State election: Dietmar Woidke – The man of the SPD’s comeback

Dietmar Woidke has put everything on one card. “If I lose to the AfD, I’m gone,” was his motto. His biggest goal: to prevent the Brandenburg flag from “getting any big brown spots.” On election night, he was happy: his SPD had achieved a strong result of over 30 percent – the projections put them ahead of the AfD. “We have managed to catch up like never before in the history of our country,” said Woidke at the SPD election party in Potsdam.

Woidke has been Prime Minister for eleven years and in the state parliament for 30 years. He is one of the four longest-serving Prime Ministers in Germany. The 62-year-old is running as the SPD’s top candidate in the state elections for the third time.

After completing his studies, the graduate agricultural engineer worked as an assistant at the Humboldt University in Berlin and from 1990 to 1992 went to work for a company in Bavaria. But the Brandenburg native was drawn back to his homeland: in 1994 he became a member of the Brandenburg state parliament and ten years later Minister for the Environment and Agriculture. After the state elections in 2009, he became SPD parliamentary group leader and the following year Minister of the Interior. In 2013 he took over the Prime Minister’s sceptre from Matthias Platzeck.

His biggest coup so far: Tesla

Woidke was by far the best-known state politician recently. His biggest coup: the settlement of the electric car manufacturer Tesla in Grünheide, which was announced in 2019 after the state election. In his own words, his “most difficult political decision” was the cancellation of the district reform. He counts the murder of two police officers and the tragic death of two firefighters among the sad days – both in 2017.

Woidke likes to emphasize his Brandenburgian reserve, but speaks with a smile about the “Andalusian temperament” of the Brandenburgers, which sometimes slumbers within them. Perhaps this was also the model for the goal of transforming Brandenburg quickly: from a coal-producing country to a renewable energy country. In terms of economic growth, Brandenburg was in second place last year, behind Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Fan of Roland Kaiser and the Rolling Stones

The married father of one daughter revealed more private information than ever before in the recent state election campaign. He told “Bunte” that he and his wife Susanne had ignited their relationship at a Roland Kaiser concert. His campaign magazine featured photos of him as a child on the farm and as a young man with long hair. Woidke is a fan of the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Lou Reed. He is proud of his grandson. And then there is the dachshund Justus von Lindenberg – “the only nobleman in the family,” as Woidke says.

Born in Lusatia, he grew up on a farm in a village in the south of Brandenburg. “With ten cows, ten to 15 pigs, ducks, geese, 50 to 60 chickens,” he revealed at the German Farmers’ Day this year. He has been closely associated with agriculture ever since. In front of the farmers, he recited a slightly modified quote from the Prussian King Frederick II – known as Old Fritz: “Agriculture is the first of all arts; without it there would be no poets, philosophers, prime ministers and federal agriculture ministers.”