A Tutorial for Merz: How to Fire Katharina Reiche

A satirical guide in ten steps for a chancellor who can’t.

BILD needed three years and 70 “Heating Hammer” headlines¹ to take down Habeck. For Reiche, Springer hasn’t lifted a finger. So here I am. With facts, footnotes, and a Spotify playlist for the farewell ceremony. And before Merz complains that young people don’t work: I’m sitting here on a Wednesday evening with a glass of wine, doing his job. Unpaid. Kubicki would be three bottles deep by now.

1. Disclaimer: Occupational Hazard

Before we begin, a word on the tone.

Robert Habeck was systematically dismantled by BILD over three years. 101 out of 147 articles negative. Almost 70 uses of “Heating Hammer”¹. “Children’s book author,” “Christmas Grinch,” “Energy Stasi.” A Kobuk study from the Vienna University of Applied Sciences documented: 0.7 percent positive coverage². Point seven. Björn Höcke, legally classified as a fascist, got 17 percent. Springer typed so much about Habeck you’d worry about the “journalists’” carpal tunnels.

And Katharina Reiche?

Silence. Relative, conspicuous, documentable silence. The GovRadar affair? Primarily Spiegel and Tagesspiegel. The secret summit in Tyrol with her partner? FragDenStaat. The email searches in her own ministry? Spiegel again. No BILD campaign slogans, no personalized barrage, no “Lobby Hammer,” no “Gas Grinch.” Döpfner wrote to his editor-in-chief in 2021: “Please boost the FDP”³. The taz noted: Merz’s political agenda is “nearly identical to the positions of the Axel Springer publishing house.” If you say A, you stay silent on B.

So now I’m doing BILD’s dirty work. Someone has to. The Springer lackeys certainly won’t risk carpal tunnel syndrome for a CDU minister.

And before anyone yells “Sexism!”: This is not an attack on a woman. This is an attack on a minister. Katharina Reiche has a right to be criticized — that’s called occupational hazard. Robert Habeck was treated more harshly than any CDU minister in the history of the Federal Republic, and nobody offered him victim status. Anyone who wants to shield Reiche from criticism because she’s a woman is practicing actual sexism. Equal treatment means: equal sharpness. Habeck got it. Reiche gets it now. Besides, I know enough strong women who, at any sign of excessive sexism, would kick me so precisely in the soft parts that my voice would be three octaves higher for the rest of this essay. Rightly so.

Everything that follows is protected by artistic freedom. But just to be safe: I did the research anyway.

2. The Human Gas Boiler

On the morning of May 6, 2025, Katharina Reiche was registered in the German Bundestag’s lobby register. Registration number R001813⁴. Function: CEO of Westenergie AG, an E.ON subsidiary, over 10,000 employees, 37,000 kilometers of gas pipeline, 23 areas of registered interest. By noon, the entry was deleted. By afternoon, she was Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Lobbyist in the morning, minister by lunch. The revolving door doesn’t even squeak anymore — it has no hinges.

You have to appreciate this in its full beauty. On February 4, 2015, three things happened simultaneously: In the morning, the federal cabinet approved the draft law for cooling-off periods for officials moving to the private sector — the very safeguards designed to prevent politicians from seamlessly joining the lobby. In the afternoon, the VKU board elected Reiche as their new CEO. On the same day, Reiche asked Chancellor Merkel to relieve her of her position as Parliamentary State Secretary. LobbyControl commented: “Reiche would thus exploit the last window for a switch without a cooling-off period”⁵. The law took effect on July 25. Reiche had been gone for six months. Timing is everything.

Ten years later, the return trip. From E.ON subsidiary CEO to Energy Minister. LobbyControl warned on April 28, 2025, eight days before the swearing-in: “With Ms. Reiche, an energy executive is being made Energy Minister”⁶. They might as well have warned that water is wet.

What did Reiche do first? Replaced eight out of ten department heads. Internally called “tabula rasa.” Particularly heartwarming: Stephanie von Ahlefeldt, who under CDU Minister Altmaier as head of the electricity department had slowed the energy transition — 1,000-meter minimum distances for wind turbines, you may recall — returned as department head. A Green MP called her “Dark Voldemort of the energy transition”⁷. Voldemort at least had the decency to hide behind a false name.

And then the BDEW Congress on June 4, 2025. STATION-Berlin. 1,700 industry representatives. In the audience: Leonhard Birnbaum, CEO of E.ON — her former boss. Reiche opened: “Maybe I should say: Dear former colleagues. But then LobbyControl will scream again.” And: “I have deep ties to this industry”⁸.

The beautiful thing about Katharina Reiche is: you don’t have to make anything up. You just have to quote her.

