Some apple juice spills on the table.

One of the thick carpets suffers.

In the venerable cabinet room of the Hessian state parliament, things are unusually lively this morning.

Parliament President Astrid Wallmann (CDU) invited women and children from Ukraine to talk to them personally about the everyday life of the refugees and to show solidarity.

Ewald Hetrodt

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung in Wiesbaden.

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Most of the guests come from Bucha, Odessa and Kharkiv.

"These cities have made terrible headlines," the politician notes.

"They make us sad and stunned." The mother of two is told that there is still a long way to go in Wiesbaden for all Ukrainian boys and girls in kindergarten or school.

She asks the volunteer companions to send her a list of names “The children need structures.

Nobody knows how long the war will last."

"Carefree moments".

At the end of the conversation, the guests receive tickets for the "Taunus Wonderland".

The aim is to give them “carefree moments”, explains the CDU woman with a smile.

It is reciprocated when the interpreter's translation reaches the guests.

Wallmann takes the stack of 35 tickets from her employee and distributes them herself. It is gestures like this that have earned her the reputation of a friendly politician.

Wallmann is a president with a heart.

But that was just one of the reasons why today's Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) proposed the bank clerk as his successor in the post of Speaker of Parliament at the end of May.

The constellation also spoke for the Wiesbaden MP, who has regularly picked her constituency directly since 2009 and has been deputy parliamentary group leader since 2014.

Rhein had announced that the CDU would present itself as "younger, more female and more colourful" under his leadership.

Wallmann is the embodiment of this promise.

She is the first woman in the history of Hesse to head the parliament and, at 42, is also the youngest personality to hold the office.

The politician answered the question about the role of women in politics rather briefly.

She sees her election as President of the State Parliament as a "sign of modernity".

These included “women in management positions”.

Wallmann believes that the quota, which is currently the subject of lively discussion in the CDU, is only the second-best solution.

From the FDP to the CDU

In the end, she won't really help women.

But so far, none of the instruments chosen have led to the desired result.

Wallmann emphasizes that this applies to the country as a whole, but not to Wiesbaden.

Because the party has managed to get several women into top positions there for decades.

Even the prominent name did no harm in the election for the President of Parliament.

Rhein admired Walter Wallmann, the former mayor of Frankfurt, Prime Minister of Hesse and Federal Minister for the Environment.

He was the uncle of the new President of the Landtag.

Her father also made a career in politics.

One of his outstanding positions was the office of Wiesbaden mayor.

The daughter says that she was warmly welcomed in the CDU with her name.

But there was also life before politics.

At that time, many a contemporary put them in a drawer right from the start.

Teachers in particular would occasionally like to “give her their opinion”.

Your career has relatively little to do with your family, says Wallmann.

"The first thing I looked at was the Young Liberals." Eventually she ended up with the youngsters of the CDU because she felt that she was in better hands there and found her again.

Wallmann likes to strike warm tones in personal conversations.

But she also got to know the less pleasant sides of her job.

In Wiesbaden's local politics, she experienced first-hand the tremors that were triggered by the liberation of her party from the long-term dominance of the former parliamentary group leader Bernhard Lorenz.

dark side of politics

In the corona pandemic, Wallmann met quite a few people who had turned away from society.

She sees this experience, the declining voter turnout and the waning interest in politics as a duty to keep explaining the connections to the citizens.

She wants to increase the number of visitors to the state parliament as quickly as possible after the slump caused by Corona.

From her own experience as a member of parliament, she also complains that since the state elections in 2018 there have been not only 110, as planned, but 137 members of parliament.

But a change in the electoral law would be hasty from Wallmann's point of view.

Instead, she is counting on the situation normalizing when the elections in the autumn of next year result in significantly fewer overhang and equalization mandates.

Until then, she is grateful every day for her new, honorable task, says the Union politician.

Disputes in the plenary session sometimes lead to interruptions in the session.

But when the committee of elders meets, the excitement usually subsides quickly.

The President sees her impartiality not only as an obligation, but also as a challenge.

The state parliament is also “a parliament of togetherness”.

Another soft, presidential tone.

"I am very happy in this office," says Wallmann - and beams.