The ABC to Bayern election

In the refugee debate, Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) used the term repeatedly, referring to people who want to apply for asylum first in another EU country and then in Germany. Söder was criticized for cross-party ( => brutalization ). A little later, Söder rowed back. "For me personally, I will not use the word asylum tourism again if it hurts someone."

Söder is planning a Bavarian space program. "We're launching Bavaria One", the head of government tweeted: "With our space program, we are developing solutions for people's problems in medicine or ecology from space." Cost: about 700 million euros. There is a Bavarian satellite and the largest space faculty in Europe at the TU Munich.

Future means technology. Bavaria is the market leader: we invest in digitization, robotics, artificial intelligence, hyperloop and space travel and even develop quantum computers. pic.twitter.com/v3GpSi7YP5

A little later, the Bavarian Prime Minister tweeted a photo of himself at the lectern; Behind him on stage is a logo of "Bavaria One" with Söder's oversized likeness - an election campaign idea of ​​the Junge Union ( => Yoda ). Critics reacted with scorn - wrongly, says a scientist who co-developed the "Bavaria One" concept.

Questions of faith and cultural identity play a major role in the election campaign. A decision of the Bavarian Cabinet provides that in every Bavarian authority a cross should hang ( => cross ). Ludwig Hartmann, top candidate of the Greens, criticized Söders crucifixion: "The cross belongs to the faithful, it does not belong to the state." The oath of office as prime minister he would take without the formula of God, so Hartmann on demand ( => broadcasting ).

"Game of Thrones" is the favorite series of the Green-top candidate Katharina Schulze. At carnival, she disguised herself as Daenerys Targaryen, the dragon mother of the cult series. Daenerys is an idealist who frees slaves, but at the same time a strategist who wants to conquer a kingdom. This fits well with their intention to break the absolute majority of the CSU, says Schulze.

Andreas Gebert

Katharina Schulze

Since 1957, the CSU in Bavaria, the Prime Minister, most of the time, without being dependent on a coalition partner. From 2008 to 2013, the Christian Socialists formed a government with the FDP before regaining the absolute majority.

Since September, Bavaria has been paying parents of children in the second and third years of age 250 euros per month and child, from the third child onwards it is 300 euros. A consequence of the family money introduction is a dispute with the Federal Government about the crediting of Hartz IV payments.

In 2013, Bayerische Landesbank sold about 33,000 semi-public apartments to private investors for a good 2.5 billion euros. As then Minister of Finance Markus Söder was one of those responsible. Tenants complained in the episode about rent increases. The state legislature set up a committee of inquiry with the voices of the opposition, but the opposition Söder could not prove a violation of the law. In the election campaign, the sale of the GBW apartments remains subject. The apartments could and should remain in public hands, so the accusation of the SPD to the government. A takeover by the Free State would have stood in the way of EU state aid law, argues the CSU.

It is not uncommon for federal debates to have an impact on state elections. The way the Berlin government constellation radiates on Bavaria is very good. CSU boss Horst Seehofer is a minister of the interior and a member of a federal government that has been on the verge of breaking up twice in recent months.

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Horst Seehofer, Markus Söder

Seehofer was one of the main characters both in the Union dispute and in the Maures cause. The approach of the CSU chief sometimes meets his party friends in Bavaria unprepared: "The Horst has surprised us all yesterday," Söder said in early July. Seehofer had offered his resignation from the office of the Federal Minister of the Interior and as CSU chief the night before - to announce then once again allaller a last attempt of the agreement with Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Now, shortly before the election, Seehofer and Söder are already blaming themselves for the possible defeat. While the Prime Minister criticizes the Grand Coalition in Berlin, the CSU leader states on record that he has nothing to do with the Bavarian election campaign, since Söder is responsible.

The AfD provides with a poster in the election campaign for outrage. On it are good-humored teenagers who jump over a school corridor. Under the photo is "Islam-free schools", about "German Leitkultur". "Such a poster fires certain moods that do not stop at the school door, and that is dangerous," criticized Simone Fleischmann, President of the Bavarian Teachers' Association (BLLV). "Children do not border on others."

When working on a scandal in the Bremen branch of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, a Bavarian official played a central role: Josefa Schmid, graduate in administration and honorary mayor of Kollnburg in the Bavarian Forest.

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Josefa Schmid

Schmid used to be in the CSU. After a political dispute, she joined the FDP and now runs as a liberal for the state legislature.

At the initiative of Söder, the Bavarian Cabinet decided in April that a cross should be placed in all government buildings in the entrance area. The move was criticized by church officials as an instrumentalization of the cross for election purposes ( => Christianity ).

