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Silvana Koch-Netzin at the Women in Parliaments 2015 Forum in Mexico City
Photo:
Mario Guzman / EFE / dpa
At the beginning of the millennium in a café in Brussels: a man and a woman from the same party meet to discuss whether they want to become general secretary of the FDP.
But this conversation was obviously not just about future strategies and leadership qualities.
At least that's what Wolfgang Kubicki said on the TV show "Maischberger" on Wednesday evening.
"I called her and said: 'We have to talk about it, we need a general secretary of the FDP, how about you think about it?' Then she said: 'Come to Brussels, we'll talk about it .' Then we met for coffee and then I was flirting with her and all of a sudden there was this guy standing next to me who was three times my height and twice my width.
And he looked pretty fit too.
So I thought to myself, it might be better if you go.«
The background to these statements is a book by Silvana Koch-Netzin, in which the former FDP politician addresses the fact that she has been sexually harassed several times.
Also from party colleagues.
She doesn't name names.
In a 2010 interview with Die Zeit, however, Kubicki himself had described that meeting with Koch-Netzin in Brussels in similar terms, which prompted Sandra Maischberger to ask questions about Koch-Überin's book on her show.
Kubicki, it quickly becomes clear, sees no problem in his behavior in Brussels and does not deny that he would behave in the same way today.
For him, the story from Brussels seems more like an amusing anecdote.
On the other hand, he spoke critically to SPIEGEL about the “Maischberger” show.
He considers "the insinuation" that he had "exploited a position of power vis-à-vis colleague Koch-Netzin, dubious and journalistically unprofessional."
At the time, he was the leader of the parliamentary group in Schleswig-Holstein, "Pariah of the party, she was one of the leading figures of the FDP, Vice President of the European Parliament.
I was in no position to promise her anything.
Besides, flirting is different from assault.”
Today's party deputy apparently didn't ask himself why this "well-trained" man suddenly appeared at the café table where a leading position in the FDP was supposed to be at stake.
Koch-Netzin now gave the answer to the WDR.
She asked her husband "to stop by after about an hour because I suspected there was more to it," said the 51-year-old on the "Current Hour" program.
She felt pretty clever at the time, "cunning", "strong", that she had come up with this "clever" idea.
She didn't see her train of thought as a problem at the time.
And that, she now says, was exactly the problem, she says: that she didn't recognize her conscious caution as a problem.
"If my daughters told me today that they had such an appointment and would take such extravagant measures, I would be very shocked."