Saalfeld/Erfurt.
Doreen Denstädt is to become the first black woman minister in the East. How does she deal with her own experiences of racism?
the question Doreen Denstadt was: Why had the Thuringian Greens delegated them to the Federal Assembly to elect the Federal President? Her answer: “I probably got noticed again with my big mouth.”
At that time, it was early February 2022, she had been a member of the party for just a few months. There was still half-peace in Europe. Almost a year later, Doreen Denstädt is standing in front of journalists in the small state office of the Greens in Erfurt. War is raging in Ukraine, and Thuringia also has so many refugees recorded like never before. There are almost 40,000 so far, and the number is growing every day.
That’s exactly what Denstädt should take care of from February – as a State Minister for Migration and Justice. She has “the greatest respect” for the task, she says to the cameras. “I think that the most pressing issues are on the table in the area of migration.”
Doreen Denstädt: Racism and insults against designated minister
That’s the way it is. But that’s why the question arises: Why her? Why a 45-year-old woman and mother of two who is currently still employed as a clerk in the state interior ministry. Is it because of how it is said on the internet and at the AfD that she is black?
The designated minister knows them Prejudices and deal with it aggressively. “I really hope that I don’t have an advantage because of the color of my skin,” she says. You will prove yourself on the job.
Still, the debate rages. Some praise Denstädt’s naming as signal of diversity. Others doubt her qualifications, after all she is neither a lawyer nor a migration expert. And on social networks, questions about suitability often enough turn into racism; the police are now investigating the insult.
Those who intervene in the noise court patience. After all, Denstädt is one experienced police chief and studied administration, who knows a ministry from the inside.
Distance became close: Denstädt worked as a police officer
But who is Doreen Denstädt? Born in Saalfeld in 1977, she grew up in the left scene on. Just phenotypically, she says jokingly, she didn’t have much choice. Your attitude towards the police is critical. She keeps her distance, which slowly turns into closeness: she meets officials who don’t immediately classify her, who treat her in a relaxed and respectful manner. She noticed “that there is another way,” she says. And so, after studying civil engineering in Saxony for a while, she becomes a police officer herself.
For the time being, she will be doing her service in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia. She goes where only a few police officers voluntarily go on duty: in the north of the city, in a center of crime and racist violence.
Denstädt experienced racism in private and professional life
She also experiences racism against herself, in both professional and private life. Their strategy, on the other hand, is twofold. On the one hand, she lets a lot of things roll off her, at least that’s what she says herself complaints from the public to edit about their colleagues.
The fact that Denstedt is now being promoted to the government quite spontaneously also has something to do with them special conditions in Thuringia to do. The red-red-green coalition lacks a majority in the state parliament. After the chaos surrounding the short-term FDP Prime Minister Thomas Kemmerich, who was elected in February 2020 with votes from the AfD, a chronically bad-tempered minority government under leftist Bodo Ramelow manages the country.
The new office is a big challenge
This was probably one of the reasons why Green Environment Minister Anja Siegesmund announced her resignation shortly before Christmas when she had the prospect of a position as Executive President of the Federal Association for Waste Management. Your state party then used the opportunity to get rid of your own and rather unloved Minister for Migration and Justice Dirk Adams – and this, although the green staff cover very thin is.
After some internal back and forth, the successor to Adams finally fell on the career changer Denstädt, who has only been part of the party since 2021. There is her new department a big challengeboth professionally and politically: there are constant disputes between the state government and the municipalities about accommodation, about money, about everything.
The pressure on Denstädt is enormous
How will she deal with it? The minister-elect emphasizes her interpersonal skills. She says she has “communicative enough” – and gained sufficient experience as a civil servant in the police and ministerial apparatus.
But it will an experiment for Thuringia, for the Greens – and for the woman who played professional rugby for a long time in Erfurt and is a dog lover. This week she is in the process of getting an overview of the ministry and talking to those responsible in the specialist departments. She doesn’t want to give any more interviews for the time being.
the pressure is enormous. When she is sworn in as minister at the beginning of February, it will only be a year and a half until the regular state elections in Thuringia. Above all, Denstädt’s performance should decide whether the Greens remain in parliament. Most recently, three years ago, the party barely made it over the five percent hurdle.
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