Dhe entry into the Lower Saxony State Chancellery in the summer of 1990 marked the actual start of Schröder’s network. As Prime Minister, Schröder has more opportunities than before to fill posts and accelerate careers. Many names now appear in the SPD politician’s environment who later move to Berlin with Schröder and become important for German Russia policy. Brigitte Zypries takes over the department for constitutional law in Schröder’s state chancellery. With Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Zypries is also guiding a fellow student from her student days in Giessen to Lower Saxony. In the 1980s, Zypries and Steinmeier worked for the legal journal Democracy and Law, which was monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The publication was published by Pahl-Rugenstein Verlag, which was largely financed by the GDR. In 1990, Steinmeier, like Schröder, was one of the opponents of the rapid unification process. “You fit in with us,” Schröder is said to have said to Steinmeier during the interview.
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There is another confidant of Schröder who moved from Hanover to Berlin in 1998. In contrast to the politicians mentioned, his name does not appear in the relevant Schröder biographies: Heino Wiese. The social democrat, born in 1952, met Schröder in 1982 over the famous currywurst in the Plümecke restaurant. From 1990 to 2003, Wiese held influential positions in Lower Saxony’s social democracy. He is managing director of the SPD district in Hanover and state director of the SPD in Lower Saxony. Wiese now largely controls the party headquarters on Odeonstrasse and manages Schröder’s election campaigns. He is building up a uniquely dense network within the SPD in Lower Saxony. According to Wiese, the focus is on “the Gerhard Schröder team” with Steinmeier and Zypries, which you can imagine as an old football team. Sigmar Gabriel, the current Minister President of Lower Saxony Stephan Weil and the current SPD Federal Chairman Lars Klingbeil also belong to the longtime Wiese confidants.
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What is striking in Schröder’s network is the high number of interrelationships that are financially backed. Within this network one could describe so many different chains. Heino Wiese arranges the entry of the oligarch Alexej Mordaschow into the TUI managed by the social democratic manager Michael Frenzel, which in turn sponsors the arena of the building contractor Günter Papenburg; Papenburg holds shares in the steel company Salzgitter AG, which Schröder once bought as prime minister with state funds from Frenzel’s TUI predecessor Preussag and which later supplies pipes for the company Nord Stream 2, which Schröder supervises, as well as other pipeline projects for the Kremlin, whose honorary consul in Hanover is Heino meadow is. And all of the people named meet from time to time in the common “G 6” box at Hannover 96. If you look at the structural features of the Schröder network, you will notice the extensive absence of women. Schröder’s environment bears male traits. It consists mainly of successful and wealthy gentlemen, who usually have a strong self-confidence. Feelings of shame are less pronounced. Crude groups and contacts to criminal rockers are just as little a barrier to entry as are strong contacts in Iran, China or Russia. You drink together. You help each other.
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