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Boris Pistorius at the security conference
Photo: IMAGO/Lukas Barth-Tuttas/Msc/Lukas Bar/ IMAGO/ZUMA Wire
When Boris Pistorius got off the stage on Saturday, the political opponent was already there.
David McAllister really wants to shake his hand, from Lower Saxony to Lower Saxony.
The CDU man was Prime Minister in Hanover for a short time, now he is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.
He wants to know whether Pistorius could perform there.
Of course, he says, and McAllister beams like a little boy who's been given a scooter.
The two pat each other on the back like they're old buddies.
Roderich Kiesewetter can hardly contain himself either.
The CDU man and reserve colonel has been one of the harshest critics of the chancellor's Ukraine policy in recent months.
Already last spring, shortly after the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, Kiesewetter demanded German Leopard 2 tanks for the Ukraine.
Since then, hardly a day has gone by that he hasn't accused Olaf Scholz and his defense minister, Christine Lambrecht, of leadership failure.
And now?
Is Kiesewetter transformed.
He is sitting in the audience at the Munich Security Conference in the large ballroom when the new Defense Minister Pistorius makes his first major appearance there.
It barely keeps him in the chair.
"Great," he keeps saying, "great!"
The social democrat delivers his speech in decent English.
That alone is enough to set it apart from its predecessor.
She had to have every word translated by an interpreter.
So Pistorius is lucky too.
Anyone who has the privilege of succeeding Christine Lambrecht in office can only do better.
But that alone is not what makes Kiesewetter euphoric this afternoon.
The new man says exactly what he would have liked to hear from the chancellor for months.
"Ukraine must win this war," says Pistorius, knowing full well that Scholz has so far only demanded that Russia should not be allowed to win this war.
The minister asserted in an interview with SPIEGEL that this is no more than a semantic difference, but of course that is only half the truth.
In his speech, Pistorius tells of the courage and determination he saw in the eyes of the Ukrainian soldiers during his visit to Kiev.
It's a new tone, and CDU man Kiesewetter likes it.
Just like the statement on Germany's obligations to NATO.
It is no longer the Germans who act as brakemen
"We are strongly committed to the two percent promise," says Pistorius, "as you know, we still have some ground to make up to get there." But he will work hard to ensure that Germany meets this long-overdue goal.
Pistorius wants to demand around ten billion euros more for the next defense budget in the upcoming budget negotiations.
So he seems serious.
When Pistorius is done, Kiesewetter quickly grabs his bag, jumps up and storms towards the front of the stage.
He really wants to take a selfie with the new minister.
But he has to wait.
First it's Kieswetter's party colleague McAllister's turn.
The new man has been in office for just four weeks and can currently enjoy what will probably be a short phase of his political honeymoon.
This can be seen especially in Munich this weekend.
Pistorius sits on the podium with the Norwegian Prime Minister, the Latvian head of state and a US Senator.
When the moderator asked the three what they thought of Germany's role in helping Ukraine, they were full of praise for Germany.
That hasn't been the case for a long time.
The fact that Berlin, after much hesitation, took over the leadership of the Leopard coalition and is now struggling to persuade the other countries to make definitive commitments to tanks has changed the international image of the Germans noticeably.
Now it's no longer them who are the big brakes.
This also pays off politically for Pistorius, because he is now the face of German efforts.
On Saturday evening he sits at a second event in a smaller format and is interviewed by the Munich political scientist Carlo Masala.
You can see the stress of the past four weeks.
His head is red, his eyes glazed over from exhaustion, but here too he quickly wins over the audience.
You can tell he enjoys his job.
That could no longer be said of its predecessors for a long time.
Above all, it is his clear, verbiage-free language that distinguishes him from other politicians.
"Let me put it this way," he says when it comes to the budget, "the coal has to be right."
The generals are now sitting there and listening to the newcomer announce a fundamental restructuring of his department.
"It's very big," he says, "very, very big." The audience laughs, Pistorius grins, and then he goes one better to get his point across to the last one.
"So very big!" Laughter.
"As someone who has experienced all levels of administration," he looked at the organization chart of the ministry, and that doesn't have much to do with what is taught academically about organization charts, he says.
It is the clear message that a lot will change.
What exactly, he does not want to reveal, as long as he has not spoken to those affected.
Pistorius made many new friends that evening and weekend.
But what does friendship mean in politics?
Pistorius and his associates have been in the political business long enough to know the honeymoon won't last forever.
The challenges that Pistorius has to face are too great for that.
Two issues top the list for him: the tank issue and the budget.
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Scholz announced that the Europeans would provide the Ukrainians with two tank battalions, one under German command and the other under Polish command.
A Ukrainian battalion normally has 31 tanks, but so far Pistorius has only managed to collect 17 of the modern A6 Leopard 2 variant.
14 from Germany, three from the Portuguese.
In the next few weeks he will have to campaign hard again for his partners.
Hope dies last, but the process is tough.
And then he still has to get new tanks for the Bundeswehr as quickly as possible, because the tank battalion in Augustdorf affected by the levy is now largely empty.
And this process is almost even tougher than the first.
Pistorius has instructed the ministry and the Koblenz procurement office that the tanks that are to be handed over to the Ukraine should be procured as quickly as possible.
Previously, this would have taken a good year and a half due to the complicated processes involved in signing the contract.
The new minister is now pushing for the deal worth several hundred million euros to be signed before the summer break.
However, the manufacturer should not wait until then.
In Munich, Pistorius reported that he had already assured the tank builder Krauss-Maffei Wegmann “by handshake” that they definitely wanted to order the Leopards.
In turn, the newcomer wants to go into the budget negotiations with a whopping demand of ten billion euros more for the defense budget.
That would still be a jump of 20 percent.
FDP Finance Minister Christian Lindner has already signaled that the modernization of the Bundeswehr is important to him and that Germany must meet NATO's two percent target, but Pistorius is not the only minister who wants more.
Political experience does not indicate that he will fully enforce his demands.
So the minister has an inkling of what might soon await him.
Pistorius recently confessed during his recent visit to Kiev that if he can't convert the sympathy he's now enjoying into political successes, the elevator will probably take him back down very quickly.