Two candidates for chancellor with similar pasts, right?

Even his critics will not deny that Olaf Scholz is a hard-working person. He also enjoys his job, even if there is currently a certain lack of enthusiasm among Germans for the Chancellor’s office. But just under a year before the federal election, Scholz seems to be completely satisfied with himself.

Work has a special place in the Chancellor’s life. As always with Scholz, this ethos sometimes comes across as a bit strange. At the time of the Hartz reforms, when there was discussion about which jobs were reasonable for unemployed people with good vocational training, the then SPD general secretary Scholz was once asked whether he would also work as a sausage seller. Answer: “I think that’s fine.” And in the discussion about a bonus of 1,000 euros for former citizens’ benefit recipients who hold out in a normal job for a year, Scholz recently advocated the thesis that people were “born to work.” How does the Chancellor know this? “You can see that on the beach when we build sand castles, even if we could lie there.”

But let’s leave aside for now that work is one of those topics where Scholz often manages to say less than he should because of his complicated language and his messed up relationship with political communication. What is more important to us today is that Olaf Scholz practiced as a lawyer specializing in labor law for 13 years. During this time he experienced first hand what it means when people lose their jobs. In his speech on October 9th on the 35th anniversary of the revolutionary demonstration in Leipzig, the Chancellor spoke of how, after German unity, he supported works councils of a heavy machinery factory combine in the fight to preserve more than 30,000 jobs. “We couldn’t save many of these jobs back then,” reported Scholz.

That was an unusually modest description, considering that there are those affected from that time who still appreciate Scholz’s work today. The lawyer from the West, as the then head of the works council, Thomas Arnold, once said, fought for social plans, secured an employment company and drew up special contracts. Thousands of people kept their jobs for a few years or were able to retire. “Many people still praise the result today,” said Arnold.

I had to think of this when Friedrich Merz recently said that he had “designed his life differently” than Scholz. Merz referred to his consulting work for American companies and German medium-sized companies. “I didn’t decide after a short time in the job that I wanted to be a professional politician long-term and alone,” said Merz to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. He probably didn’t mean that in a derogatory way, but considering Scholz’s 13 years of professional activity without political office, it seems strange to talk about a short time. It often happens to Merz that he doesn’t notice the derogatory effect of some of his statements – or doesn’t consider them derogatory.

Merz and Scholz worked at different ends of the economic hierarchy beyond politics. Both jobs have their place. We do not want to discuss here the question of how Merz’s parliamentary mandate and secondary activities were compatible from various points of view. The Union candidate for chancellor rightly expects that his work will be respected and not presented in a distorted manner. But it would be good if he also extended this care to his political competitors.