There are people who speak particularly quietly when they want to make the other person understand the seriousness of a situation, perhaps even threaten them.

With Olaf Scholz, this point is difficult to identify because he speaks quietly anyway.

Even if he answers questions from journalists at the federal press conference, like on Thursday.

So it was only possible to tell from the content of his words that at two points in his performance, which lasted more than 90 minutes, he seemed a little less confident than the rest of the time.

Eckhart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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It was about the Hamburg Warburg Bank and so-called cum-ex deals.

A journalist had claimed that the Warburg Bank was allowed to keep a tax liability of 47 million euros - he spoke of "stolen money" - "according to your instructions".

That has been proven, Scholz knows that, that is a fact.

The Chancellor, who will have to testify again in the Hamburg investigative committee on the Cum-ex affair at the end of next week, countered that it was not a fact.

"And if you - you can rest assured that I'm not one of the people who do something like that - but you wouldn't be able to substantiate this factual claim if you had to," Scholz told the questioner.

"Consider that when you say something like that." There was the possibility of legal consequences, even if Scholz immediately ruled them out.

At another point, too, the chancellor seemed a little insecure for a moment.

Again it was about his time in Hamburg, again about Cum-ex.

One questioner wanted to know whether the former SPD member of the Bundestag Johannes Kahrs had influenced him, the then head of government in Hamburg, before a meeting with the Warburg people in November 2016.

"Did this meeting with Mr. Kahrs take place?" Scholz passed over the question unanswered and instead said what he assured several times on Thursday when it came to the cum-ex matter: There was no political influence on the decision on the tax liability of the Warburg bank given.

Largely surprise-free appearance

Later, when the subject came up again, he said of meetings with Kahrs that the last encounter must have been "a long time ago".

He currently has no contact with him.

He also does not know where the 200,000 euros that were found in a Kahrs safe deposit box came from.

But he would like to know.

After two and a half years of "spotlights" on the matter with no evidence of political interference found, he said he had no right to anyone admitting that they had failed to find such evidence.

But he admits - "I am human" - that he would be happy if it happened that way.

In any case, he will report everything again next Friday “for many hours”.

He's looking forward to it.

Apart from these minor anomalies, the Chancellor's appearance was largely unsurprising.

The dominant topic was the relief for citizens, which the Federal Government believes is still necessary not only, but above all, for energy as a result of the increased prices.

The day before, government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit had announced that Scholz was open to the plans of Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) to reduce the so-called cold progression in the tax system, Scholz made that very clear on Thursday.

“The Minister of Finance presented his contribution to the necessary considerations yesterday.

I find that very, very helpful,” he reversed a saying of his Christian Democratic predecessor Angela Merkel.