As of: February 16, 2024, 1:37 p.m
By: Lisa Mahnke
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Split
After Söder's Honecker comparison against Lemke, the Green politician counters.
More voices report about the incident.
The CDU wants to get closer.
Berlin – Markus Söder (CSU) described Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) as the “Green Margot Honecker” at the political Ash Wednesday.
It always restricts people's freedom through new requirements.
“Söder did something very stupid,” Lemke explained on the “Markus Lanz” program on February 15th.
She thinks the comparison is ahistorical.
For the Green politician, Söder's expression represented a "targeted defamation" and "complete ignorance of history", which, however, according to Lemke, also affected many people from East Germany.
The current Federal Environment Minister comes from the GDR and took part in the protests in 1989.
The late Margot Honecker was the former Minister for Public Education in the GDR and the wife of Erich Honecker, who was elected Chairman of the GDR State Council in 1976.
Return coach at Lanz: Söder’s own world a “big beer tent”
“I think Markus Söder somehow lives in his own world and it just seems to be a big beer tent,” explained Lemke as a guest of Markus Lanz.
However, the Green politician is also sure that Söder knows what he is doing: "It wasn't in a beer binge, but a very conscious attack," she told the broadcaster
n-tv
.
Steffi Lemke surprisingly countered Markus Lanz against Söder © IMAGO / teutopress
Meanwhile, the political power struggle between the CDU and CSU continues.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz is pursuing an opposite strategy to Söder, he wants to try to “find the wires again” with the Greens,
ZDF
.
Meanwhile, Söder continued to tease on political Ash Wednesday: “The Greens do so much crap that they should actually fall under the Fertilizer Ordinance themselves.” It wasn’t long ago that the CDU also differentiated itself from the Greens; Merz even called them “ main opponents”.
According to ZDF
, Lemke explained
: “The fact that he has already corrected it is early, but right.”
Despite the CDU's change of course: the Greens are unimpressed by the rapprochement
In an interview with Markus Lanz, Lemke said that no coalition options “except with right-wing extremists” should be ruled out, since “all coalition options have now been tried out in the federal states.”
The Federal Environment Minister also classified the black-green coalition in Hesse as successful until it was ended by the CDU “from completely specious Greens”.
However, the Federal Environment Minister does not want to commit herself yet: “I think it is too early.
We are about two years before the federal election.” The next federal election will take place in autumn 2025.
However, according to Lemke, the Greens had registered the “coalition discussions”.
Other Green politicians on Lemke's side - the GDR victims' association also reports
According to Die Zeit
, Green Party leader Omid Nouripour accused Söder
of “mocking and trivializing” GDR injustice.
According to the Tagesspiegel,
the co-chair of the Green dual leadership, Ricarda Lang, demanded
: “Return to the center.” Bundestag Vice President Katrin Göring-Eckardt spoke of “agitation”.
These are just a few of the many voices from the Greens that accused Söder after the Honecker comparison.
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The Union of Victims' Associations of Communist Tyranny (UOKG) also had its say.
“Margot Honecker was a real criminal and a communist criminal.
That is definitely not Ms. Lemke,” said chairman Dieter Dombrowski to the
editorial network Germany
.
The comparison is therefore neither appropriate nor funny.
(lismah)