Mr. Habeck, you played theater when you were at school.

What was your favorite role?

Ralph Bollmann

Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of economics and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.

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Maja Brankovic

Editor in the economy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, responsible for “Der Volkswirt”.

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The most demanding: Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum in the Threepenny Opera, the beggar king who makes a business out of human misery - every feeling, every pitifulness can be converted into money and draw from it immense power.

So cynicism, but also a truth of capitalism in one role.

As a rolemodel?

As a chilling example.

I was then 16 or 17 years old.

If everything just congeals to a business advantage, one begins to instrumentalize everything.

Then it's about power instead of friendship.

But there are also things that cannot be translated into gross domestic product, euros or business interests.

They are what make our life valuable.

Is that what the Minister of Economic Affairs says?

Just the one.

What would 16-year-old Robert Habeck say about the person who is now Vice Chancellor in the Federal Ministry of Economics?

I'd rather take Robert Habeck in his early 40s.

The politically most formative period so far has been my years as a minister in Schleswig-Holstein.

The much smaller house in Kiel was structurally similar to my current federal ministry.

I had many conflict issues under one roof: renewable energies, grid expansion, species protection, nature conservation, agriculture.

I had to make decisions that brought different viewpoints together.

My I at the time would say: It is logical that you ended up here now.

And today?

I have the same thing on another level.

I want to reconcile climate protection with economic value creation.

I don't want an energy and climate protection department that wants to raise prices or prohibit things and an industrial department that works against it.

Then the house would be paralyzed.

You said the Ministry of Economic Affairs was a sleeping dragon.

What do you mean by that?

The house repeatedly played a constitutive role in the history of the Federal Republic, starting with the positioning of Germany as a social market economy at a time when everything was open between capitalism and socialism.

The social market economy was implemented from here.

And the house has continued to develop with the tasks of the time: business and work, business and energy.

now economy and climate protection.

I want this house to become the power center and take the next step.

And that is to give a socio-ecological market economy the regulatory framework and the instruments.

You still have to change the sign at the entrance.

There is still economy and energy, not economy and climate protection.

I'm not very interested in outward appearances like signs.

The main thing is that we make progress in terms of content.

You are now Vice Chancellor and Super Minister.

How does it feel when you look in the mirror in the morning and know that you are driving into this hundred square meter office?

It's pretty big already.

But somehow it reminds you of it every day: It's also a great task that I accept with respect.

I came here with the mental attitude to start working straight away, concentrated and first here in the house.

Of course I meet with associations and unions, but always to discuss specific issues.

This is a Prussian building, and you can use a bit of a Prussian attitude in view of the gigantic tasks that we have.

What have you done already?