Ralf Stegner

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Ralf Stegner (2019)

Ralf Stegner (born October 2, 1959 in Bad Dürkheim ) is a German politician ( SPD ).

From 2003 to 2005 he was Minister of Finance and from 2005 to 2008 Minister of the Interior of Schleswig-Holstein . He has been a member of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament since 2005 and chairman of the SPD parliamentary group there since 2008, making him the opposition leader in 2017 for the second time after 2009 to 2012 .

He is counted on the left wing of the SPD. From 2007 to 2019 he was chairman of the SPD Schleswig-Holstein and from 2014 to 2019 one of the deputy federal chairmen of the SPD. He was the top candidate of the SPD Schleswig-Holstein in the state elections in 2009 and applied for the position of the top candidate in the state elections in 2012 , but was defeated by Torsten Albig in a membership decision .

Life and work

Stegner grew up as the middle of five siblings in Maxdorf in the Palatinate . There his parents Wolfgang and Marietta Stegner ran an inn. After giving up the inn, the family moved to Emmendingen . There the father took over the management of a catering business. As a result of the move, Stegner moved from the Tulla-Gymnasium in Mannheim to the Goethe-Gymnasium in Emmendingen. There he passed the Abitur in 1978 and then did his basic military service . From 1980 to 1987 he studied political science , history and German at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg . Included was an academic year from 1984 to 1985 at the University of Oregon . In 1987 he was McCloy-Scholar of the Volkswagenwerk Foundation and the German National Academic Foundation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University , which he graduated in 1989 with a Master of Public Administration .

In 1990 he joined the Ministry for Labor, Social Affairs, Youth and Health of the State of Schleswig-Holstein as a consultant for press and public relations . With the work Theatrical Politics made in USA. President in the tension between modern TV democracy and commercialized PR show he was in 1992 at the University of Hamburg for Dr. phil. PhD. From 1994 to 1996 he headed the staff of Schleswig-Holstein's Minister of Social Affairs, Heide Moser .

Ralf Stegner is Protestant , married, has three sons and lives in Bordesholm .

Political party

Stegner joined the SPD in 1982. From 1998 to 2002 he was deputy chairman of the SPD district association Rendsburg-Eckernförde . From 2005 he was a member of the executive board of the SPD Schleswig-Holstein and was elected state chairman on March 24, 2007. At the state party conference on April 9 and 10, 2011, there were two candidates for the state chairmanship for the first time in over 30 years. Stegner prevailed against Uwe Döring with 62.7 to 35.8 percent of the vote . From 2005 he was a member of the SPD party executive committee and from 2007 he was responsible for domestic politics in the party presidium.

In the state elections in 2009 , he ran as the top candidate. The SPD lost 13.3 percentage points in the election and achieved 25.4 percent, its worst result since the end of the Second World War.

At an extraordinary state party conference on September 11, 2010, he announced his candidacy for the position of the top candidate in the early state elections in 2012 . He challenged the Lord Mayor of Kiel Torsten Albig , who had already announced his candidacy. In the first member's decision, Stegner Albig lost 32.1 to 57.2 percent of the vote.

Ralf Stegner together with Gesine Schwan at an SPD regional conference (2019)

On January 26, 2014, Stegner was elected one of the six deputies of the federal chairman Sigmar Gabriel with 78.3 percent of the vote at an extraordinary federal party conference . Gabriel had nominated Stegner in December 2013, after he was initially considered the favorite to succeed the previous Secretary General Andrea Nahles . In December 2015 he was re-elected with 77.3 percent of the vote and in December 2017 with 61.6 percent of the vote.

In September 2018, he announced that he would no longer run for state chairmanship at the state party conference in March 2019 and that he would support Serpil Midyatli's candidacy for state chairmanship. Midyatli announced her candidacy for the state chair in August 2019. On March 30, 2019, Midyatli was elected country chairman.

In the election for the SPD chairmanship in 2019 , he ran together with Gesine Schwan . Schwan and Stegner finished last among the six candidate pairs in the membership decision in October 2019 with 9.6 percent of the votes and thus did not make it into the runoff election.

