Thuringia and the Blackberry Coalition: Venture with Wagenknecht

“Courage to take responsibility.” That’s what it said on the monitors that were set up in a hall of the Thuringian state parliament on Friday. And that’s what it says in the 120-page coalition agreement presented by the CDU, BSW and SPD.

In fact, the undertaking is not only brave but daring. Three very different parties, one of which has not existed for a year, want to form a government – and this without a clear majority in parliament.

Because if all their MPs stick together, the CDU, BSW and SPD will only get 44 out of 88 votes, i.e. the same number as the AfD and the Left combined. A stalemate coalition: That hasn’t existed in Germany yet.

In addition, one of the three partners is the BSW: a completely new, populist and partly obscure party, which is led in the federal government by an authoritarian chairwoman.

But hey, this is Thuringia, the country of special political situations. The only left-wing prime minister, the only minority government without tolerance, the only short-term head of government without a government: Experiments have been going on in Erfurt for years.

It is precisely these experiences that are a central reason why, in contrast to Saxony, where there was even a real majority, the negotiations in Erfurt led to success. Beyond the usual special interests and lust for power, the consensus has grown that the country finally deserves a little stability again.

The other reason sits as a member of the state parliament, leads the largest parliamentary group and is called Björn Höcke. Without an agreement, everyone involved knows that at some point there would be changing majorities with the AfD. The Union, of all people, provided proof of this in the last electoral period by repeatedly passing laws against the red-red-green minority government with Höcke’s parliamentary group.

That was in opposition. Now CDU state leader Mario Voigt wants to become Prime Minister. Thuringia has been considered a “political problem case” for years, he said at the presentation of the contract. “We want to change that today.”

But whether this will work is at least uncertain. The venture with Wagenknecht is already costing absurd contortions. After the BSW boss found the preamble full of peace poetry not enough, a sentence about the planned US medium-range weapons was added further back in the contract especially for her.

It reads: “We are critical of stationing and its use without German participation.” From a cursory reading, that sounds like a rejection like the Brandenburg exploratory paper. But thanks to the inclusion of “without German participation,” the coalition is distancing itself from something that does not exist and is not planned. As a result, the stationing, which is of course coordinated with Germany, is not called into question.

The formulation only served to save face for Wagenknecht, who ultimately shied away from a final escalation in Thuringia. Because if she vetoed it, state leader Katja Wolf and her loyalists would have left the party and caused the faction in the state parliament to implode. The BSW chairwoman obviously didn’t want to risk that in the heated federal election campaign.

And so there could now be the first so-called blackberry coalition. After the state committee (CDU), state party conference (BSW) and member survey (SPD) have been completed, Voigt is likely to be elected head of government with a relative majority in the third round of voting. Then the next experiment will begin.

And no matter how it turns out: the rest of the republic should perhaps suppress its practiced arrogance towards Thuringian politics this time.

In glorious Saxony, the once all-powerful CDU has to form a minority government. In eternally social democratic Brandenburg, Germany’s oldest party is currently giving up its basic values. And even in the federal government, the government currently lacks a majority.

As the Bavarian Prime Minister recently said in another context: A little humility would be appropriate.