First a video, then breaking news about his application: Robert Habeck is positioning himself as the Greens’ candidate for chancellor. First, shortly after his comeback, the Vice Chancellor posted a short video on the online service X, which caused speculation. Hours later it is clear: Habeck wants to officially declare his application for the Green Party’s candidacy for chancellor on Friday.
In the short, 11-second clip, the Vice Chancellor can be seen sitting at his desk and working through documents. He also hums Herbert Grönemeyer’s “Time for something to turn around”, the theme song of the 2006 Summer Fairy Tale World Cup.
Shortly afterwards, Grönemeyer banned the Greens from using the song for the election campaign. “Today we also asked the Alliance 90/The Greens party and Mr. Habeck to refrain from using songs by Herbert Grönemeyer and specifically the song “Time for something to turn” for election campaign purposes in the future,” said Grönemeyer’s media lawyer Christian Joke with me. His client “fundamentally does not want his person or his songs to be used by political parties for any kind of election advertising, especially without his consent.”
In Habeck’s video, the screen also goes dark several times for a fraction of a second, as if a camera were being triggered. In fact, brief detailed shots are shown, once of Habeck’s bracelet, once of his calendar. Habeck appears ever larger in the picture until he looks up, laughing, and presumably reaches into the lens of the person filming. The picture breaks off.
What does it all mean? The office scene is probably an announcement of Habeck’s candidacy for chancellor. In any case, it was expected that the Economics Minister would officially announce his application for the Green Party’s top or chancellor candidacy before the Green Party conference. The calendar is an indication of the time: November 8th is marked in red.
The other close-up shows a pearl bracelet like those worn by Taylor Swift fans. “Chancellor Era” is written there, based on the US singer’s “Eras” tour. The video also has a title: “Different from here on out”.
Hours after the video was published, the news came: According to information from dpa, ARD and “Spiegel”, Habeck actually wants to make his candidacy official on November 8th. The election for the top man of the Greens is planned for the federal party conference of the Greens, which begins on Friday next week in Wiesbaden. There Habeck will seek the support of the delegates in order to start the election campaign with a tailwind.
Habeck had previously returned to Platform X almost six years after his departure from Twitter and Facebook. “Leaving places like this to the loudmouths and populists is easy. But making it easy cannot be the solution. Not today. Not this week. Not at this time. That’s why I’m back on X,” says a post by the Green politician and Federal Minister of Economics. He had previously intoned his return with the saying “Back for good”, in German something like “finally back”. The Greens confirm to WELT that it is actually an account belonging to Robert Habeck. Robert Habeck now also has an account on Instagram.
The choice of the Grönemeyer song is also interesting because the singer has just banned the CDU from using the song for election advertising purposes. We reserve the right to take further legal steps.
Merz mocks, Lindner compares
Union Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz reacted mockingly to Habeck’s decision to lead the Greens into the federal election as chancellor and not as the top candidate. “The self-declaration as candidate for chancellor with nine percent voter approval definitely has a humorous element,” said the Union faction leader in Berlin.
Habeck’s ex-colleague Christian Lindner also saw the video. The FDP leader, who was finance minister until a few days ago, posted a photo of himself at a desk on X, a campaign photo from old times. “All Democrats welcome here, Robert! “Almost got the picture – the lamp was on the right,” he writes.
At the beginning of 2019, Habeck, then still leader of the Green Party, announced under the heading “Bye bye, Twitter and Facebook” that he would be closing his accounts on Facebook and Twitter. In doing so, he drew the consequences of anger over election campaign tweets and a data theft that led to the dissemination of private information.
Habeck said at the time that Twitter was a “very hard medium where there was divisive and polarizing talk,” and that also rubbed off on him. Billionaire Elon Musk has since taken over Twitter and renamed it X, and polarization has increased significantly since then.
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