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He is probably the most unlikely Federal Chancellor since the existence of the republic:
Olaf Scholz
won the Bundestag election with the SPD and was elected to succeed Angela Merkel in the German Bundestag on December 8th.
Scholz's Social Democrats were only in third place in the surveys of the first half of the year.
But the mistakes of the competitors Annalena Baerbock (Greens) and Armin Laschet (CSU) as well as an unusually closed SPD enabled Scholz to win.
His traffic light coalition started in the middle of a renewed escalation of the corona pandemic, Scholz, 63, is called upon immediately as a crisis manager.
Photo: Political-Moments / IMAGO
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Also
Manuela Schwesig
, 47, won the end of September a choice for the SPD.
The state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was her first as a top candidate, and Schwesig led her party to a clear victory with 39.6 percent.
In doing so, the Prime Minister also significantly improved her standing in the federal party.
At times she was traded as a possible new SPD leader.
But since Saskia Esken did not move to the cabinet and ran again for the party chairmanship, Schwesig decided not to run.
Photo: Christoph Hardt / Future Image / IMAGO
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At the beginning of 2021,
Hendrik Wüst
, 46, was still a North Rhine-Westphalian state politician, who as a transport minister hardly anyone outside the borders of North Rhine-Westphalia knew - at the end of the year hardly a day goes by without the CDU politician appearing in the national media: Wüst is his successor of the failed Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet Prime Minister of the most populous federal state, Chairman of the CDU regional association there (no other has more members) and, qua rotation, also head of the Prime Minister's Conference.
Photo: Christoph Hardt / Future Image / IMAGO
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Anne Spiegel
was still very busy in Rhineland-Palatinate in the spring.
As the top candidate, the 41-year-old entered the state election campaign, got a good result, remained a minister and became deputy prime minister - but only for about half a year.
Then they asked the chairmen of the Greens to join the federal cabinet in Berlin as family minister.
Photo: Rainer Unkel / IMAGO
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Minister thanks to the crisis: Without the corona pandemic, the rise of
Karl Lauterbach
, 58, to Federal
Minister of Health would
hardly have been possible.
Quite a few in the SPD consider the professor from Leverkusen to be a pain in the ass and not able to work in a team.
In 2019 he applied for party chairmanship with Nina Scheer in vain.
But in the pandemic, Lauterbach rose to become the most prominent corona expert and explainer in the republic.
Large parts of the population would have found it difficult to accept another successor to Jens Spahn.
And so Olaf Scholz couldn't get past Lauterbach when putting his cabinet together.
Photo: Florian Gaertner / photothek / IMAGO
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The 42-year-old has achieved everything that could be achieved for himself and his party this year:
Christian Lindner
became, as he himself promised, Federal Finance Minister in the traffic light coalition, and his FDP also secured three other ministries, including the weighty House for Digital and Traffic.
Only his actual goal, a Jamaican coalition, he missed because of the weakness of the Union in the federal election.
The new pragmatism that Lindner is now showing alongside the SPD and the Greens on the subject of finance and Corona is not without risk.
Parts of the FDP could grumble at some point.
These days he announced that he would also be available as FDP leader after 2023 - if the party so wished.
As of today, there is no one who could compete with him.
Photo: Jörg Carstensen / dpa
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Cem Özdemir
, 56, is something of a comeback.
After ten years as party leader, he had slipped into the second row in the previous legislative period and had to be content with chairing the transport committee.
For a long time it didn't look like he could get a ministerial post.
In the end, however, the party leaders did not want to give up his popularity in the cabinet.
Özdemir is now Minister of Agriculture.
Photo: Stefan Boness / IPON / IMAGO
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Her party suffered a heavy defeat in the general election, and she narrowly missed the direct mandate she had hoped for.
Nevertheless:
Katja Kipping
, 43, is one of the few winners from the left in 2021. When she gave up the chair in spring, the survey curve for the left then showed a downward trend.
Kipping himself, who fought for a red-red-green government in the federal government to the end, nevertheless made it to a cabinet table - in the new Berlin Senate.
Despised by her opponents as a »lifestyle left«, Kipping is now supposed to take on one of the most important positions for the left: She is supposed to be the Senator for Social Affairs.
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
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The AfD co-chair,
Tino Chrupalla
, is undoubtedly one of the winners in a deeply divided party.
After he had contested the federal election campaign with Alice Weidel as the male part of the top duo, he also moved up to become the new parliamentary group leader at her side.
The re-election of Saxony as co-party leader - probably alongside Peter Boehringer - is considered certain, but has been postponed to the coming half-year due to the pandemic.
That is how long the 45-year-old, who also survived a corona infection this year, has to hold out at the side of his internal adversary Jörg Meuthen in the dual leadership.
Photo: Julian Stratenschulte / dpa
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