BDEW President Dohler praised her ability to “rattle off the topics that concern the energy industry.” The taz commented: “Reiche made expressly no effort at distance”⁸. Why would she. Distance requires having left. The question of who’s regulating whom — the minister regulating the industry or the industry regulating the minister — answers itself when the minister still calls her old colleagues “colleagues.”

Additionally: Table.Briefings documented partially verbatim passages between Reiche’s ten-point plan and the E.ON/RWE position paper “Market-oriented and pragmatic: The energy transition needs a restart”⁹. Handelsblatt revealed that the ministry had solicited a strategy paper on power plant policy from RWE — no comparable paper was requested from other associations. The underlying EWI monitoring report was, according to Greenpeace, altered at 28 points. Karsten Smid (Greenpeace): “A commissioned opinion dressed up as science”¹⁰.

Reiche, whose entire career from E.ON to VKU to the federal ministry traces a single gas pipeline — the human gas boiler of Germany’s energy lobby. And someone needs to turn off the tap.

3. What Katharina Reiche Builds: Gas Power Plants

Katharina Reiche builds exactly one thing. Gas power plants. To understand what climate policy in reverse looks like, just read her ten-point plan.

First government declaration: “Energy security first!” Immediately after: “At least 20 GW of gas power plants.” The EU rejected it. So 12 GW as initial tender. Then the announcement: 20–25 GW from 2027. All “H₂-ready” — theoretically convertible to hydrogen by 2045. In practice: gas power plants that will burn gas for 20 years. “H₂-ready” is the “I’ll start going to the gym on Monday” of energy policy.

Simultaneously: The Hydrogen Acceleration Act, which doesn’t deserve the name. Faster permits, sounds good. And the funding? Cut from a planned €24.5 billion to under €7 billion¹¹. A €17.5 billion gap. Plus: blue hydrogen — natural gas with the PR label “hydrogen” — receives the same status as green. The woman who, as chair of the National Hydrogen Council, promised a green hydrogen ramp-up now declares it a failure as minister. This isn’t an energy transition. It’s an energy U-turn.

Where does the gas come from? 96 percent of German LNG comes from the USA. And when that wasn’t enough, SEFE — state-owned, formerly Gazprom Germania — signed a ten-year contract with SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s state oil company, in June 2025¹². Azerbaijan: Freedom House Index 7 out of 100¹³. For comparison: Russia scores 19. Germany has officially replaced one dictatorship with a worse one. Ilham Aliyev has ruled since 2003, his wife is vice president, 331 political prisoners, Reporters Without Borders rank 167 of 180, and in September 2023 he expelled over 100,000 ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh — the European Parliament called it “ethnic cleansing”¹⁴. But Azerbaijan has gas. And the CDU has experience with Azerbaijan: caviar diplomacy, three convicted MPs (Lintner, Strenz, Fischer), $2.9 billion in corruption via Danske Bank. Axel Fischer was convicted in January 2026 as the first-ever member of the Bundestag under § 108e StGB (bribery of elected officials)¹⁵. And now the same party is buying gas there.

Oh, and Baden-Württemberg. In February 2026, Reiche leaked a 400-page draft reform of the Renewable Energy Act that would abolish solar subsidies for rooftop installations. In a state with one million photovoltaic systems. The CDU was 14 points ahead. On March 8, the Greens won 30.2 to 29.7 percent¹⁶. At the Greens’ election party: “You couldn’t have wished for a better campaign helper than Katharina Reiche.” In 2011, a nuclear lifetime extension co-authored by Reiche already cost the CDU Baden-Württemberg once. Jürgen Trittin called it the “fossil Fukushima”¹⁷. You could call it a pattern, but that would be unfair to coincidence.

4. Price Increases Only Once a Day

And then came fuel prices.

On February 28, 2026, the Iran war began. The Strait of Hormuz — 20 percent of global oil supply — was effectively closed. Brent crude rose from $72 to $128. At the pump: diesel climbed to €2.447 per liter, an all-time high, 12.2 cents above the Ukraine war record of 2022.

Katharina Reiche’s answer: the “Austrian Model.” Gas stations may only raise prices once daily at noon. Sounds reasonable. The problem: Austria combined the rule with a fuel tax cut and a margin cap. Germany copied only the cosmetic part.

The result on day one: At exactly noon, plus 7.6 cents for E10, plus 7.5 cents for diesel. In the following week, the diesel price hit a new all-time high every single day. The ADAC on April 7: “The government raised high expectations for the so-called Austrian Model and even called it a fuel price brake. It is not a fuel price brake. Prices are going in only one direction: up”¹⁸.

And here’s where it gets really good: On April 8, oil prices crashed 15 percent — Trump announced a two-week ceasefire. Brent fell to $90. At the pump? Diesel rose to €2.502. Oil price drops, pump price rises. As a software engineer, you wonder every day why fuel prices don’t correlate with oil prices. As an economist, you know the answer: oligopoly. As Economics Minister, you pretend you don’t.