In polls, the Greens are clearly ahead of the SPD. The Bayerischer Rundfunk therefore decided that would compete in the traditional TV duel Grünen top candidate Hartmann against Söder instead of SPD top candidate Natascha Kohnen ( => broadcasting ).

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Natasha Kohnen

Kohnen called the decision of the BR "absurd". Instead of a TV duel, there was then Söder versus Kohnenim Internet: The "Nürnberger Nachrichten" transmitted via livestream the 90-minute duel.

Bavaria is a "model country and a blueprint for others," Söder said in his recent government statement. For all indicators, the federal state is ahead: in education, in economic growth, in internal security ( => dream home ).

Nuremberg is the hometown of Markus Söder - and is traditionally regarded as a stronghold of the Social Democrats in Bavaria. In the general election last September, however, both CSU and SPD recorded significant losses.

In the election campaign 2017 Seehofer had demanded a ceiling for refugees. The figure should not exceed 200,000 refugees per year. The coalition agreement between the CDU, CSU and SPD now states that immigration figures "will not exceed the range of 180,000 to 220,000 annually". The term upper limit is not used in the paper.

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Horst Seehofer (left), Markus Söder, Ilse Aigner

The CSU government has extended the powers of the Bavarian police with a controversial amendment. Unlike in the past, police are no longer allowed to intervene when investigators have concrete evidence of a planned crime. Instead, an "imminent danger" is now generally sufficient. FDP, Left and Greens are suing the Federal Constitutional Court together against the law.

The man is a "headstrong cross-head", he thinks that likeable, said former Mayor Christian Ude (SPD) formerly about Hubert Aiwanger. The 47-year-old farmer Aiwanger is the chairman and central figure of the Free Voters.

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Hubert Aiwanger

Aiwanger recently described the Free Voters as "the last sensible conservatives" - and hopes for a coalition with the post-election CSU.

In the traditional BR television duel, the top candidate of the CSU met for the first time this year on a green ( => livestream ). When asked if he would be a coalition with the CSU, the Green Hartmann said: "We have very different policies." But you are "ready to talk".

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Markus Söder (center) and Ludwig Hartmann (right)

Söder described in the TV duel the program of the Greens as a "classic stuffy green program": with well-known enemy images and templates. But Söder did not want to rule out a coalition.

Polls see the CSU far from an absolute majority. Prime Minister Söder still sees his party as the "Penthouse of German Democracy". There is no party in Germany, which would have such poll ratings as the CSU, Söder said recently on Deutschlandfunk.

Munich's CSU politician Stephan Bloch launched the "Union of the Middle" in July. The initiative turns against the course and the wording of the CSU leadership in the refugee debate ( => brutalization ). The CSU opposed the initiative: The "Union of the Middle" was a gross violation of the party's statutes, it said in a letter to Bloch. New associations within the CSU are allowed only with the consent of the board.

The CSU leadership has been repeatedly criticized in recent months for its rhetoric in the refugee debate. "Words such as asylum tourism come from the repertoire of the political Gossensprache," said FDP leader Christian Lindner. He did not want "that our democracy is as brutal and blighted as the American one under Donald Trump". Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) called for more "discipline in the language" ( => asylum tourism ).

For Markus Söder, the over-father was hanging over the bed. Three years ago, the Bavarian prime minister posted a photo of himself at a young age on Facebook: Söder stands in his room and points to a poster by

on the wall. , "That was the poster over my bed in adolescence," Söder wrote. "What was wrong with you?"

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Franz Josef Strauss

Strauss had once stated: "Right of the CSU there must be no democratically legitimized party." Right of his party was "only the wall". In the election on Sunday, probably the AfD between the CSU and the wall press.

How many Bavarians will make their cross on Sunday? In 2013, the turnout in Bavaria was 63.6 percent. Compared with the elections in 2003 (57.1 percent) and 2008 (57.9 percent) an increase; In the long term, however, voter turnout declined: in the 1990s, it had still been consistently between 65 and 70 percent.

Y like Yoda

Are the space plans ( => "Bavaria One" ) of the Bavarian head of government possibly an expression of a deeper longing? Söder is a confessed "Star Wars" fan. He has a "basement full of lightsabers, because I always get one," Söder told the "Donaukurier".

How endeavored Markus Söder is to go as far as possible to the disputes in the Federal Government, showed up not least in the TV duel. One can see in Berlin, what happens when coalitions are welded together, which do not belong together, so Söder. "The daily Sichzerfleischen, I do not want that in Bavaria." The Green Hartmann countered: "It's your party chairman, who makes for chaos" ( => Horst ).