At the federal party conference in December 2019, he no longer ran for deputy federal chairman and instead supported Kevin Kühnert's candidacy . In the election of the party executive committee, he received 165 votes in the first ballot instead of the required 290 votes and did not run in the second ballot.

MP

Since the state elections in 2005 , Stegner has been a member of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament and since January 15, 2008 chairman of the local SPD parliamentary group. After he was elected to the state parliament via number 4 on the state list in the state elections in 2005 , he moved into the state parliament via number 1 on the state list in the state elections in 2009 and via number 3 on the state list in the state elections in 2012 and 2017 . He ran in 2005 and 2009 in the Rendsburg-Süd constituency and in 2012 and 2017 in the Rendsburg-Ost constituency , but was defeated by Claus Ehlers (CDU) in 2005 and Hauke ​​Göttsch (CDU) in 2009, 2012 and 2017 .

In July 2020, he announced that he wanted to run for the 2021 federal election in the Pinneberg constituency .

Public offices

After the state elections in 1996 , Stegner was appointed State Secretary in the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, Youth and Health in the state government led by Prime Minister Heide Simonis . In 1998 he moved to the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Culture as State Secretary.

On March 1, 2003, he was appointed Minister of Finance for the State of Schleswig-Holstein. After the failed re-election of Heide Simonis on March 17, 2005, he remained in office. In Schleswig-Holstein he was long considered the " Crown Prince " who could inherit Heide Simonis in the office of Prime Minister.

From April 27, 2005 to January 15, 2008, he was a member of the cabinet of the grand coalition led by Prime Minister Peter Harry Carstensen (CDU) as Minister of the Interior. In this function he was deputy chairman of the collective bargaining association of German states .

The Schleswig-Holstein CDU and Prime Minister Peter Harry Carstensen accused Stegner in 2007 of repeatedly failing to adhere to coalition agreements and therefore called for his withdrawal from the state government. On September 17, 2007, Stegner announced that he would resign on January 15, 2008 and apply for the SPD's top candidate for the 2010 state elections. On January 15, 2008, he resigned from his position as Minister of the Interior.

Ralf Stegner at the benefit event Appen musiziert (2014)

Stegner took over the offices of SPD state and parliamentary group chairman. The climate within the CDU / SPD coalition deteriorated. After the executive committee of the bank had promised the CEO of HSH Nordbank , Dirk Jens Nonnenmacher , bonus payments for his stay in the bank, Stegner stated that this process had taken place without the consent of the SPD.

In July 2009 the coalition partner CDU terminated the coalition agreement with the SPD and also blamed Stegner's behavior for the break. Stegner accused the Prime Minister of lying in relation to the controversial bonus payments. Carstensen then admitted untrue information.

The SPD parliamentary group did not agree to the CDU's motion to dissolve the state parliament for an early election. Carstensen then dismissed the SPD ministers from the cabinet and asked the vote of confidence on July 23, 2009 , which he lost with the majority abstaining from his own parliamentary group. In the new state elections held at the same time as the 2009 Bundestag elections , the SPD received 25.4% of the votes cast (minus 13.3 percentage points compared to 2005), the worst result ever achieved in a state elections. Stegner, who appeared as the top candidate, took responsibility for this, but remained in office as party leader. He was re-elected as group leader with 20 out of 25 votes. Until the change of government in 2012, he remained chairman of the strongest opposition faction and thus opposition leader in the state parliament.

Political controversy

On March 18, 2005, in response to the failed re-election of Heide Simonis as Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein the day before, he published an open letter to the unknown MP who had abstained from this election and thus prevented Heide Simonis from being confirmed. He described his behavior in it as "shabby and characterless betrayal". The media suspected that Stegner himself had prevented Heide Simonis from being re-elected as Prime Minister. Heide Simonis himself emphasized that she did not understand the allegations against Stegner and did not believe it.

