It’s a serious security breach: A man followed Olaf Scholz to the airfield in Frankfurt and hugged him. The predecessors also had such experiences. There was a slap in the face for Gerhard Schröder and a visit to Angela Merkel’s dacha.
The man never travels alone: when Olaf Scholz is driving outside of Berlin, several vehicles accompany the chancellor. A police car drives in front, behind it – around the Chancellor’s limousine – the vehicles of the security officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office, as well as the vehicles of Olaf Scholz’s employees. Depending on the trip, this convoy can become longer and longer, for example if journalists are also present or a business delegation is accompanying the chancellor.
On Wednesday, after the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the European Central Bank, Scholz drove onto the tarmac at Frankfurt Airport with a convoy that was not too long. The number of as well as their number plates are deposited beforehand at the entrance. The column had police in front and behind, the man drove behind the column.
When Scholz got out of the car in front of his government plane, the man also left his car, walked up to the chancellor, shook his hand and hugged him. Scholz let it happen, his security officers only intervened afterwards. Government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit has now “essentially” confirmed a corresponding report by the “Bild-Zeitung”.
The security effort for top politicians is great
The man is said to be a German-Greek who claims he thought it was a wedding party. Scholz himself did not consider the incident to be dangerous and even took a photo with the accompanying police on the gangway afterwards.
Handshake and hug? Sounds like a fan. But what if the man wasn’t so kind to the chancellor? The incident in Frankfurt is a serious breakdown and should still cause discussions in the Chancellery and the BKA. The bodyguards, however, have to be credited with the fact that they are not responsible for who can drive onto the runway. That lies with the airport company Fraport.
The security effort for top politicians is great. Those who are particularly at risk, like the chancellor, have bodyguard squads consisting of several BKA officers who work in shifts around the clock to look after the politician. They are everywhere, guard the hotel rooms and even travel with you on vacation.
Nevertheless, the incident at Frankfurt Airport is not the first example of this, which also applies to top politicians: there is no such thing as absolute security. This is also due to the fact that the vast majority of politicians do not want total isolation from the citizens. They accept a residual risk, the assassination attempts on Oskar Lafontaine and Wolfgang Schäuble are the worst examples of what can happen if this risk becomes reality.
Eggs were thrown at Kohl and Schröder
But Scholz’s predecessors also had experiences similar to those of the chancellor in Frankfurt. Helmut Kohl was once thrown with an egg by a demonstrator in Halle. The man did not agree with the policy of the union. At that time it was still Kohl himself who put his safety at risk because he rushed towards the egg thrower full of anger, as if he wanted to take on the man personally. Back then, the chancellor’s own bodyguards protected him by holding him back from a scuffle.
On May 18, 2004, Gerhard Schröder was hit much harder. At an SPD reception for new members in Mannheim, the unemployed teacher Jens Ammoser approached the chancellor and slapped him in the face. Ammoser had joined the SPD just a few weeks earlier.
Ammoser justified his action with anger at Schröder’s Agenda 2010 reform policy and referred to his right of resistance under the Basic Law in court. The district court of Mannheim saw it differently: “The act was insidious,” it said in the verdict. “It’s just not possible to act out your political dissatisfaction through physical violence.” The then 52-year-old Ammoser was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for willful bodily harm and insult. The SPD excluded him.
Shortly before the court hearing, a man had thrown an egg at Schröder in Wittenberge, Brandenburg, like Kohl had done years before. In this case, the Chancellor refrained from filing a criminal complaint. Schröder was also the target of an egg thrower in Finsterwalde in the same year, but it did not hit him. At that time, Schröder canceled the event, a folk festival opening, but did not file a criminal complaint either.
Unwanted visit to Angela Merkel
In 2010, Angela Merkel received an unwanted visit to her dacha in the Uckermark. A then 45-year-old man, who initially wanted to visit her in her private apartment in Berlin but was turned away by the police guards on the doorstep, later succeeded twice in penetrating Merkel’s property near Templin. It was a man from Mecklenburg who worked as a librarian in Stralsund and as a freelance journalist.
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On October 17, he rang the doorbell for the first time. The chancellor was there, but didn’t open it. As the man later reported to the “Berliner Zeitung”, he was able to enter the property without being noticed by the police. “Since nobody answered my ring at the door, I went into the garden, where I met the chancellor, who was on the phone. I handed her a letter and then left.”
A few days later, he rang the bell at 4:30 a.m., as the responsible investigators reported at the time. This time Merkel’s husband Joachim Sauer, who was alone in the house, opened the door. The reason for the second visit was the man’s anger that the chancellor had not replied to his letter.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
