Linda Teuteberg sits in front of a café in Berlin-Mitte. The sun is shining, an apple spritzer is standing in front of it, a wasp sits on the edge of the glass. “I won’t let that disturb me,” she says and watches the insect.
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Be attentive, do not make any hectic movements, do not allow yourself to be provoked – this is roughly how the situation in Teuteberg’s own party is currently presented. You are in danger, but the 39-year-old remains outwardly ostentatiously calm.
For some time, there has been speculation about Teuteberg’s premature replacement as FDP general secretary at the upcoming party congress in September. Party leader Christian Lindner is dissatisfied with their work, it is said, such voices appear again and again in various media reports, anonymously of course. As if it should be made clear to Teuteberg that their time is up. It’s a well-known game in political Berlin.
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Lindner himself is currently avoiding a clear statement about the future of his general secretary. When asked, he avoids a standard formula: She is, he said recently also to SPIEGEL, a “strong part of our team”. But he also said: “All parties are currently talking about their line-up for the federal election.” It doesn’t sound like a job guarantee until the regular end of their term of office in spring 2021.
For the FDP it may be about everything
Because it’s one of those things with teams: if things go bad, the team has to be restructured. Nobody in the FDP wants to shake the post of team boss, Lindner, even if the polls in the corona crisis are five to seven percent, far from the federal election result of 10.7 percent. There are many reasons for the misery – the pandemic is the hour of the executive, an opposition party has a hard time there. But it was before Corona FDP The temporary election of FDP politician Thomas Kemmerich with AfD votes for Thuringian Prime Minister continues to this day.
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Lindner has long had an eye on the federal election campaign, which could once again be about anything for the liberals. Teuteberg no longer seems to play a major role in his planning. The only question is: what if she wants to stay? It’s a tricky place. Teuteberg, says one from the FDP, could be one thing above all: “stubborn and defiant”.
Teuteberg was elected Secretary General in April 2019, with almost 93 percent. Lindner had proposed her, a young East German who, as the migration policy spokeswoman for the Bundestag parliamentary group, stood out for critical remarks on Merkel’s refugee policy. But above all: she was a woman in a party in which only 21.6 percent are female. Many had expected Johannes Vogel, General Secretary of the NRW-FDP. He was once considered a close champion of Lindner, today Vogel goes his own way.
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The decision for Teuteberg was a risk, it has brought Lindner no luck. An FDP insider said he had long since dropped her and didn’t trust her anymore. The party chairman had doubts as to whether Teuteberg was the right woman in the right post months ago, in autumn last year – barely five months after she was elected. At that time, the FDP was in the East German election campaign in Thuringia, but little was heard from Teuteberg. When she said something, she hardly got through to the media. She did not deliver the relief that Lindner had hoped for from her. The party leader felt that he had to take on the role of the aggressive general secretary.
According to SPIEGEL information, Lindner Teuteberg made an offer before the summer break: Frank Sitta, an FDP politician from Saxony-Anhalt who is giving up his top political positions, will be vacant in the presidium. At a meeting in Berlin, Lindner asked her to propose her for this post at the party conference in September and to upgrade her as Eastern Commissioner. Teuteberg refused, it is said that it was not enough for her. The FDP politician did not want to confirm the process on request.
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What happens now? The federal executive committee will meet in Berlin on August 17th. Some believe that a decision could be made here. Is Teuteberg still moving and coming towards Lindner? Or does she risk a crisis in which she damages herself and others?
In an interview with SPIEGEL in the Berlin café, from which she does not want to be quoted, she does not seem as if she is simply being pushed out of the field. A few days earlier she was a guest in the talk format “Der SPIEGEL asks”, referring to her term of office until May 2021. Many in the FDP have followed her appearance closely. When asked whether she would also take on a different task in a team, she replied: This question is not asked “at the moment”. At the moment.
Lindner’s authority could be damaged
If Teuteberg does not bow to the pressure, the party leader may have a problem. Then his authority would also be damaged. However, when it comes to personnel issues, Lindner has not always shown a lucky hand. At the last party congress in spring 2019, the outgoing Secretary General Nicola Beer was elected as one of the three vice chairmen, she had urged Lindner to do so – and she was, alongside Katja Suding and Wolfgang Kubicki. For this, the then vice-boss Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann had to give way, she came instead to the federal executive board. That left scars on everyone involved.
The “Beer model” – which is now also rumored for Teuteberg in the party – is unlikely to be transferable this time: for Teuteberg one of the three deputies would have to vacate his post early. It would again be a solution at the expense of others. That doesn’t seem like a serious option at the moment.
It’s a tricky situation. Although Lindner has the right to propose the post of general secretary, Teuteberg was elected in April 2019 by the delegates – such as the presidium, the federal executive board and the party leader – for two years. There are actually no elections at the party congress in September. So Teuteberg could wait and sit out the crisis for her person. She is, says an FDPler, “on the bigger lever”. But she would probably trigger a veritable crisis in the FDP by waiting, and the topic would waver for months. Does she want that? In conversation, Teuteberg looks as if she is armoring herself, she does not allow her to look into her cards.
But she knows: she is counted. The speculations about her replacement had already started at the end of June with an article in the “Welt am Sonntag”, in which internals about her alleged inability to deal with her staff were also spread. Some in the party who refused to be quoted found that indecent because personnel issues were complex.
In fact, however, the heads of your Bundestag and party offices have been orphaned since spring. “Such piercing,” says an FDP member of the Bundestag who means well to her, is “always a sure sign that something is brewing.”
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