political break, the political system of the Federal Republic is too stable for that, scenes like in the American Capitol after Joe Biden's assumption of office from Donald Trump would be unimaginable in this country - on the other hand, the constitution of the new Bundestag has an effect despite the eternal provocations of the AfD parliamentary group first look like a political family celebration.

On the second one, however, it can be seen that an epoch ends on this day and something new begins.

Alone on the faces of the members of the CDU and CSU.

For 16 years they made up the largest parliamentary group and thus also the Chancellor.

They are already group number two behind the SPD.

And Angela Merkel, who on this day is only allowed to watch from the visitors' gallery, will soon be gone.

With the meeting of the new Bundestag, the term of office of the previous cabinet ends, which is why the government bench remains empty on this day, Merkel & Co. rule from now on only provisionally.

And if the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, with Scholz at their head, actually rule by the end of the year, Merkel will leave and the tough everyday opposition will finally begin for the Union.

"It's bitter," as one hears it again and again from members of the CDU and CSU parliamentary groups.

Beginning and end. There is, for example, Armin Laschet, who wanted to inherit Merkel as Chancellor, but is now likely to end up in the opposition as a simple parliamentarian. In the morning, the CDU boss took his last business trip as the executive Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia to the Bundestag, with the constituent parliamentary session, the hapless Christian Democrat leaves this office for good. After all, the new MP Laschet is allowed to sit in the second row of his parliamentary group on this day.

At the very back, however, sits Jens Spahn, the outgoing Federal Minister of Health, somewhere in the middle of Friedrich Merz.

He has moved back into parliament, where he once headed the Union parliamentary group from 2000 to 2002.

Merz, 65, is once again one of his party's hopes these days.

In one of the breaks you can see the CDU politician, tanned and in a good mood, walking to the Bundestag restaurant with a parliamentary group colleague.

The line is long, they have to line up.

Merz says: "Let's see if we can get anything else."

Merz still hopes that Wolfgang Schäuble is history as a top politician on this day.

Schäuble, who has been in the Bundestag since 1972, would have liked to continue as president, but the post is now due to the SPD.

After all, he is allowed to open the meeting as the senior president, gives one of his typical Schäuble speeches, a little bit of warning, a little bit provocative, a little bit age-wise, then it's over. In the end, almost all MPs applaud standing, even most of the AfD parliamentary group. "Please don't get me too moved," says Schäuble, then he lets his wheelchair, to which he has been tied since an assassination attempt in 1990, roll into the plenary session. Schäuble's place is now in the front row of the Union faction.

One of the newcomers is the FDP MP Muhanad al-Halak.

He was born in Iraq, came to Germany in 2000 at the age of eleven, most recently worked as a sewage master, which is not one of the typical professions in this parliament and certainly not in his own party.

On this day he has to give one interview after the other.

"I'm still overwhelmed," says the Liberal MP.

Ricarda Lang has not sat in the Bundestag either.

The vice-chief of the Greens is pleased that she is getting close to one of her female political role models for the constitution of parliament - even if Rita Süssmuth is a CDU politician.

"I admire her very much," says Lang, while the former Federal Family Minister and former President of the Bundestag gives an interview a few meters away.

Süssmuth is one of the guests of honor

The CDU politician is one of the guests of honor, she sits next to Merkel and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The fact that Bärbel Bas, for the first time since Süssmuth left office in 1998, is again chairing parliament, fits perfectly with that of course.

And even the Union parliamentary group, in which the lack of support for women is a big issue these days, suddenly called up a female candidate for the Presidium, the Saxon MP Yvonne Magwas, who promptly achieved the best result of all applicants.

No wonder that Magwas was one of the few very good-humored members of her group on that day.

However, there are some things that are not much different about the constitution of the 20th Bundestag than in the past four years.

The AfD provocation machine is one of the constants of parliament.

This becomes evident once again with the Corona issue.

The pandemic rules that were agreed in advance are on this day: Only vaccinated, current, tested or recovered MPs are allowed to sit in the plenary, they get a bracelet in black, red and gold - everyone else has to go to one of the guest stands.

In the end, only members of the AfD parliamentary group sit there, around 20, and they don't seem particularly unhappy up there.

The AfD parliamentary group also fails again with the attempt to have one of its members elected as Bundestag vice-president, and the same applies to its motions on the rules of procedure.

And the left is still there and, as always, in the opposition, albeit clearly decimated, as it slipped just below the five percent hurdle and is only represented in the Bundestag thanks to three direct mandates.

Shortly before the beginning of the meeting, you can see how the MP Sören Pellmann photographs his foot from different angles.

Pellmann is one of the directly elected left-wing MPs, the photo of his red socks, which he later spreads on Twitter, should mean something like: Thanks to me, the red socks are still in parliament.

But things have started to move, especially between former political opponents.

Who would have thought, for example, that the social democrat Scholz would one day look so demonstratively to be close to the FDP?

In the meantime it's almost logical, he wants to rule with them soon - and so you can see Scholz with party leader Christian Lindner, General Secretary Volker Wissing and other top liberals in one of the breaks in the meeting in intimate round in the plenum.

Among them is Florian Toncar, who still had Finance Minister Scholz sharply attacked in the past Wirecard investigative committee: Now, like his party friends, he listens carefully to the designated Chancellor and is evidently entertained by the giggling Scholz.

Scholz wants to replace Merkel - but they are still connected.

On the evening of the constitution of the new Bundestag, head of state Steinmeier presented the previous cabinet with the certificates of discharge: the old black-red coalition is now in office until a new chancellor is elected.

Merkel enters the hall in Bellevue Palace as the penultimate, after her only the Federal President comes.

Steinmeier says that this chancellorship can be counted "among the great ones in the history of this republic".

Then he reads out: "The office of Chancellor Angela Merkel came to an end when the 20th Bundestag met on October 26, 2021." Merkel and her cabinet now govern only provisionally.

Until the state of affairs, Olaf Scholz is elected Chancellor by the majority of the 20th Bundestag.

Beginning and farewell.