Home office in the heart of the capital: After his coronavirus infection, Chancellor Olaf Scholz steers government affairs out of isolation – and the SPD politician does not spend it at home in Potsdam or in his second home not far from the Hamburg-Altona train station. Instead, these days he is using the often spurned official apartment in the Berlin Federal Chancellery.
Little is known about the chancellor’s apartment, and there are almost no photos of the interior. No wonder, because the apartment had been relatively deserted in recent years. Scholz’s predecessor, Angela Merkel, preferred to commute a few kilometers between her Berlin apartment and her office. Only Gerhard Schröder used the apartment more or less regularly when he was in the capital. “But there is no obligation to move into an official apartment,” wrote the Bundestag’s research service two years ago on the remuneration and benefits for the Federal Chancellor.
Don’t expect too much comfort in the chancellor’s apartment. After renovations, it is just 28 square meters in size, located on the top floor of the Chancellery, facing south.
CDU veteran Wolfgang Bosbach described his impressions of the apartment in 2015. Among other things, it consists of a bedroom “into which a bed fit with difficulty” and a bathroom that was converted into a wardrobe. “The location of the kitchen and bathroom didn’t add to the feel-good factor either. To reach them, you first had to cross two large conference rooms that shared the ‘apartment’ down the middle,” wrote Bosbach.
The apartment can be reached by stairs, which are hidden by a wall of books, from the chancellor’s study, the “Spiegel” noted shortly before Gerhard Schröder moved out. The former chancellor had to pay 500 euros a month in rent – the federal government still bears a large part of the additional costs today. The chancellor does not have to pay for the furnishing of the apartment himself, he is entitled to “appropriate equipment”, according to the scientific service of the Bundestag. Details regulate the “Regulations on the administration and management of the official apartments of the members of the Federal Government” (BRegAmtsWoVwVs).
The chancellor doesn’t have to worry about anything else in his official apartment either: food and drinks are reportedly provided by the chancellery’s kitchen.
When the federal government was still in Bonn, the official chancellor’s residence was much more popular among the heads of government – and also much better known. The Chancellor’s Bungalow near the Federal Chancellery not far from the Rhine was the scene of numerous state receptions and is still considered an icon of 1960s architecture (read more here).
As part of an expansion of the Federal Chancellery, a new, larger apartment for the Chancellor is also to be built in Berlin in the future. For the time being, however, Olaf Scholz seems to be satisfied with the current apartment. It “makes sense because I can do my work well from here,” he told the “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung”.
Sources: Bundestag, “Spiegel”, Wolfgang Bosbach, BRegAmtsWoVwVs, “Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung” (€), DPA news agency
