They even have to share the birthday.

They were born on the same day, December 15, 1980, the Minister for Family Affairs, who had just resigned, and the Foreign Minister, who was suddenly celebrated on all sides.

Anne Spiegel, who wanted to appear so perfect on the outside and therefore hid in contradictions.

Annalena Baerbock, who, as a candidate for chancellor, embellished her CV, had parts of a book copied and barely got away with her political existence.

Patrick Bernau

Responsible editor for economy and "value" of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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Ralph Bollman

Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of business and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper in Berlin.

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This gave the impression of female politicians for whom their own image is more important than their actual work.

Who want to appear particularly flawless on the outside.

Who might also feel particularly under pressure.

Maybe that's not just the problem of the two, but of a whole generation.

The 40-year-olds do not only play a role in the federal government.

Across the country, they are the ones who are taking on more and more responsibility in the world of work.

In exceptional cases, they are right at the top, such as the founders of the fashion mail order company Zalando (born 1982 and 1984) and the mail order service Delivery Hero (1980) or Christian Klein (1980) at the software group SAP.

But almost every company has 40-year-olds in middle management, and they have a lot of influence on working conditions.

The urge for impeccability is destructive

Anne Spiegel's problem was only partly that she had not warned properly on the flood night in summer 2021.

Maybe the problem wasn't that she took some time off during a personally difficult phase.

That would have given rise to criticism from political opponents, but the Greens would not have given up their Rhineland-Palatinate top candidate and Vice Prime Minister because of that.

In personally difficult phases, other politicians in more important positions had also taken time out in recent years, such as Schwerin Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig or the former Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, who finally went to Mallorca during the refugee crisis to cure a long-delayed infection .

Trying to scandalize

the "Bild" newspaper did not get through.

The difference: De Maizière had not told anyone about his vacation untruth.

He hadn't wanted to look perfect.

Baerbock also had her problems during the election campaign.

She had started as chancellor candidate, but first there were mistakes in her résumé, then it turned out that passages in her book had been copied from other sources.

And among the Greens fans, one asked oneself: did that even have to be the case?

Did Baerbock really need such a detailed CV in which such mistakes could hide?

Wouldn't she have had just as many choices without a book?

There it is again: perfectionism.

Trying to appear flawless on the outside - so flawless that one politician tore a bar that she only set herself.

Everything had to be right.

So long, until in the end it was no longer true.

To determine how a generation ticks, you have to look at the economic conditions of its youth - a consensus among economists for years.

And the 40-year-olds are different from the much-discussed "Generation Y", which comes shortly after them.

Because her high school and university years stretched from the mid-nineties to the mid-noughties.

They not only experienced the collapse of the Internet bubble, but above all the highest unemployment figures that post-war Germany had ever had.