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Vandalized election poster by Olaf Scholz (September 2021)
Photo: Emmanuele Contini / IMAGO
When it comes to the composition of federal governments, there is a tried and tested game in the SPD: How do you manage to meet as many quotas as possible without having to forego too many West German men?
In the end, on the winning side and thus in the cabinet, there are usually people who meet several criteria at the same time. This game is also used in the second row, with the state secretaries. An example of this is the newly elected Minister of State for Migration, Refugees and Integration, Reem Alabali-Radovan, who conjured up Chancellor Olaf Scholz's hat shortly before he took office. Alabali-Radovan pretty much meets all the quotas currently in demand. She had Iraqi parents and was born in Moscow. At 31, she is one of the youngest in the government, and she grew up in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Alabali-Radovan is Scholz's super joker - and makes up for everything that the government lacks: the younger, the East Germans, the people with a migration history.
Anyone who accuses the new Chancellor of a lack of diversity in his cabinet will in future be held against this person.
Even if the occupation of Alabali-Radovans may be a positive signal, Scholz shouldn't let this joker get away with it.
The new government has a representation problem.
Only two ministers who were born in East Germany made it into the cabinet.
The Saxon hitchhiker Steffi Lemke (Greens) and the Brandenburg woman Klara Geywitz (SPD).
Wessi Annalena Baerbock, who lived a large part of her life in East Germany, could be counted halfway there.
In sum, this is not enough - measured against the size of the population.
With 20 percent East Germans, it should have been three to four cabinet posts.
The Eastern SPD has let itself be powerfully suppressed
But it's not just about sheer numbers.
A particularly bitter signal comes from the Personnel Carsten Schneider: The long-time parliamentary manager of the SPD parliamentary group was actually supposed to become a minister, but that didn't work.
Although he is East German, he is not a woman and he has no history of migration.
If Scholz had appointed him minister, another West German would have had to drop out.
One can of course argue that in Karl Lauterbach an expert has struck the proportional share.
Yes, in case of doubt there is no such thing as a virological specialist from the east.
But why couldn't Lower Saxony and Labor Minister Hubertus Heil have vacated his post for Schneider or Lauterbach?
Obviously, Scholz could not bring himself to do this - possibly because it would have required explanation to saw off salvation, he had not done much wrong as a minister.
Perhaps his comrades from Lower Saxony, who had otherwise been so dominant in the SPD for years, would also have intervened.
In any case, the Eastern SPD has let itself be powerfully suppressed.
The result is fatal.
Democracy in East Germany is defective more than 30 years after reunification, perhaps even more defective than it was ten years ago.
As with the refugee admission five years ago, the pandemic has caused a major crisis of confidence.
As a West German, one can simply accuse the Saxons of being stupid or lackluster because too many do not get vaccinated or vote for the AfD.
But: it won't help at all.
"Democracy is defective in East Germany more than 30 years after reunification."
This is not about "identity politics", not even about mere quotas.
The eastern German federal states require special attention.
You cannot compare it with Bavaria, where Prime Minister Markus Söder also complains that his country is not represented in the government.
In the East German federal states, the new government has to take care more than anywhere else to hold a society together - and should, if something threatens to break up somewhere, it should not leave any stone unturned to prevent it.
Despite 16 years of chancellorship of an East German (who for 15 years perfectly concealed her origins), federal politics does not manage to convey to larger parts of the East German population that it rules for them too.
The East Germans have arrived in a democracy while protesting.
Many took to the streets not only with Pegida.
When FDP man Thomas Kemmerich was elected Thuringian Prime Minister with AfD votes in 2020, many citizens were outraged and protested in the marketplaces.
There is hardly a meeting of AfD politician Björn Höcke in Suhl or anywhere else without counter-protests.
But that's not enough: Democracy lives from taking part and not always just being against it.
The regional associations of the parties in the east are still much too small today, they need more members.
But for that you have to let them participate sufficiently.
An East German minister more in the Scholz cabinet might not have pushed the vaccination rate up in the east at a record high, and the AfD would not have immediately disappeared from the state parliaments of Erfurt and Magdeburg.
But perhaps he or she would have counteracted the vague feeling that this democracy belongs to more than one half of Germany than the other.
And if in doubt, the East German will lose out anyway.
Carsten Schneider, for example, has now been fobbed off by Scholz with the post of Eastern Commissioner, which is basically a humiliation (we have an office for Ossi!).
This new beginning of the government could have provided an impetus for more democracy in reunified Germany.
This opportunity was missed.