At first nothing indicates an exciting evening: The Giessen University Medicine and the privatized Uni-Klinikum Giessen and Marburg (UKGM) have invited to their New Year's reception.

Among the guests of honor is Science Minister Angela Dorn (Die Grünen).

The former Prime Minister of Hesse, Volker Bouffier (CDU), is also among the guests.

Dorn will later dutifully call him “my prime minister at the time”.

Tobias Kaltenbach, the new head of UKGM's majority shareholder Rhön-Klinikum AG, said that at the end of a long marathon of negotiations with the minority shareholder Land, an agreement on the new future contract was on the horizon.

Thorsten Winter

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for central Hesse and the Wetterau.

  • Follow I follow

It is about 800 million euros in investment funds for the clinic, which is suffering from a blatant lack of money, and the state is supposed to pay the bulk.

The investment backlog amounts to a three-digit million amount - about the same amount that was missing before the privatization in 2006.

The basic agreement now has to be “carried to the summit with delicate hands”.

UKGM boss Gunther Weiß then praises Kaltenbach.

It is good to have such a CEO at the parent company and head of the supervisory board in-house.

"Frankfurt sacrosanct, Marburg renovated, Giessen stupid"

In short: The New Year's reception is like some other event of this kind - with speeches according to the motto "Good luck to all and no woe to anyone".

But then Werner Seeger steps up to the microphone.

The magenta tie shines on the white shirt that the lung specialist and medical director wears with the dark suit.

His words soon develop radiance too.

He announces that he will go a little deeper into the past than the previous speakers.

It goes back to the time before privatization.

And proves to be a friend of clear speech.

The previously merged clinic was transferred to a special facility almost 18 years ago.

In previous years, the Giessen University Clinic, which was still independent at the time, had hardly received any public investment funds.

The counterpart in Frankfurt was "sacrosanct", the Marburg house was freshly renovated - and "pouring stupid".

As a result, state politics came to the conclusion: "Giessen must be closed" - especially since there was talk of the doctors' glut.

Something that no one would think of today.

Supporting the privatization brought into play by the government under Roland Koch was "not done for fun and money".

Rather, the Gießeners would have remembered the motto of the Bremen Town Musicians: "We will always find something better than death" - that is the slightly modified version.

In the course of privatization, however, a fundamental rule of hospital financing in Germany was abandoned at the expense of Gießen and Marburg: namely that the public sector has to pay for investments in construction projects and medical technology.

Now both locations in Central Hesse have also received investment allowances from the state in recent years.

However, only 4.1 million euros each and unchanged since 2006.

The Frankfurt University Hospital, on the other hand, received a good 105 million euros last year alone, Seeger calculated in a free speech.

Of the 105 million euros, 48 ​​million euros are compensation for special charges from the corona pandemic.

The UKGM got nothing.

Gießen has treated more and above all more severe corona cases than Frankfurt, says Seeger repeatedly.

This chasm pisses him off.

The same applies to a quote from the ranks of the black-green state parliament coalition circulated by the FAZ.

There it is sometimes said that the UKGM has not been a real university hospital in the country since privatization.

Giessen University President Joybrato Mukherjee had already picked up this sentence at the beginning of the reception and said: "This is a real university hospital, this is our university hospital." Seeger goes one better and says with a view to the derogatory statement from Wiesbaden : "This is the pinnacle of provincial narrow-mindedness." In the United States, many top medical facilities have been privatized - and yet they are not dependent on public funding, he says.

After his speech, he received remarkably lively and sustained applause.

Minister Dorn thanks the UKGM

Dorn then says that the New Year's reception in Gießen is always "constructive, open and challenging".

And after an artistic break: "And Professor Seeger especially." She emphasizes the achievements of the UKGM in the fight against the pandemic.

The medical and nursing staff have done "inhuman", she praises.

Dorn also takes up the issue of financing.

However, it draws attention to the case flat rates.

With a view to the reform plans of Federal Minister Karl Lauterbach (SPD), she hopes that the university clinics will be better considered in the case flat rates in the future.