In January 2006, as then Minister of the Interior, Stegner triggered defensive reactions with his response to a criticism from the independent state center for data protection in Schleswig-Holstein . In a draft of the new police law , among other things, a vehicle license plate monitoring as well as an extended detention authorization for suspicion-independent identification was required. The head of the data protection center, Thilo Weichert , had criticized that the draft would “impermissibly interfere with the constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens” and would “probably [...] not withstand a review by the Federal Constitutional Court”. Stegner then accused the data protection officer, under the heading "Thilo alone at home", that he lived in "a wrong world [...] alone". In April 2007, however, Stegner said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag that Federal Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was pursuing “a policy that gradually undermines our basic rights ” and that Schäuble “did not even shrink from abolishing the presumption of innocence ”.

From 2003 to 2008, Stegner was a member of the Supervisory Board of HSH Nordbank as the representative of the State of Schleswig-Holstein . The work was remunerated at 14,375 euros per year, of which, as minister, he was only allowed to keep 5,550 euros and had to pay the rest to the state of Schleswig-Holstein. Since the remuneration for 2007 was only paid to him after his resignation as Minister of the Interior, he initially refused to transfer the money to the State of Schleswig-Holstein. He later admitted a legal error and transferred the sum to the state of Schleswig-Holstein.

At the request of the AfD state association of Rhineland-Palatinate, Stegner was banned from repeating the claim that the AfD was "for the death penalty for democratic politicians" by an interim injunction from the Hamburg regional court in March 2016 .

In a video published by Klemens Kilic on YouTube on December 5, 2019 , Kilic called Stegner and pretended to be Norbert Walter-Borjans , who had been elected party chairman-elect days earlier. He pretended that the party leadership wanted to offer Stegner the office of Vice Chancellor , and Stegner replied that he could imagine taking over the offices of Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister from Olaf Scholz .

Twitter posts

Stegner caused outrage several times with Twitter posts. When the situation of the then CDU and SPD coalition in Schleswig-Holstein was already tense in 2009 , he wrote: "The media show retro everywhere: politics and journalism in the style of the SH of the 70s, 80s before Bjoern Engholm cleared up!" A few hours later ended the CDU the coalition.

In May 2016, Stegner demanded in another post that one had to "attack the positions and staff of the right-wing populists because they were yesterday, intolerant, far-right and dangerous!" AfD district associations in Bavaria and the AfD parliamentary group in the Hamburg citizenship filed criminal charges because they saw in it a call to violence against AfD politicians.

In October 2016, Stegner compared the CSU General Secretary Andreas Scheuer , who had warned of a possible red-red-green coalition as a “left front”, with the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un . With reference to a previously failed missile test by the dictator, he tweeted: “I thought Scheuer wanted missiles against R2G. Put on your glasses and take a closer look: Noticed in time, the CSU General is not ”.

In February 2017, he compared the Facebook managing director Sheryl Sandberg optically with the alleged right-wing terrorist Beate Zschäpe using a photo : "And I thought Ms. Tschzäpe was in custody." He later explained in another post: "Sorry, the comment was a mistake- was therefore deleted by me immediately. ”The associated lack of taste was not intended.

