The CDU achieved a great result in Schleswig-Holstein. The beaming winner Daniel Günther has a lot ahead of his party leader Friedrich Merz. In Berlin, on the other hand, there is little reason to gossip: Tenants are once again threatened with hardship there.

The CDU has a new hero: Daniel Günther from Kiel.

With a sensational 43.4 percent, he won the state elections in Schleswig-Holstein and can therefore be celebrated as the most successful Prime Minister of the Union of Germany. Even the CSU in Bavaria, which likes to boast about its high election results, cannot keep up with the 43 percent.

Daniel Günther is already being marketed as a future chancellor candidate because he is apparently able to attract votes from all directions. His career is not spectacular. In Eckernförde, where Germany is at the top, the master of political science was active as a councilman. He learned the necessity of economics in an economic development agency, and as state manager of the CDU Schleswig-Holstein he tried out political practice for seven years. With his new federal boss Friedrich Merz, who doesn’t think as left-wing as he does, he will arrange himself pragmatically for mutual success. Both are linked by the Roman Catholic faith. However, the Holsteiner is hierarchically ahead of the Sauerland. He is an elected member of the Central Committee of German Catholics. Even in these shrinking circles, he can attract voters.

Berlin is the poison kitchen for housing troubles. After the recipes for rent caps and expropriations, the limitation of living space is currently up for debate. The project: If you live in an apartment that is said to be too big, you either have to move out or pay an underoccupancy tax.

Instead of building the apartments that have been promised for years, tenancy law could be changed so that tenants can be evicted if they occupy too many square meters.

The mother of the idea is Maren Kern, head of the Association of Berlin-Brandenburg Housing Companies.

It is based on a calculation by the Federal Environment Agency, according to which the living space per capita has increased from 46.1 square meters in 2011 to 47.7 square meters in 2020.

Those who live on bigger feet have to worry. Many social hardships are hidden in the project. Quality of life is endangered. I am thinking of a woman who is used to a larger apartment. After the children have moved out and her husband has died, she wants to stay in her familiar apartment. Instead, she must fear evil. You are threatened with accommodation, termination or the regular payment of an underoccupancy tax.

Many people continue to live in an apartment that is said to be too big after their partner dies. Finding a new home is just as stressful as getting used to a new nest.

Our society should refrain from threatening its citizens with the rental police after the loss of a loved one.

Since following daily reports of Putin’s war against Ukraine, I’ve heard the names of cities and regions that are strangely familiar. I heard them often as a child. When my father came home from captivity, he occasionally talked about the war. As a lieutenant in the reserve, he had been forced to go to the Ukraine. Apparently he spent a long time in the Kharkov area, which he always called Kharkov.

FOCUS founding editor-in-chief Helmut Markwort has been a FDP member of the Bavarian state parliament since 2018.