The Federal Cartel Office — which reports to Katharina Reiche (§ 52 GWB, within the jurisdiction of the BMWE) — documented a “sustained decoupling of diesel wholesale prices from crude oil”¹⁹. A 25-cent markup above the pure crude oil price increase. Crack spreads at double the norm. And what does President Mundt say, now in his 17th year in office? “We are not a price authority.”

Correct. The Cartel Office is not a price authority. It’s not a competition authority either. It’s not an authority at all. It’s an observation post with a fax machine. The sector inquiry of 2011 already identified a “market-dominant oligopoly” of BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Jet, and Total²⁰. 15 years later, nothing has changed about the basic structure, except that the number of daily price changes per gas station has risen from 3.9 to 50. Fifty price changes. Per day. And the Cartel Office watches.

Katharina Reiche and the Federal Cartel Office — both toothless. Reiche is 52 — too young for dentures, but exactly the right age to preside over an authority that hasn’t had any since 2011. And while one can’t control prices and the other won’t, Germany fills up at €2.50 a liter and wonders if there’s money left for groceries.

Heads must roll. And there’s one person who could make that happen.

5. A Tutorial for Friedrich: The Art of Firing

Friedrich, pay attention. This is the core course. The reason you’re reading this essay. The one competence Angela Merkel possessed and you lack: firing people. What Merz as the boardroom chancellor doesn’t understand: you can’t wait out cabinet members the way you wait out board colleagues.

Let’s start with the curriculum.

Lesson 1: The Röttgen (90 seconds, done)

May 13, 2012. Norbert Röttgen loses the NRW state election with 26.3 percent — worst CDU result since 1947. Röttgen frames the result as a “referendum on Merkel’s Europe policy.” Three days. Merkel suggests he resign voluntarily. Röttgen refuses. On May 16, Merkel takes him aside for a private meeting. One hour. Röttgen lists his achievements. Merkel stays firm. Röttgen only asks that his children not learn of the “firing” from the news at school. At 4:35 PM, Merkel steps before the cameras. 90 seconds. Not once the word “NRW.” Not once the word “election defeat.” A “ninety-second icicle statement”²¹ (taz). Röttgen wasn’t even in the room.

Pursuant to Article 64 of the Basic Law. Proposal to the Federal President. Dismissal certificate. Done.

Lesson 2: The Schavan (with feeling)

February 5, 2013. The faculty council of Düsseldorf University revokes Annette Schavan’s doctoral degree. “Systematic and deliberate deception through plagiarism.” Schavan was one of Merkel’s closest confidantes, 14 years deputy CDU chairwoman. Tagesspiegel: “Schavan at least made it easy for her friend”²². She resigned herself. Four days. Merkel’s voice trembled. A year later she made Schavan ambassador to the Vatican. Loyalty is rewarded — but only after the dismissal.

Lesson 3: The Guttenberg (the Lover)

February 16, 2011. Plagiarism allegations. Merkel defends him for two weeks. “I did not appoint a research assistant, but a minister.” 60,000 scientists sign an open letter. On March 1, Guttenberg resigns. Merkel learns via text message at CeBIT. Then the farewell ceremony on March 10, at the Bendlerblock parade ground. The departing official gets to choose three musical pieces. Guttenberg chooses: the Grand Elector’s Cavalry March, King Ludwig II, and — as a provocative finale — “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple, performed by the military band in brass arrangement. His comment: he intended to write down thoughts in the future. “They are my own thoughts.” At least.

And here’s where it gets really good. In 2009, Guttenberg was the CDU/CSU’s lead negotiator for Economic Affairs and Energy during coalition talks. He was briefly even Federal Economics Minister. And now, 15 years later, his partner is the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy. They meet in the middle of the revolving door. He had “Smoke on the Water” played on his way out; she had the lobby register deleted on her way in. Romance is when two people cross paths at the same career opportunity.

Now, about you, Friedrich.

Merkel fired Röttgen in three days. Schavan in four. With Guttenberg she was generous — 13 days. You? You dismissed cabinet reshuffle talk as “truly nonsense” in January 2026. Since then: Baden-Württemberg lost. Fuel price all-time highs. 13 percent approval for your Economics Minister — the least popular cabinet member. The taz demanded: “Friedrich Merz should urgently concern himself with his minister’s performance.” 84 percent of Germans are dissatisfied with your government²³.

