Olaf Scholz’s wife Britta Ernst wants to break with stereotypes that have fallen out of time and rarely speaks about the future chancellor. Above all, she wants to concentrate on her work as Minister of Education for Brandenburg.
When Olaf Scholz was elected First Mayor of the City of Hamburg ten years ago, it wasn’t just the black-green government that had to be reorganized. 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 withdraw 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 that changes in one partner are accompanied by the waiver of the other,” she said at the time.
Britta Ernst has been a successful state politician for many decades and has since served in the government cabinet in both Schleswig-Holstein and Brandenburg. As a pure Chancellor’s wife, she does not want to be considered in the future either. When asked about her husband’s new role, she becomes very tight-lipped. The education minister of Brandenburg never commented on her husband’s ambitions for the chancellery. She also politely but firmly blocks questions about her private life. The 60-year-old wants to prevent her work as state minister from being brought into any connection with her husband’s politically prominent position.
In the social networks she shows every now and then that she likes to explore her new hometown Potsdam and the surrounding area, on foot and by bike at the Griebnitzsee. Or occasional visits to the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, which was the couple’s home until 2018.
Government responsibility in Brandenburg and Schleswig-Holstein
Born in Hamburg, she came as a surprise to Brandenburg as Minister for Education, Youth and Sport in 2017 after her predecessor Günter Baaske withdrew for private reasons. Before that, she was Minister of Education in Schleswig-Holstein from 2014 until she left the cabinet after the state elections in 2017 because her portfolio in the government of Daniel Günther (CDU) fell to the Christian Democrats.
North German reserved, pragmatic and calm – this is how Ernst appears as education minister of Brandenburg and current president of the conference of ministers of education. As education minister in the corona pandemic, she often has a difficult time with the opposition in the state parliament and the associations, which repeatedly accuse her of mismanagement of the measures to combat infection in schools. Ernst says nothing about calls for resignation as he did last Monday from the state parents’ council – he just tirelessly repeats the measures currently being taken in schools, such as corona tests and wearing masks.
New home Potsdam
Britta Scholz and Olaf Scholz have been fighting side by side for many years. The two got to know each other during their student days in Hamburg in the 1980s. While Scholz was taking his first steps in regional politics in Hamburg, the trained clerk in the real estate and housing industry finished studying social economics. Their wedding followed in 1998.
Just like her husband, Ernst joined the SPD when he was young. Since 1978 she worked as a personal advisor for senators and as a research assistant in the Hamburg building authorities before she turned more and more to the school and education sector. In 1997 she won a seat in the Hamburg parliament for the first time.
Since spring 2018 there was a new base for the childless couple Ernst and Scholz in Potsdam, when Scholz moved from the office of First Mayor in Hamburg to Berlin to become Federal Minister of Finance. 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
In the series of talks “Brigitte live”, Scholz once gave an insight into his emotional life: “I believe that 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 urged him to lose weight and thus jog. On his homepage he writes that his wife means “everything” to him. And in the “Spiegel” he said: “The most important thing in life is love.”
Olaf Scholz supports his wife in her strong demeanor. When asked whether his wife would continue to work if he won the election, he reacted indignantly in 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 from his point of view would not be put to a chancellor’s husband, “completely out of time”.
Sources:, DPA
Source From: Stern
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