Cabinets

Web links

Commons : Ralf Stegner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Ralf Stegner  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Who attracts the stink. In: taz. taz, the daily newspaper. Verlagsgenossenschaft eG, May 8, 2008, accessed on December 14, 2017 .
  2. ↑ "Would never offend the Palatinate" . In: Mannheimer Morgen , September 12, 2014, p. 4.
  3. ↑ SPD argued about the decision. In: shz.de. April 11, 2011, accessed April 11, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Stegner wants to be the top candidate. In: shz.de. September 11, 2010, accessed September 11, 2010 .
  5. ↑ Albig beats Stegner. In: shz.de. February 26, 2011, accessed February 26, 2011 .
  6. ↑ Ralf Stegner elected SPD vice-president. In: shz.de. January 26, 2014, accessed January 26, 2014 .
  7. ↑ SPD party congress punishes Gabriel from welt.de, December 11, 2015
  8. ↑ SPD Olaf Scholz waddles off spiegel.de, December 7, 2017
  9. ↑ Ralf Stegner gives SPD state chairmanship from zeit.de, September 3, 2018
  10. ↑ Change in the Northern SPD: Midyatli replaces Stegner from zeit.de, March 30, 2019
  11. ↑ Schwan and Stegner apply for SPD chairmanship spiegel.de, August 14, 2019
  12. ↑ Scholz / Geywitz against Walter-Borjans / Esken in the runoff election for SPD chairmanship spiegel.de, October 26, 2019
  13. ↑ Ralf Stegner renounces SPD deputy post for Kevin Kühnert shz.de, December 3, 2019
  14. ↑ Maas fails in the first round in the SPD board election spiegel.de, December 7, 2019
  15. ^ Departure of the troublemaker. In: welt.de. January 16, 2008, accessed July 13, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Ralf Stegner. In: parliamentwatch.de. Retrieved July 13, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Candidate for the Bundestag: Stegner moves to Berlin. In: welt.de. July 8, 2020, accessed July 13, 2020 .
  18. ↑ SPD state chief Stegner defends himself against allegations spiegel.de, July 13, 2009
  19. ↑ Male feud breaks up Kiel riot coalition spiegel.de, July 15, 2009
  20. ^ "Carstensen lies" spiegel.de, July 17, 2009
  21. ↑ Carstensen confesses untrue information about bonuses spiegel.de, July 19, 2009
  22. ^ SPD parliamentary group: Holger Astrup on the election of the SPD parliamentary group chairman. September 29, 2009, accessed December 20, 2013 .
  23. ↑ Ralf Stegner: “ Open letter to the MPs who alone (?) Know to whom this is addressed”, March 18, 2005, 12:37 pm.
  24. ↑ Susanne Gaschke : A rumor and its destructive effect . In: Die Zeit , No. 13/2005, March 23, 2005, accessed on August 27, 2017.
  25. ↑ Heide Simonis in “Stegner meets…” September 12, 2009, Neumünster Museum Tuch & Technik ( YouTube ).
  26. ^ Opinion on the draft law to adapt the hazard prevention law and administrative procedural law provisions of the LVwG ( Memento of January 15, 2006 in the Internet Archive ). In: datenschutzzentrum.de . Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  27. ↑ Bettina Winsemann: In Schily's footsteps . In: heise.de . January 13, 2006, accessed July 6, 2017.
  28. ↑ Double pass for decent foreigners! ( Memento of May 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). In: picture online . April 22, 2007.
  29. ↑ Stegner under pressure focus.de, August 29, 2009
  30. ↑ Stegner under Raffke-Verdacht focus.de, February 20, 2010
  31. ↑ Stegner admits mistake focus.de, February 22, 2010
  32. ^ Court forbids SPD Vice Stegner to make statements about AfD . In: Focus online . April 22, 2016. Retrieved July 6, 2017.
  33. ↑ Telephone Prank: I am appointing Ralf Stegner as Vice Chancellor! youtube.de, December 5, 2019
  34. ↑ Ralf Stegner could imagine replacing Vice Chancellor Scholz welt.de, December 8, 2019
  35. ↑ Youtuber offers Stegner the post of Finance Minister Olaf Scholz on stuttgarter-zeitung.de, December 9, 2019
  36. ↑ a b Stegner apologizes for “bad taste” in his tweet , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 6, 2017.
  37. ↑ a b Stegner apologizes for tasteless tweet , Welt N24, February 6, 2017.
  38. ↑ a b Markus Wehner: If it goes against the right, other standards apply . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung online . May 16, 2016.
  39. ^ Media report: AfD local politicians file criminal charges against the deputy head of the Federal SPD . In: Focus online . May 16, 2016.
  40. ^ AfD wants to file criminal charges against SPD man Ralf Stegner . In: Hamburger Abendblatt online . May 27, 2016.
  41. ↑ Resignation demands on Stegner: Twitter-mob suddenly tight-lipped , Focus online, May 18, 2017.
  42. ↑ Peter Köhler: The Truth: Der Unverboingbare , taz, August 22, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Stegner, Ralf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German politician (SPD), MdL
DATE OF BIRTH October 2, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Bad Dürkheim