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Ex-SPIEGEL editor-in-chief Wolfgang Büchner: "An irresistible challenge"
Photo: Bernd von Jutrczenka / picture alliance / dpa
For a few days, his name has been traded in the capital's media circles.
Now it's official: Wolfgang Büchner will be one of the two vice government spokesmen for the future Ampel-Kabinett.
The FDP chairman and future Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner proposed Büchner for this post.
The appointment of the government spokesman and the two deputy government spokesmen has yet to be confirmed by the new federal cabinet, but this should only be a matter of form.
Approval is expected to take place next week.
This shows the ranks of future speakers.
The first government spokesman is Steffen Hebestreit, who is currently still working for Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) as a spokesman.
Scholz will be elected Chancellor in the Bundestag on Wednesday.
It was not yet known on Tuesday who the Greens would propose for the second post of deputy government spokesperson.
The 55-year-old Büchner most recently worked as a so-called Senior Advisor for the consulting firm MSL. In spring 2021 it became known that he was also working as a "strategic communications advisor" for the FDP. Büchner told SPIEGEL on Tuesday that Lindner had asked him if he could propose him as deputy government spokesman. “I was very happy to accept this offer. The Ampel project to accompany this political awakening in our country communicatively is an irresistible challenge «.
Lindner, in turn, justified his personnel decision to SPIEGEL as follows: Büchner had advised the FDP intensively on communications over the past few months. "I got to know him as a highly professional, responsible communications expert." He is pleased that the Liberals have been able to nominate Büchner, one of the most accomplished German journalists, for the post of deputy government spokesman. "And I am convinced that it will make a valuable contribution to communicating the work of the new federal government appropriately," said Lindner.
Büchner can look back on a long and eventful history as a journalist.
At the time of SPIEGEL ONLINE he was in a leading position, most recently in 2008 as editor-in-chief at the side of Rüdiger Dietz.
Büchner then moved to the German Press Agency (dpa), where he was initially deputy editor-in-chief from July 2009 and editor-in-chief from January 2010.
Büchner was editor-in-chief of SPIEGEL from September 2013 to December 2014.
He then worked in a leading position at the Swiss Blick Group and as editor-in-chief of the editorial network Germany (RND).
His departure from the Madsack media group, to which RND belongs, became known in spring 2019.
