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Gerhard Schröder (SPD) in his office in March 2024.

Photo: Michael Kappeler / dpa

Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder warns the SPD leadership not to erase him from the party's history. In an interview with the German Press Agency, he complained that there was no longer a picture of him to be found in the party headquarters on the floor where the chairmen have their offices.

“The SPD also has to be careful,” says Schröder. »In the communist parties of the past, the respective leaders were of course erased from the history of the party when they were gone. So I don’t think the SPD will go that far.”

Schröder has been friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin since he was chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and continues to work for the majority Russian companies on the Nord Stream pipelines through the Baltic Sea. Although he described the Russian attack on Ukraine as a “fatal mistake,” he nevertheless did not break away from Putin. The SPD leadership therefore excluded him, but a party expulsion procedure against him failed.

Schröder is no longer invited to party conferences - as is usually the case with a former party leader. Party leader Saskia Esken justified this last year with the words: “I can no longer recognize Gerhard Schröder, the former chancellor and former party leader. I see him as a businessman pursuing his business interests.”

When asked whether the exclusion by the party leadership hurt him, Schröder said: "It doesn't hurt me because I know the actors who are causing it. So why should this hurt me? If my wife forgot my birthday, it would hurt me.”

Schröder said he didn't want to make his "principled relationship with German social democracy" "dependent on people who I can only take politically seriously to a limited extent." He will remain a Social Democrat as long as he is let.

He couldn't complain about the lack of affection from the middle of the party. »There are still a lot of letters in which people don't understand certain attacks against me. So in this respect I believe that I still live in the middle of social democracy and I want to continue to do so.«

It is well known that he does not have a particularly close relationship with the current party leadership; “But you don’t have to have it to remain a social democrat.”