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Summer staycation: Where Germany’s politicians are spending their holidays

From Chancellor Angela Merkel to Bavarian state premier Markus Söder, Germany's politicians are drawn towards Deutschland's domestic destinations this summer. Here's where they're headed.

Published: 9 July 2020 16:52 CEST
Summer staycation: Where Germany's politicians are spending their holidays
Green party politician Katrin Göring-Eckard is planning on sailing in the Baltic Sea on her holiday. Photo: DPA

After months of coronavirus crisis management, Germany’s Bundestag and Bundesrat have taken their parliamentary summer break. 

For many politicians, this means a chance to head on holiday before the last quarter of the legislative period begins. 

But in times of pandemic travel warnings and border closures, the choice of potential holiday destinations is limited, even for politicians. Yet that has not stopped them from setting their sights on some of Germany’s best travel destinations.

READ ALSO: How to travel the world while staying in Germany

Due to the virus, Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democrats, or CDU) is planning on spending her summer holiday domestically this year. When asked on ZDF Television in June where she would go exactly, the Chancellor simply said “Germany” without giving a more concrete answer.

In the past years, Merkel was often drawn to the mountains of South Tyrol in northern Italy. But the Chancellor will have to wait a little longer for her Alpine fix.

Next week, the EU special summit on the EU coronavirus reconstruction awaits. That means Merkel is still on duty on her 66th birthday on the first day of the summit on July 17th. 

Home, sweet home

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer of CDU sister party CSU is planning a staycation – and not just because of the coronavirus. 

“I have not been going on holiday for 25 years, as I would rather stay at home in my Heimat, especially in the Altmühl valley,” in Bavaria said Seehofer. “Once you get to know it, you’ll never want to go elsewhere.” 

Germany's Altmühl valley, situated along the river, is a popular hiking destination. Photo: DPA

The Ingolstadt resident has a holiday home in the nature park known for its spectacular low mountain range.

CDU Secretary General Paul Ziemiak has similar ties to his homeland. He says he is lucky to live “where many Germans go on vacation.” Ziemiak and his family will spend a large portion of their days off from work and school in Sauerland, as he told DPA.

A staycation is also in the cards for Environment Minister Svenja Schulze of the Social Democrats (SPD). “Actually, my husband and I wanted to go on holiday in France this year,” she told DPA. “Now we are staying in Germany and are at home in Münster most of the time.”

Bavaria's state premiere and CSU leader Markus Söder is spending his holidays at home, but is looking forward to a mudflat hike during an official visit to northern Schleswig-Holstein in August. 

For CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, “relaxed, sunny days” with family, friends and bicycle tours are on the agenda, she told DPA.

Wherever they get a chance, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Büdenbender like to relax in the mountains. That’s where they are headed this summer too, though the President's Office stayed silent about the exact destination. 

In the past, Steinmeier and Büdenbender crossed the Brenner Pass and hiked in South Tyrol.

Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) also wants to hike with his wife. According to his ministry, he is also looking forward to a few days to read, sleep in, jog, and ride his bike. 

The ministry did not want to reveal whether the Vice Chancellor, who lives in Potsdam, and his wife, Brandenburg's SPD Education Minister Britta Ernst, will stay in their home turf or relax somewhere else.

According to a spokesperson, Green Party leaders Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck will  use the holidays to spend more time with their families. But Greens faction leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt has set her sights on sailing in the Baltic Sea.

READ ALSO: North Sea or Baltic Sea? How to decide between Germany's two coasts

Lake Ratzeburg in the northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein. Photo: DPA

Highly political

For Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD), the decision on where to go on holiday is highly political. His ministry is responsible for travel warnings and travel advice for foreign countries, which change rapidly in coronavirus times. So personal holiday planning can quickly be seen as a political signal. 

That’s why Maas has so far blocked all questions about his holiday destination, not even revealing if he’s staying in Germany or going abroad.

“I don't give any travel recommendations either. Because if I did, it would cause a lot of trouble with about 25 other Member States of the European Union,” he once said at a press conference with his Italian colleague Luigi di Maio.

According to her ministry, Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht (SPD) is taking very little time off over the summer because of the coronavirus crisis and the German EU Council Presidency. 

“If work permits, she will go to the Dolomites for a few days to recharge her batteries and go hiking”, a spokesperson said.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) Chairman Jörg Meuthen does not yet know how he will spend his holiday: “Everything is still open with me because Covid-19 has reopened all the original plans”.

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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