Government formation: from the Chancellery on the back bench

Olaf Scholz already has his certificate of discharge. Six weeks ago, after the constitution of the new Bundestag, he received it from Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and has only been the managing Chancellor since then. However, his term of office only ends next Tuesday – at least if nothing comes in.

If CDU boss Friedrich Merz is then voted his successor by the Bundestag as expected, it was for Scholz. He will have been in office 1,245 full days. Only two of his eight predecessors came to a shorter time: Ludwig Erhard (1963 to 1966) with 1,142 days and Kurt Georg Kiesinger (1966 to 1969) with 1,055.

What remains: a change of time and traffic lights

What remains of Scholz ‘chancellery will clarify the historians under themselves after he resigns. In the long term, you will definitely remember your time turning speech in the Bundestag four days after the Russian invasion in Ukraine. At that time, Scholz broke up with the taboo not to deliver weapons into current wars and set up a 100 billion heavy special fund for the Bundeswehr – a historical moment that has changed the country.

However, it will also remain that the experiment of the first traffic light coalition at the federal level from the SPD, FDP and the Greens failed. Scholz wanted to make a project for more than one legislative period. However, the traffic light broke up before it turned three – on endless arguments above all over finances.

What there is to say goodbye: “Respect” and the Beatles

Not much has been heard from Scholz in the past few weeks. There were two farewell trips to Warsaw and Paris, the last cabinet meeting with a pension increase as the end of his reign. The last working date of the Chancellor is a panel discussion with schoolchildren on a high school in Eichwalde near Berlin on Monday, before the Bundeswehr adopted him with a big tap in the evening.

He wanted “Respect” by Aretha Franklin from the staff music corps. Respect was the central catchphrase in his successful election campaign 2021. “In My Life” by the Beatles is also on Scholz ‘playlist. From the Beatles was his first record, he once revealed in an interview, namely “Let It Be”.

What will be: directly elected MPs

“Let it be” would not have fit so well to say goodbye, because Scholz doesn’t want to put it over with politics. He will switch from the Chancellery to the back bench of the Bundestag and wants to remain the whole legislative period as a directly elected MP in his constituency Potsdam. “The highest office in which one can be elected directly in Germany is that of the MP in the German Bundestag,” he said as a reason before the election.

This is not unusual, most of his predecessors handled it that way. Willy Brandt (SPD) was even 18 years in the Bundestag after his resignation in 1974 until his death in 1992 and opened the parliament three times as the age president. Most recently, Helmut Kohl (CDU) remained in the Bundestag after his election defeat in 1998 despite the donation affair. His successor Gerhard Schröder (SPD), on the other hand, hired as a lobbyist with the Russian energy industry. And Angela Merkel (CDU) no longer competed for the Bundestag in 2021.

What else works: running and rowing

You will see which specialist committees will belong to Scholz and how often it is still drawn to the speaker desk. It is also uncertain whether he is looking for interesting part -time jobs from the back of the Bundestag for interesting part -time jobs. Scholz once said that he had become a lawyer for labor law, “because I think that work is doing our lives”. Pension at 66 is out of the question for someone like him.

But he is already looking forward to a little more free time. “I would like to sleep in more often,” he said everything in the “Zeit” podcast “?” revealed when asked about the time afterwards. Scholz likes to run and like to row, from time to time he looks at a concert, rather rarely he goes to the cinema or to the theater.

Why Scholz returns to the Chancellery

His passion is books. For example, he would now have time for the approximately 700 -page memoirs that his predecessor Angela Merkel (CDU) sent to him – if he has not already read her. Some time ago he had revealed that he was going on the festival in the podcast “The Scholz-Update”. “Because I like them and we also worked well together.”

Scholz stayed with Merkel during his chancellorship. It is quite possible that he now meets her more often. The two connect that they do not get along with the future Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) at all. A good basis for lively conversations.

The two still have something in common. You will return to the Chancellery in the foreseeable future. But only as a painting in the portrait gallery on the first floor of the government center. Merkel has had this project looped in recent years, but wants to deliver this year. Scholz also has an artist in view, but not yet revealed who.

How he wants to go into history: “You tried”

And how does Scholz want to be remembered? What should be in the history books? “There is no better sentence than the one of which Willy Brandt said that he wanted to read him on his tombstone,” he said in January in a “star” interview. The sentence is: “You tried.”