By Uwe-Peter Steinschek
Every Monday BZ editors say what really bothers them. Today Uwe-Peter Steinchek, who misses role models.
I think role models are a good thing. Above all, personalities who are in the public eye can and should be role models in their function and convey values such as decency, honesty and honesty to people. But I’m starting to get the impression that we’re running out of role models at this level.
The most recent case: the scandal surrounding RBB director Patricia Schlesinger and her more than dubious financial conduct. Then there are the allegations against the Green Mayor of Mitte, Stephan von Dassel, who is said to have intervened inadmissibly in filling a vacancy.
Before that, the affair surrounding the governing mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD), whose doctoral thesis contained numerous plagiarisms, so that her academic title was finally revoked.
These people are more or less the focus, they could convey values. In the eyes of many citizens, however, they missed this opportunity: just like the bank bosses, who cheated the state out of billions with cum-ex deals.
They preach water and drink wine, so the angry view of many who seek in vain for role models. They are convinced that the value system up there is crumbling. Bad and basically extremely dangerous, because extremists from the right and left are just waiting to fill the gaps that have arisen with their radical value putty.
Fortunately, we can still make ends meet with role models from below. I think of nurses who do a hard job serving the elderly and sick, I think of the firefighters who worked until they were exhausted during forest fires, and I think of the anglers who voluntarily hauled tons of dead fish from the Oder have fetched.
Yes, these are role models! They receive no lavish salaries, no severance pay, and no bonuses are written into their employment contracts. And they still make sure that the shop runs. Those up there could take an example from those down there.