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Gerhard Schröder, Soyeon Schröder-Kim: “They’re just pathetic people”

Photo: Sven Wettengel / NDR

Reporter Gerhard Schröder asks right at the beginning of the film whether he feels isolated. “Not at all,” assures Schröder. Well, there was the rejection by SPD General Secretary Kevin Kühnert, and perhaps by some party officials. But they are not significant. And the parliamentary group that canceled his office in the Bundestag? “They’re just poor people,” says Schröder.

Gerhard Schröder turns 80 on Sunday. He was SPD chairman, Prime Minister of Lower Saxony, and Federal Chancellor from 1998 to 2005. After his political career, Schröder became a lobbyist for Russian state-owned companies. Even after the war of aggression against Ukraine began, he did not break away from his friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In Germany and in large parts of the SPD, he has become a pariah, a non-person. The party's grassroots associations initiated exclusion proceedings against Schröder, which ultimately failed in May 2023.

NDR reporter Lucas Stratmann accompanied the former chancellor for several months. He went with him to the golf course, to the Elbphilharmonie and on a trip to China. This resulted in the film »Out of Service? The Gerhard Schröder story. The documentary shows Schröder's point of view in just under 60 minutes, giving him some space without being submissive.

Stratmann, who delivered a highly acclaimed long-term observation of Kevin Kühnert with Katharina Schiele in 2021, manages to have Schröder expose himself. The social democrat lives in his own world. In a world where he is still on the right course. And all critics who are ghost drivers. Or in his words: “poor people”.

He lived with criticism all his life and was never particularly impressed, says Schröder. "This is my life and not anyone else's." He looks satisfied. And fit.

Every now and then you catch yourself how this Schröder captivates you. He undeniably has a certain charisma, as well as a chutzpah. Schröder never let himself be defeated. Neither from your political opponent nor from your own party. Then again, he leaves you stunned when he claims that there are free elections in Russia. Schröder admits that his prediction that Putin would turn the country into a proper democracy did not come true. But: "There are free elections, you can't deny that," he claims.

The former Chancellor brushes off the fact that Putin mercilessly eliminates any serious opposition as if it were a trivial matter.

Welcome to Schröder's world. The film also brings you closer to this on a trip to China. A business association invited Schröder to the People's Republic for three days. He gives lectures to companies and is awarded an honorary doctorate. He proudly talks about his honorary title: the Chinese greeted him as an “old friend of the Chinese people.”

For him, Kühnert is “a poor wretch”

For Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Schröder only has condescending words. With regard to the Green politician, he speaks of “a terrible aberration, what porcelain is being smashed.” He thinks it is "superfluous" if Baerbock calls Chinese President Xi Jinping a dictator. You could think so, but as German Foreign Minister you don't say something like that publicly, says Schröder. "This also has to do with professionalism, and this is obviously rather underdeveloped in the Foreign Office at the moment."

He makes similarly derogatory comments about Kühnert. For Schröder, the general secretary of his party seems to represent everything that is wrong in this strange parallel world in which he is not considered a hero and an upstanding social democrat. On the SPD website there is the section “Great Social Democrats” in history. Schröder no longer appears there. He suspects Kühnert to be the driving force behind this decision. “He’s a poor wretch,” says Schröder.

The SPD has forgiven him a lot. Successors at the top of the party such as Kurt Beck, Sigmar Gabriel and Andrea Nahles suffered more than he did from the controversial Agenda 2010 and the Hartz IV trauma. But with his stubborn loyalty to Putin despite his brutal war of aggression, Schröder destroyed his legacy. In his own world, none of this matters.

Broadcast dates: ARD media library from Wednesday, April 3rd; The film will be shown on ARD on April 8th at 9 p.m.