For many decades, possibly centuries, the lectern was a part of speech like subject, predicate, object.

Even in times when everything was mixed up and millions of people felt that they had to express their political opinion, it mostly made it clear who really had the floor, and so it remained a commitment to the old order or at least to frontal teaching.

Timo Frasch

Political correspondent in Munich.

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    There were also practical advantages: As a rhetorician you could put a beer mug on the desk and, if you had lost the thread for a moment, cheerfully toast to the audience. Even though there was no table, the desk was suitable for hitting it. If your knees were shaking with excitement, there was support and privacy. It also offered space for crisp political messages, which was especially good when the person at the desk didn't get to the point.

    Over and over.

    Not only has the pandemic hastened the slow death of the fax machine, it has also accelerated the handling of the lectern.

    Political speeches have recently started to be made sitting, at a desk or in a living room.

    A desk would only be a nuisance.

    His disappearance began long before that, at the latest with the demotion of the pulpit in Catholic churches in favor of the poor anvil.

    In high political office, it would have been the Free Democrats who were the first to do without a lectern.

    It should of course not be a sign of renunciation, that would not be FDP.

    But it is a signal that people can do without a support if they only have enough legroom.

    Habeck's speech looked badly rehearsed

    It speaks for the FDP or perhaps against the other parties that they apparently thought they had to do the same.

    For example Olaf Scholz from the SPD.

    What was interesting about his speech at the recent party congress was that the desk had no function, but was still in the room.

    Just like your own party leadership.

    Robert Habeck spoke completely free at the Green Party Congress - although, well.

    Precisely because he did not have a desk in front of him on which to be on the safe side he could have placed a few bullet points about the commuter flat rate or Bafin, the speech seemed badly rehearsed.

    You also noticed that his nonchalance relies on being able to lean, lean or slouch somewhere.

    Ecce Armin

    Armin Laschet spoke at the CDU party congress like his competitors for the party chairmanship at the lectern.

    Markus Söder must have had the right sayings on his lips: “Desk instead of cult.” Or: “The CDU may be on the desk, but not on the cutting edge.” But things turned out differently.

    At the end of his speech, Laschet stepped next to the desk, just as if he were coming out of cover and showing himself completely undisguised as a person.

    Ecce Armin.

    The FDP chairman Christian Lindner developed this move further at the latest party congress.

    He left the lectern several times, only to come back to him.

    He treated it like a dance partner who was sometimes ensnared like a major donor, but who was also given the cold shoulder so that she knew that you were one of those who would rather not rule than rule wrongly.

    If the pandemic should be over at some point despite the FDP policy and Lindner is not a candidate for "Let's dance", but Federal Minister, you can be sure that he will go through the audience at party congresses like a motivation guru and kiss dentists' wives and be friends while talking Honorary consuls en passant caresses the bald head.

    Why not also sawn off ministers?

    The only party that is now still able to completely rethink the desk and make it fit for the future, yes, a KataPULT, is the CSU.

    This was last seen at the reception of the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz in the garden of the Munich State Chancellery.

    Saw-off tree trunks served as lecterns there, from fir trees that were supposedly dead anyway.

    What symbolic power!

    What originality!

    Maybe that will finally get the friends of the CDU on their toes and new ideas. At meetings of the women's union, for example, men bent forward could be used as lecterns, ministers sawed off at party congresses. As Söder always says: We have to offer people inspiration.