The mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer, wants to take a break after his controversial statements in Frankfurt am Main. He announced this on Monday in a personal statement that is available to the dpa. Südwestrundfunk (SWR) had previously reported on it. “One thing is clear to me: It can’t go on like this,” the statement said. “I can no longer put up with the recurring storms of outrage from my family, my friends and supporters, the employees in the city administration, the municipal council and the city society as a whole.”
Palmer wrote in his personal statement: “When I feel unfairly attacked and react spontaneously, I fight back in a way that only makes things worse.” As a politician and mayor, Palmer writes, he should never have spoken like that. He can only try to change himself. “I will therefore seek professional help and try to work through my part in these increasingly destructive entanglements.” He will therefore avoid all confrontations with obvious escalation potential through abstinence.
Palmer caused a stir on Friday with a verbal argument with a group in front of a migration conference in Frankfurt am Main. In front of a building at Goethe University, he had taken a stand on the way in which he used the so-called n-word and had repeatedly used and defended the word, which was considered racist and highly discriminatory (a previously common term for black people).
In a recording of this that was circulated on the Internet, a black man in the crowd asked him if he wanted to say that to his face. Palmer then repeats the N-word by repeating a sentence that has already started. When confronted with shouts of “Nazis out,” Palmer said to the crowd, “It’s nothing but the Star of David. It’s because I used a word that you guys frame everything else by. If you say the wrong word , you’re a Nazi. Think about it.”
During the conference afterwards, too, he said the N-word several times and insisted on his point of view that it depends on the context of use whether the word is racist, as a video also circulating on the internet shows.
Palmer had been heavily criticized for his statements in Frankfurt am Main. There was a lack of understanding not only among those involved in the city, but also in Baden-Württemberg. Lawyer Rezzo Schlauch turned his back on Palmer, the Tübingen Greens city association distanced itself, and the group “Vert Realos” – an association of so-called real politicians in the Greens – wants to continue working without Palmer in the future.
