Andrea Nahles returns to the political stage - it is a comeback, a reconciliation, but also a reminder for the new chancellor party SPD, which believes that with the election victory it has put all the evils of the past behind it.

The former top politician, now 51 years old, is to become head of the Federal Employment Agency.

Around 100,000 employees will soon report to her.

Mona Jaeger

Deputy Editor-in-Chief for News and Politics Online.

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Andrea Nahles is a social democrat, you can hardly be more of a social democrat than she is.

But she is also a mind of her own.

She comes from the rural Rhineland-Palatinate, from Mendig in the East Eifel.

She still lives there on an old farm.

Nahles is Catholic and was an altar boy.

She likes to drive fast.

For once, the word down-to-earth is not a cliché for her.

Nahles, the left and lute, started with the Jusos.

She was later often attacked by the young tormentors in the party, even though she was one herself: she described SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as the “wrecking ball” of the welfare state, and his Agenda 2010 as “lacking a concept, lacking prospects, lacking in instinct”.

She later gave up this categorical rejection and tried to correct Hartz IV.

It was publicly dismantled

She became general secretary, and in 2013 she was appointed minister for the SPD's important department for labor and social affairs, and was responsible for introducing the minimum wage.

Politicians from other parties valued Nahles as a reliable practitioner.

In 2017 she became chairwoman of the SPD parliamentary group, after the end of the Schulz hype also party chairwoman.

In the male-dominated SPD, she was the first woman at the top.

They were proud, but still gave her a bad result.

Under her, the SPD board decided at the beginning of 2019 to carry out a general revision of the Hartz IV rules. She has had a close relationship with Olaf Scholz for a long time. She should flank his rise to chancellor. But then Nahles first stumbled when Hans-Georg Maassen was transferred, then she cut an unfortunate figure in some appearances. The fate of Nahles is the best example of the consequences of the contradictory desire of many people for true-to-life politicians who should be infallible. Kevin Kühnert and other dismantled Nahles publicly, others did nothing about it. She resigned in mid-2019. Kühnert later said he was ashamed of that time.

A few months later, the SPD passed its welfare state concept.

She was reconciled with herself, the foundation stone for the ultimately successful election campaign had been laid.

But Andrea Nahles was gone.

She attended no party congresses and gave no public advice.

She briefly headed the Federal Post and Telecommunications Agency.

Now she returns.

Perhaps, according to some in the SPD today, Nahles had to be sacrificed so that it got so bad that it couldn't get any worse.