Christian Lindner stops: To say goodbye only a quiet servus

The beginning of the end begins at 12:24 p.m. Christian Lindner speaks for the last time as chairman of the FDP. Once again he goes to the speaker in his typical walk with the short steps. Here was always his most important battlefield. You can do a lot against Christian Lindner, and many will say: It’s good that he is finally gone. But talk, he could.

Anyone who has followed the first debates of the 21st Bundestag in the past few days mourns the 20th, also because of Christian Lindner. Shortly before completing his political career, he recently demonstrated his rhetorical talent when he asked the trillion debt maker Friedrich Merz in parliament: “Who are you and what did you do with Friedrich Merz?”

So now his last party speech at the top. Or not? He had already resigned in 2011, at that time as Secretary General, in 2013 the FDP flew from the Bundestag. Lindner returned, became the party leader, revived the FDP, led it to the Bundestag and even to the government four years later.

But everything was lost within three years. Crash into the abyss. Lindner leaves the FDP outside of Parliament today, exactly where he collected it eleven years and five months ago. He is just 46 years old, he was the youngest chairman the FDP ever had. And also the youngest who didn’t want to be anymore. But he does not go at the height, but at the low point. Can that really be all?

His last speech is called “accountability report of the federal chairman”. And it sounds a bit like that too. Lindner thanks the employees who had to endure him. He thanks important companions such as Marco Buschmann and Wolfgang Kubicki. “I look back on a great journey with you,” says Lindner at one point to all his party friends. In the hall you can also see those that this chairpooked politically worn out, Philipp Rösler and Linda Teuteberg, for example, or Birgit Homburger. They don’t tell them anymore? Even.

Existence endangered. Only splinter party. Slop, slapper, FDP. Lindner recalls that these were the headlines in 2013 when the FDP flew out of the Bundestag. And then it went on. Since his election as party leader, the FDP has won 10,000 new members, had moved into 20 state parliament and even borne government responsibility. Uh, wait a minute, wasn’t there anything else?

Of course you also made mistakes. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be here,” said Lindner. There were always two criticisms: the one mooned that the FDP had made too many compromises with left -wing parties. The others found “we should have shown more willingness to compromise so as not to stand up as a blocker”. And what does he think about it? Lindner doesn’t say that. The new party leadership should work out. Sounds like he no longer wanted to be available as a witness.

Udo di Fabio, a former constitutional judge and non -party liberal, has previously spoken of a kind of judgment about Lindner, who should have liked it: Lindner is not said goodbye as a failed person, but as one who has taken on political responsibility for an election defeat. Di Fabio thinks that “Honorig” is “Honorig”. Of course you can see that too.

Lindner has always polarized. And he enjoyed it. An FDP chairman is never about the majority in the country, but about the consent of his clientele. Pleasure, sometimes hatred, is priced in this job. And Lindner liked to fuel this with provocations such as the word of the “free mentality” of some Germans. In the end, he was less told than he had to take. He had to listen to Olaf Scholz that he lacks “the moral maturity” for the rule.

Does Lindner follow again? Not against Scholz, only against Merz. “It is difficult for me to turn a fleet when it comes to basic political beliefs, there is more talent for this at the CDU,” he says. The voters would have chosen less state and more freedom, “and they get more state and more debts”. At the latest here you ask yourself: What did the man do with Christian Lindner there?

Lindner does not celebrate this last appearance, he completes it. A short personal passage in which he appreciates his wife Franca Lehfeldt. “When I was euphoric, you slowed me down. When I was depressed, what happened more often, you built me ​​up,” he says to his wife’s address, who, according to Lindner, was sitting on his arm with his little daughter at home on the television. “Dear Franca, you had to carry a politician’s life with you, even though you got me and not the FDP. I am grateful for that.”

Once the old Lindner flickers. Then he defends the liberal idea with a certain passion. “We shouldn’t explain to each other what true liberalism is,” calls Lindner. The diversity strengthens the party and freedom is the connecting element. “The FDP does not need a congregation of faith.”

The farewell is not easy for him. “My liberal heart wants to storm again,” said Lindner. “But my mind says that everything has his time.” Clearly: the mind has clearly prevailed in this speech. Christian Lindner was also the longest-reigning chairman of the FDP at the age of eleven and five months, longer than Hans-Dietrich Genscher. His successor becomes Christian Dürr.

Lindner takes the time for only 30 minutes, and 40 minutes were planned for his speech. The conclusion becomes important again. What does he say to say goodbye? In 2011, when he resigned as Secretary General of the FDP, there was a kind of promise at the end of his appearance: “Goodbye.” And he made it true in a remarkable way.

This time he only says: “Thank you very much.”