Gerhard Schröder meets Viktor Orbán: An irritating evening

While the audience streams into the Vienna Sofiensäle, the Schröder couple briefly scurry to one of the balcony boxes and marvel at the crowds down in the stalls. People are no longer used to this kind of encouragement. So-yeon Schröder-Kim lets the old and gray-looking former chancellor pose on the balcony railing for one of her social media photos. He does as he is told, the Instagram filter will sort it out later.

What happened this afternoon is remarkable. The former German chancellor risked his life’s work through his stubborn insistence on friendship with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. He had become a stranger to his country and especially to the Social Democrats. And now, at the moment when a new SPD general secretary dares the unexpected embrace and explicitly declares him to be part of the party that just wanted to get rid of him, he sits on a podium in Vienna and publicly chums with Viktor Orbán, the democratic politician Bless our hearts in Europe. The 80-year-old Gerhard Schröder’s desire for harmony was never strong, but it must have withered now.

To say it in advance: Schröder will not say a word this evening about Matthias Miersch and his relationship with the SPD. For him, these seem to be just local political obstacles. Today it is about nothing less than the future of Europe, the West and the world. The conflict as to whether Schröder’s views are still acceptable does not exist here among all the right-wingers, neo-conservatives and market-radical court council widows. The right-wing conservative publisher and politician Roger Köppel, who also moderates, was invited. The motto of the evening is “Peace for Europe”. And it quickly becomes clear what the translation of this slogan should be: surrender to Russia.

In the audience, alongside Ms. Schröder-Kim, there are dazzling figures such as the FPÖ politician Harald Vilimsky, who heads the new “Patriots for Europe” faction in the European Parliament as a deputy, Russia’s ambassador to Vienna Dmitri Ljubinski, and the 84-year-old Swiss-Russian hotel millionaire Ljuba Manz -Lurje and an older gentleman with Ray Ban glasses and a “Make America Great Again” hat. It feels like you’ve landed in a parallel universe. In an alternative reality where you can still wear a fur coat unshorn, it is considered a “misfortune” that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and where Ukraine seems to be somehow to blame for this war. Volodymyr Zelensky is ultimately responsible for the fact that members of the Russian language minority “have to fill out their pension applications in Ukrainian,” said Schröder. Well, what else can you do but march in?

The stage conversation begins, as it will end, with thunderous applause. In this world, Viktor Orbán is not an errant autocrat who uses his role as current President of the Council of the European Union, which falls to him on a rotating basis, for shameless self-promotion. Here he is the leader of a new Europe, a link to a world order that could be sealed with Donald Trump’s renewed victory. “I spoke to President Trump on the phone this afternoon,” Orbán boasts, and people nod at each other with emotion. “I hardly dare say it, but the only one who has contributed to a peaceful solution so far is Donald Trump,” says Gerhard Schröder. His postscript “… I didn’t believe that I would praise him again …” is already drowned out by applause and cheerful laughter.

Here sit two men carved from similar wood. Shirt-sleeved, do-it-yourself types who know how the world works. They still know each other from the old days, a photograph that is projected above the podium shows the then Chancellor with the young Prime Minister during his first term in office at the beginning of the noughties. Schröder remembers the delicious goulash, of which there was plenty back then, and the good beer in Budapest. And we quickly identified the fundamental commonality: the desire to face headwinds. “I definitely have people who love me – my wife, five children and many grandchildren,” says 61-year-old Orbán. That will probably have to be enough. He was born into the headwind, a man of the storm.

So now to Putin, to Ukraine, to the war and how it can be ended as quickly as possible. “I do believe that it can be proven that he doesn’t just want to be a warlord,” says Schröder about his friend in the Kremlin. “But that he is thinking about how to end this war.” He was personally involved when Zelensky wanted to make a push for peace at the beginning of the war. Orbán adds with a whisper that they were already close to an agreement. But the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom prevented this.

It’s exciting to listen to this story, in which Putin is gradually portrayed as a thwarted prince of peace. And at some point Hungary’s head of government says it clearly: “This war is lost.” It’s “a sad story that Europe doesn’t want to be on the side of peace,” and that’s why he has “no hope for Europe,” which is hell-bent on defeating Russia. “Anyone who wants peace is insulted as anti-democratic and pushed aside,” he claims. He took the German Chancellor and the French President to task in this regard. “I told them to hurry up,” said Orbán. After all, there would be elections across the big sea, and then the “big boys would sit at the table and Europe would sit next to them.”

There are many places like this where Orbán says things that a journalist like Roger Köppel or a social democrat, which Schröder still sees himself as, would have to contradict or at least ask questions about. But that is not the essence of this evening, we are here to agree and affirm each other. “Europe should follow Viktor Orbán,” says Schröder instead.

The former chancellor didn’t say much that was wrong this afternoon; he resisted Roger Köppel’s attempts to declare him a Putin oracle. Nevertheless, the appearance turns out to be fatal because, as a former great statesman, he obediently fulfills the task assigned to him here: as legitimation.

The event is the second item on the Hungarian Prime Minister’s agenda for this day in Vienna. In the morning, Viktor Orbán was already in parliament, where Walter Rosenkranz received him. The FPÖ politician has been President of the National Council since October 24th and is therefore the second highest representative of the republic. The only person ranking above him is Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen, who did not task FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl with forming a government, even though he won the elections by a landslide. Since then, the Austrian right has been fuming. The reception of Orbán by the two senior liberals in the House on Ringstrasse was commented on with outrage by the other parties. And interpreted as the dominance gesture of the right that they were presumably intended to be.

Shortly before the pilot of the Hungarian military plane calls to say that there is a slot for the flight home, Viktor Orbán speaks plainly and rarely gives clear insights into his worldview. It is a shame that in two world wars and today in Europe Christians kill millions of other Christians and instead immigrate people with other religions. “Is that logical?” he asks the audience and receives the biggest applause in these 90 minutes.

The era of great political leaders like Schröder is unfortunately over. Instead, bureaucrats from Brussels and politicians “who are concerned with progressive-liberal gender issues” would set the tone, says Orbán. “But these are not essential questions for people and that is how I interpret the election results in Austria.” It is probably the essential moment of this appearance when he says: “Something new is in the throes, a new center is coming that already exists in people’s hearts, only the politicians of Europe don’t know it yet.”

It sounds like mockery when Viktor Orbán dresses up the rise of the right and right-wing extremists with the concept of a “new center”. After all, Gerhard Schröder and Tony Blair announced their vision of a modern social democracy under this slogan in 1999.

But Schröder lets it happen and is obviously happy that an incumbent head of government praises him for saying that someone like him is needed to save ailing Germany. “At 80 years old, I can no longer do it,” says Schröder. Germany needs “decisive leadership”. “The world is looking to us to see whether we can free ourselves from the current situation.”

Once again, thunderous applause waves through the Sofia halls, Roger Köppel hands out Swiss cough drops, and before Orbán finally rushes to the airport, So-yeon Schröder-Kim is allowed to take a few smartphone photos. Then we go out into the twilight.