There is seldom agreement in the city council.

But on Thursday, after the new department heads had taken their seats on the “government bench” in the meeting room in the municipal utilities for the first time after their election, a motion that had actually been quickly withdrawn at noon had already triggered a scandal.

It was motion 74 of the satirical parliamentary group, the parliamentary group, which most city councilors found neither satirical nor funny.

This went so far that the city councilors left the conference room demonstratively when city councilor Nico Wehnemann came to the lectern as the author of the motion.

A rarity in the plenary.

Martin Benninghoff

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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In the application entitled “Enable access to free menstrual items”, the Wehnemann parliamentary group described menstruation “as a natural burden imposed on menstruating people”.

The sentence "Abolishing menstruation would only be possible through a nationwide free uterus removal campaign" caused outrage.

Ursula Busch, the leader of the SPD parliamentary group, called this formulation as well as the entire text in the committee of elders in the afternoon a “shame”.

"If you can't do satire, then you should leave it or learn." Tina Zapf-Rodriguez, the group leader of the Greens, saw it similarly.

In a committed statement, she spoke of “contempt for women”.

Most of the political groups agreed with this assessment.

"Refrain from contempt for women in motions or verbal contributions" 

The city councilor Monika Christann from the Left Party was then responsible for giving the indignation of individuals the weight of the whole house. She read a largely intergroup declaration, initiated by the women in Römer: "We call on all members of the city council to refrain from such contempt for women in future motions or verbal contributions." Since she named Wehnemann, he was able to reply. Although he apologized to those who might feel attacked, he then went on the offensive: “The motion has achieved its goal” and a debate has begun. The parliamentary group withdrew the motion because they “do not want to be presented by parliament”, Wehnemann had said, and finally he received a serious rebuke from the head of the city council, Hilime Arslaner-Gölbasi. She said,the request was "disrespectful". In the committee of elders she had already said to the parliamentary group: "We do not want anything to do with such ideas."

After this topic was dealt with, the meeting could move on to the regular agenda.

Before that, there had been a discussion among the groups as to whether speaking times should be limited in the current hour.

This often takes up a lot of space and means that the meetings run until late in the evening, which is difficult for the voluntary city councilors.

The groups had agreed to limit speaking times, at least this Thursday, to three requests to speak of three minutes per group.