"The word has the valued colleague Knell," says Boris Rhein (CDU), President of the Hessian state parliament.
A murmur goes through the plenary hall.
The young, blond FDP politician steps up to the desk and smiles: "Well, the President has taste." He is having a great time and announces as responsively as he is generously: "It doesn't depend on the speaking time."
Ewald Hetrodt
Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung in Wiesbaden.
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During this session week in spring 2019, the formation of the third Bouffier cabinet was only a few months ago.
After more than eight years, the Rhine is suddenly no longer part of it.
Instead, the forty-seven-year-old thoroughbred politician sees himself referred to representative tasks in one of the 16 German state parliaments, which have little influence compared to the deputies in Berlin and Strasbourg.
The lawyer is of course aware that his party chairman, Prime Minister Volker Bouffier, wants to neutralize him with this personnel decision.
But he doesn't show that in the plenary session or to the outside world.
The MPs of all parties perceive him as a sovereign and good-humoured representative of their parliament.
For example, the scene that took place on a winter's day between Christmas and New Year in the inner courtyard of the Parliament building went almost unnoticed.
Dressed in a fine English tweed jacket, Hesse's highest-ranking politician picked up scraps of rubbish that the cool wind blew across the light-colored gravel floor.
The fact that the Union politician has risen to the top of the executive like a phoenix from the ashes after less than three years in power politics has to do with personal character traits.
"What do you love about your partner?" Rhein's wife answered this question more than ten years ago: "He is reliable, determined and funny." The judge meant the people at her side.
But their answer also contained the crucial trait of the homo politicus who will now lead the country.
It is the unconditional will to power that characterizes Rhein, like Bouffier and other top politicians at federal and state level.
Some felt this determination when the man from Frankfurt was still commuting between Wiesbaden and his hometown, in order to climb a higher level here and there.
In 1999, at the age of only 27, he entered the state parliament for the first time as a directly elected member of parliament.
In 2006 he became full-time city councilor for law, economics and human resources in Frankfurt.
He was one of the pillars of the black-green alliance, which was still considered an exception at the time and made headlines nationwide.
Three years later, Rhein moved back to Wiesbaden, initially as State Secretary under the then Interior Minister Bouffier.
When he rose to prime minister, Rhein moved up to the head of the interior department.
When he dismissed the President of the State Criminal Police Office, Sabine Thurau, who had been appointed by his predecessor, he faced a severe defeat.
Because Thurau fought her way back to her position through legal means.
In 2012, Rhein surprisingly lost the mayoral election in Frankfurt against Peter Feldmann (SPD).
He appeared all too sure of victory, is one of the many explanations that abound in such cases.
Like the conflicts in the Ministry of the Interior, the mayoral election campaign had strained the relationship between the Rhine and Bouffier.
One point of friction was the positioning of the CDU in the city and in the country towards Frankfurt Airport.
When the black-green coalition was formed in Wiesbaden at the end of 2013, Rhein had to swap the interior department for the ministry for science and art.
For the first time he was able to practice how to translate a demotion into an award.
However, he did not name one argument: at that time only a few ministerial personalities in the Hessian Union really knew what to do with the fine arts.
When the CDU ceded two departments to the strengthened coalition partner after the 2018 state elections when the alliance was renewed, it was again Rhein who had to vacate his place.
But the state parliament turned out not to be a siding, but a stepping stone.
Rhein enjoyed the representative duties of the new office.
With his speeches, for example on the racist attack in Hanau, he met with cross-party approval.
Together with the director of the state parliament, he mastered the organizational challenges that entailed not only the pandemic but also the renovation of the parliament building.
But that was only the official compulsory program.
The freestyle was more exciting.
The fifty-year-old, who has spent more than half of his life in party politics, also actively took up his mandate as a directly elected MP.
In an interview with the FAZ, he complained, for example, that the Greens had suddenly and unnecessarily pushed the Union out of the coalition in Frankfurt after 15 years.
Rhein was also one of the firm's internal party critics of the special fund, with which black-green in Hesse sought to deal with the financial consequences of the pandemic.
The fact that the state court rejected the finance minister's authorization to take on debts of twelve billion euros weakened Bouffier's authority, as did the spectacular failure of Laschet, the chancellor candidate, whom he powerfully protected, in the federal elections.
This is how the debate about the future leadership of the CDU and the state took its course.
At that moment, the party knew that Rhein could seize power on his own and, if necessary, against Bouffier's will.