Berlin (AFP) – Germany’s incoming finance minister Lars Klingbeil is a self-styled political “bridge-builder” whose calm and personable demeanour belies his sharp political instincts. Despite the bruising election loss of his centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), he will control the purse strings of Europe’s top economy under conservative chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz. Klingbeil — who studied political science, sociology, and history, not finance — will wield a spending “bazooka” worth hundreds of billions of euros to rebuild Germany’s military and infrastructure, agreed by the outgoing parliament.
Having established a friendly rapport with campaign-trail foe Merz during weeks of post-election coalition talks, he will also serve as his vice chancellor, setting Klingbeil up for a potential future run at the top job himself. Holding the powerful dual position at the tender age of 47 caps the career so far of a politician who favours dialogue and consensus over bluster and open power plays. Klingbeil is “a politician who is ready to compromise, not an authoritarian leader who imposes his views on others,” said political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder of Kassel University. Der Spiegel magazine has described Klingbeil as “unflappable, unpretentious, unthreatening…almost boring.” He is someone who “weighs things up, thinks things through, and even slows things down when everyone else is convinced that a quick decision is necessary,” it said.
It added that Klingbeil, who stands a towering 1.96 metres (6ft 5in) tall, “takes CrossFit and kickboxing classes several times a week, often before work, but then acts as if he couldn’t hurt a fly.” Klingbeil himself states on his LinkedIn profile that he believes that “political compromises aren’t inherently bad. I can say from my experience: building bridges is something I’ve always found enriching and something I can only encourage.”
When Philipp Tuermer, the head of the SPD’s youth wing, laid into him over the coalition’s plans to curb migration, Klingbeil defended the right of his young colleague to express a different opinion. “That is the Klingbeil method: embrace your critics – if in doubt, just about firmly enough that they no longer have room to move,” Der Spiegel wrote.
Klingbeil was born in Soltau, near the northern city-state of Hamburg, and still lives in the same region with his wife, political scientist Lena-Sophie Mueller, and their young child, a boy born last summer. As a youth, sporting an eyebrow piercing, Klingbeil was a member of a punk band, and he still plays the guitar and reportedly keeps several of them in his office. After a stint performing civil service helping the homeless instead of military service, he went on to university.
He worked in the office of former SPD chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, from whom he has since distanced himself due to the former leader’s closeness to Vladimir Putin. Klingbeil first entered the Bundestag in 2005 and he has served as the SPD’s co-chair since 2021, together with Saskia Esken. The SPD suffered the worst defeat in its history in February’s election, winning just 16.4 percent of the vote.
After outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he would take a back seat in coalition negotiations, Klingbeil became the main torch carrier for the SPD, forging a congenial relationship with Merz. Klingbeil is a Bayern Munich fan and a former member of the advisory board at Germany’s biggest football club. In recent weeks, Klingbeil, a former smoker, for the first time spoke publicly about being diagnosed with oral cancer in 2014, saying the ordeal had taught him to “approach things a bit more calmly.” “You look at life differently when you’ve had a brush with death,” he told Die Zeit weekly.
© 2024 AFP
