Since the new city government began its work in the second week of September with the election of six new city councilors, including three from the Greens, there has been renewed movement in the strongest faction in the Römer.

Six of the city councilors elected in spring leave the parliamentary group.

That is almost a third of the 23 group members.

Five of them move to the magistrate.

And Martina Feldmayer, the top candidate of the Greens in the local election campaign, has resigned her mandate in order to devote herself entirely to her job as a member of the state parliament.

Mechthild Harting

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The workload as a member of the government faction and a four-party coalition made up of the Greens, SPD, FDP and Volt is not compatible with your duties in Wiesbaden in the long term, says Feldmayer.

She is therefore resigning her Frankfurt mandate with "great regret", after all, she was successful as a top candidate.

Now their task in the Römer is being fulfilled by others: the work is in "very, very good hands".

However, due to the departures, the parliamentary group is losing some experienced workers who are very familiar with the processes in the Römer.

Like Bastian Bergerhoff, long-time party chairman, who has been allowed to participate in countless weekly coalition rounds in recent years: now he holds the office of treasurer.

Experienced followers

The previous chairman of the transport committee, Wolfgang Siefert, is now the personal advisor and deputy office manager of the former and again the new head of the transport department, Stefan Majer. Heiko Nickel, on the other hand, did not become a city councilor until the spring, but as a key protagonist of the Frankfurt cycling decision and managing director of the Verkehrsclub Deutschland in Hessen, he has sufficiently dealt with transport policy in this city. From now on he is responsible in the transport department for the development of the mobility master plan, which was decided at the beginning of this year. And Bernhard Maier, with a small break in the city parliament for ten years, is now the office manager of his party friend, Mayor Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg.

For the six who have left, there are successors, including experienced ones such as the long-standing city councilor and chairman of the economic committee Uwe Paulsen, who is now the spokesman for the Greens for culture and science as well as for the economy.

The no less experienced 81-year-old planning expert Ulrich Baier is also returning to the city parliament.

The previous parliamentary group leader and cultural politician Sebastian Popp will not move up and thus get out of Roman politics for the time being.

In the last few months, he told the FAZ, he had “had to accept that what should be Green cultural policy in Frankfurt is currently not a majority in the party”.

He missed “clear cultural-political priorities”, the phrase “should be examined” is everywhere in the coalition agreement.

With Popp, not only a connoisseur of the city and its culture, it is said, but another experienced politician who is familiar with the processes in the Römer. This also applies to the composition of the supervisory boards in municipal companies. The most recent experience in drafting the coalition agreement has obviously angered Popp. But he had already been humiliated by the party base when the local election list was drawn up in November, when he, the parliamentary group leader, had been passed on to a replacement position.

"With the new development, the group's emaciation, which began in November with old, experienced parliamentarians, continues," can be heard from the ranks of the Greens. Eventually Paulsen and Baier move up, but among the other four new members in the parliamentary group are Johannes Lauterwald and Lena-Sophie Ulrich, two members of the Frankfurt Green Youth. Ulrich has been their spokesperson since August.

For her predecessor and current parliamentary group leader Tina Zapf-Rodriguez, the recent change within the parliamentary group is not a problem. The successors had already taken part in parliamentary group meetings, and the group was only starting to work properly now. The mix is ​​good, the mood is positive, and the successors give it an “additional breath of fresh air”. Others, on the other hand, speak of “losses”, of “real upheaval”. They hope, however, that the Greens, as the main faction in the Römer, will succeed in “finding a very good way of working”.