The fact that the best-known politician of a governing party does not sit on the government bench herself but in parliament is more the exception than the rule.

This is especially true for the Free Democrats, whose proportion of women in the leadership ranks is so low that even they themselves see it as a deficit.

The defense politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann has found a role as chairwoman of the Defense Committee of the Bundestag, which gives her a lot of attention not only in this field of politics, but on the entire Berlin political stage.

Johannes Leithauser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Attention peaked last weekend.

The reason for this was an open confrontation that she fought with the SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich via Twitter: He assumed that Strack-Zimmermann's urging that Germany had to deliver Leopard tanks to Ukraine would soon lead to calls for the delivery of aircraft and follow the deployment of soldiers.

The FDP politician and others "talk us into a military conflict," said Mützenich.

She replied that Mützenich was "the symbol of all the central failures of German foreign policy";

his "views of yesterday lead to the problems of tomorrow".

Many years of experience in local politics

The coalition's internal battle of opinions about external weapons aid might have been interpreted by other participants as a serious crisis in the traffic light government.

The fact that this reflex did not work in the current case was generally due to the fact that here, instead of members of the government, parliamentarians were arguing with each other.

In particular, however, Strack-Zimmermann's personality played a role.

The Dusseldorf-born member of the Bundestag does not have her original profession in defense policy, but she has not only been dealing with it since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Strack-Zimmermann once studied political science and German in Munich, worked independently in publishing, is a mother of three children, joined the FDP in 1990 in her early thirties, was a full-time local politician from 2008 and drives a 1200 BMW.

For many years she was at home in local politics, especially in the fields of health and social affairs.

Then, after the failure of the Free Democrats in the federal elections of 2013, Strack-Zimmermann belonged to the circle around the new party chairman Christian Lindner, who in the "extra-parliamentary opposition", as the political diaspora is often called in party circles, initiated the complete renewal of the operated by the FDP.

She became deputy party leader and took over the leadership of the Düsseldorf district association.

In 2017 she was elected to the Bundestag;

in their constituency, the Free Democrats won nearly 20 percent of the vote.

She experienced the negotiations with the Union and the Greens about a Jamaica alliance, which then failed due to the veto of the FDP chairman Lindner, as part of her party's top team.

comrades-in-arms in other factions

It came as a surprise that she was also assigned defense policy in the subsequent division of responsibilities in the opposition faction FDP.

Strack-Zimmermann took on the new job with great interest – but also retained responsibility for local political issues.

In the Defense Committee, she distinguished herself as a knowledgeable critic and inspector of Ministers von der Leyen and Kramp-Karrenbauer;

she succeeded a predecessor who had played a brilliant role in the same function until 2013, the FDP member of the Bundestag Elke Hoff, who also came from North Rhine-Westphalia.

Years before her vehement commitment to Ukrainian armament aid, Strack-Zimmermann increased recognition in her party by giving up her position as deputy party leader in favor of European politician Nicola Beer in 2019, who at the time was of the opinion that her top candidate for the European elections should also have a prominent role in her conform to party leadership.

Strack-Zimmermann ran for the mayoral election in Düsseldorf in 2020 and achieved 12.5 percent there, but remained in the Bundestag and in her function as spokeswoman for defense policy.

The fact that she remained without a government function during the formation of the government of the traffic light alliance with the SPD and the Greens did not make her bitter;

Instead of accepting the position of Parliamentary State Secretary, she preferred to chair the Defense Committee.

From the start, Strack-Zimmermann followed the impulse to support the Ukraine militarily as intensively as possible; she saw this as an aid in a struggle for freedom.

She soon had supporters from other factions, namely the Greens Anton Hofreiter and the Social Democrat Michael Roth, and this soon developed into a confrontation with the hesitant government departments, especially the Ministry of Defense and the Chancellery.

Since then, Strack-Zimmermann has not contested the fact that these conflicts could be assessed as “coalition troubles” according to the usual party-political standards.

Firstly, it is about fundamentals, and secondly, she can be sure that her own party feels the same way.