Doris Schröder-Köpf and Boris Pistorius have split up

They didn’t spend the Pentecost days together on the North Sea island of Borkum. Only the 58-year-old and her 16-year-old son relaxed there in the family’s holiday home between Rosa Rugosa and dune grass. Some in Hanover’s political haze therefore went on a smoke screen: the couple has separated!

And yes, it’s true: Doris Schröder-Köpf and Boris Pistorius (62) go their own way in friendship. For months now. The “civil partnership”, as second and third attempts are so beautifully called by mature couples, has been suspended for the time being. And no, Doris Schröder-Köpf has not returned to Gerhard Schröder!

As a reminder, the former chancellor got engaged to his Korean interpreter, Soyeon Kim, in 2016. It’s a little thing that he wasn’t divorced from his wife then. But Schröder has always had a very stubborn and own head not only in dark friendships, but also in love affairs (“It’s my life after all, not yours!”). Doris Schröder-Köpf took the overlap relatively calmly and only later wrote on Facebook: “In the spring of 2016, Ms. Kim was the reason, if not the only reason, for the final separation. Our family followed the desire for discretion, since Ms Kim wanted to put her private affairs in order first.” Then a party friend outed her new love.

“Doris & Boris” made headlines

The SPD member of parliament and migration commissioner Doris and Lower Saxony’s SPD interior minister Boris – that was of course great for the newspapers, because “Doris & Boris” made great headlines. There had been a lot of whispering in the state parliament and in the committees on a leash. The Minister of the Interior and the honorary migration officer – there are of course always overlaps at the working level. Later there was a working lunch. Then these became private. Candles, roses, beaming faces.

It seemed a happy coincidence at the time that Gerhard Schröder’s fourth ex-wife also found happiness late. Boris Pistorius had lost his wife a year earlier after a serious illness, the father of two daughters was a widower and Doris Schröder was single. You’ve always been close to parties, and now that’s the case in other ways too. The connection seemed ideal. And then, as is the case with couples of politicians: the iPhones ring constantly and around the clock, even at the weekend. In addition to your love life, you also have a private life. Boris Pistorius as Minister of the Interior in the Lower Saxony cabinet, responsible for crime, blood alcohol rules and the integration of refugees. He was also a father and grandfather in his hometown of Osnabrück.

For her part, Doris Schröder-Köpf was busy with political offices and her own constituency. A single parent of three children in Hanover’s villa district, two of them in puberty and the dog also wanted to be walked. In 2020 she had to undergo heart valve surgery. As a result, she suffered two minor strokes. Pistorius looked after and helped her through the strenuous rehabilitation phase. Concern for others and the experience of one’s own finiteness are sometimes connected. But they also burden and make some things clearer.

Doris Schröder-Köpf: “Marrying once is enough”

At the end of your fifties, it’s not as easy as it was when you’re in your twenties. Everyone has their life, their house, their pictures on the wall. Start over again? It is better to share the days, the beautiful events, happy hours, but no longer necessarily the apartments. As early as April 2018, Doris Schröder-Köpf clarified the big picture star-Interview the status of their relationship also prospectively: “I think marrying once is enough!” But the rags would occasionally fly with them too, so they revealed it in the intimate “love talk” with the illustrated Bunte: “Privately we are very harmonious, we sometimes get hot on political issues,” reveals Schröder-Köpf. And her boyfriend added: “I’ve been surrounded by strong women all my life. My mother, my late wife, my daughters and now Doris. With her I’ve found an extremely clever and very loving partner. I’m very lucky with whom I can look forward to would not have expected the death of my wife.” partner and partner! That’s what people call themselves from the “third half of life”.

Sometimes the couple indulged in small jokes against the ex-Chancellor and his new love Soyeon Kim. For example, at the Lower Saxony carnival, when Ms. Doris appeared dressed as an Asian woman with a dark wig. And Boris next to her under the jester’s cap grinned. Or at the Federal Press Ball, where she countered the “in a touch of almost nothing” look of the new Mrs. Schröder with a blood-red velvet robe; and the dances of the around-the-clock-drinking chancellor with confident swings and vertigo-free waltzes in the arms of Boris P.

When the trained lawyer Pistorius threw his hat in the ring for the SPD party chairmanship in 2019, quite a few expected that he could win the election. After all, the trained lawyer Schröder had even become chancellor with Doris at his side. But as we all know, history does not repeat itself. And Pistorius was defeated by Saskia Esken and Norbert-Walter-Borjans.

Two weeks ago, the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” reported that Pistorius could become the new defense minister if Christine Lambrecht signed off. And Doris Schröder-Köpf is throwing herself into the state election campaign. She wants to win her constituency again. Even if it’s going to be difficult this time. Schroeder, Putin, SPD.

A shadow seems to be hanging over the house of Hanover this year.