Olaf Scholz’ wife Britta Ernst wants to break with outdated clichés and rarely talks about the chancellor. The education minister of Brandenburg rejects the usual role of the first lady. But she made an exception at the G7 summit at Schloss Elmau.
When Olaf Scholz was elected mayor of the city of Hamburg ten years ago, it wasn’t just the black-green government that had been voted out that had to reorganize itself. The election to the Hamburg Parliament is also a decisive moment in the political career of an experienced MP: Scholz’s wife Britta Ernst. The successful parliamentarian had to resign her seat in the Hamburg Senate after 14 years of successful work. The protocol role of the first lady is out of the question for Ernst. “In no area is it right for changes in one partner to be accompanied by a renunciation on the part of the other,” she said at the time.
But at the G7 meeting in Upper Bavaria, the 61-year-old made an exception and acted as host for the spouses who had traveled with her. Since the husband of the President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, did not come — as did the first ladies of the USA, Italy, Canada and Japan — this time the G7 partner program is actually a women-only program. With Brigitte Macron, the wife of the French President, Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie and Amélie Derbaudrenghien, the wife of EU Council President Charles Michel, Ernst is planning activities that are appropriate for the region: Nordic walking with the ski stars Christian Neureuther and his daughter-in-law Miriam, talks with researchers from Germany’s highest environmental research station in the Schneefernerhaus and a meeting with a master violin maker from Mittenwald.
Britta Ernst has been a successful state politician for many decades and has since served in the government cabinets of both Schleswig-Holstein and Brandenburg. She therefore does not want to be considered a pure chancellor’s wife. When asked about her husband’s role, she gets very tight-lipped. The education minister of Brandenburg had previously never commented on her husband’s ambitions for the chancellorship. She also politely but firmly blocks questions about her private life. In this way, she wants to prevent her work as state minister from being associated in any way with her husband’s prominent political position.
In the social networks, she shows from time to time that she likes to explore her new hometown of Potsdam and the surrounding area, on foot and by bike at Griebnitzsee. Or occasional visits to the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, where the couple lived together until 2018.
Government responsibility in Brandenburg and Schleswig-Holstein
Born in Hamburg, she surprisingly came to Brandenburg in 2017 as Minister for Education, Youth and Sport after her predecessor Günter Baaske had retired for personal reasons. Before that, she was Education Minister in Schleswig-Holstein from 2014 until she left the cabinet after the 2017 state elections because her portfolio in Daniel Günther’s (CDU) government fell to the Christian Democrats.
North German reserved, pragmatic and calm, this is how Ernst shows herself as Brandenburg’s Minister of Education. As Minister of Education during the corona pandemic, she often had a difficult time with the opposition in the state parliament and the associations, which repeatedly accused her of mismanaging the measures to combat infection in schools. Ernst said nothing about calls for his resignation – he just tirelessly repeated the measures taken at schools, such as corona tests and wearing masks.
New home in Potsdam
Britta Scholz and Olaf Scholz have been fighting side by side for many years. The two met when they were students in Hamburg in the 1980s. While Scholz was taking his first steps in Hamburg state politics, the trained real estate and housing management clerk was completing her studies in social economics. Their marriage followed in 1998.
Just like her husband, Ernst joined the SPD at a young age. From 1978 she worked as a personal assistant for senators and as a research assistant in the Hamburg building authority, before turning more and more to the school and education sector. In 1997 she won a seat in the Hamburg Parliament for the first time.
Since the spring of 2018, the childless couple Ernst and Scholz have had a new base in Potsdam, when Scholz moved from the position of mayor in Hamburg to Berlin to become federal finance minister. In the Brandenburg state capital, the couple first moved to the dignified suburb of Berlin and then to the Old Market, which was rebuilt in the Renaissance style, in the immediate vicinity of the Barberini Museum and the state parliament palace.
Britta Ernst can count on the support of her husband
Scholz gave an insight into his emotional life in the “Brigitte live” series of talks: “I think I would be a completely different person if I weren’t married to Britta Ernst.” It was also his wife who at some point gently pushed him to lose weight and thus to go jogging. On his website he writes that his wife means “everything” to him. And in “Spiegel” he said: “The most important thing in life is love.”
Olaf Scholz supports his wife in her strong attitude. When asked whether his wife would continue to work if he won the election, he reacted with outrage during the federal election campaign. His wife is a great politician, he said in the “Brigitte live” series of talks. And on another occasion he called the question, which in his view a chancellor’s husband should not be asked, “completely outdated”.
Sources:DPA
Source: Stern
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