And your problem, Friedrich, has a name: Angela Merkel. The NZZ wrote: “Merz, who would rather be liked than criticized”²⁴. You were yourself a victim of Merkel’s firing competence²⁵. February 2000: took over as parliamentary group leader. September 2002: axed by Merkel. Every biographer confirms: never recovered. Wolfgang Schäuble said: “He had no experience with defeat before 2002.” Someone who was themselves the victim of a political execution finds it hard to do the same to others. Understandable. But being chancellor means: sometimes you have to fire people. It’s right there in the constitution. Article 64, paragraph 1. Proposal to the Federal President. Done. The minister cannot refuse dismissal. If they don’t show up for the certificate handover, the dismissal is published in the Federal Gazette. Section 10, sentence 2, Federal Ministers Act. A unilateral sovereign act. No consent required.

Merkel would have fired Reiche long ago. Not because Reiche is bad — but because Reiche causes political damage, and causing damage under Merkel fell in the category of “disloyalty.” The CDU lost Baden-Württemberg, and in the Chancellery sits a man who is afraid of the Federal Gazette.

Oh, and Katharina Reiche can still hold a board position after being fired — even one head shorter. That’s inclusion.

6. Why Firing Reiche Would Be a Victory for Feminism

Campact wrote upon Reiche’s appointment: “A successful woman from East Germany, making decisions at the very top of politics — actually a cause for celebration.”

Actually.

Let’s start with the queerphobia file. Sat.1, “One Against One,” May 10, 2011: Reiche argued that children with same-sex couples were “always worse off” and would perceive the arrangement as “not normal”²⁶. BILD interview, August 21, 2012: “Our future lies in the hands of families, not in same-sex partnerships. After the euro crisis, demographic decline is the greatest threat to our prosperity”²⁷. Abgeordnetenwatch, September 2013: same-sex partnerships lead to “unlimited hedonism” on one side and “infinite suffering” on the other.

Has Reiche ever distanced herself? Not once. 15 years. Campact confirms: “To this day, the Federal Minister has not distanced herself from these statements”²⁸. On the contrary — after the 2012 backlash, she attacked her critics: “Those who shout loudest for tolerance apparently possess the least of it themselves.” BILD then crowned her “Mutter Courage.” Mutter Courage — for her campaign against same-sex marriage. And now she sits at the cabinet table, responsible for the prosperity that same-sex partnerships supposedly threaten.

Then the East German narrative. The CDU celebrated Reiche as “the first East German woman to serve as Economics Minister.” Kretschmer called it a “stroke of luck for the eastern states.” Small problem: Reiche does come from Luckenwalde (Brandenburg), but has lived since 2020 in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia — as CEO of an E.ON corporation. Tagesspiegel: “No longer politically present in her homeland.” Berliner Zeitung: “She does not represent the East”²⁹. Brandenburg’s CDU chair Redmann backpedaled diplomatically: “Federal ministers are responsible for portfolios, not for regions.” Saxony-Anhalt’s CDU chair Schulze was more candid: it was an “open secret” that they’d hoped for someone “who was still better known in East Germany.”

And now the thesis I’ve been carrying since the notes for this essay:

Firing Katharina Reiche would be a victory for feminism.

Not despite, but because of the fact that she’s a woman. Feminism means: women are judged by competence just like men. No protection, no bonus for identity categories. The feminist position is paradoxically identical to the harshest substantive criticism. Whoever says “You can’t fire Reiche, she’s a woman” — that person is being sexist. Whoever says “Reiche has 13 percent approval, a lobbying CV as long as a gas supply contract, and cost the CDU Baden-Württemberg, so she has to go” — that person is practicing equality.

CDA Federal Vice Chair Christian Bäumler put it plainly on July 27, 2025: “An Economics Minister who doesn’t realize that Germany has a high part-time rate and therefore low average annual working hours is a misappointment”³⁰. From within her own party. No one objected. The taz: “For party colleagues to publicly call a minister a misappointment is more than unusual.” The party’s silence is louder than the criticism.

670,000 Campact signatures against Reiche. 13 percent approval. No cabinet member is less popular. The dismissal wouldn’t be an attack on women in politics — it would be proof that the rules apply to everyone.

7. Competent Alternatives: Five CDU Women Without Gas Lobby Business Cards

For Friedrich, who will claim there are no alternatives. Here are five.

Anja Karliczek. Former Education Minister. Fought as minister for green hydrogen — “The future belongs solely to green hydrogen” — while Reiche on the National Hydrogen Council favored blue (from natural gas). €500 million battery cell research factory, €300 million Copernicus projects. Fossil lobby connections: zero. That Merz chose the fossil lobbyist over the green hydrogen minister is material for cabaret.

Gitta Connemann. Currently Parliamentary State Secretary at the BMWE — under Reiche. Chair of the CDU’s Mittelstand and Business Union, fully qualified lawyer. Manages the ministry’s departments for business, industry, and SMEs. She’s the operational force while above her sits a minister whose network LobbyControl calls “a mouthpiece for corporate lobbying.” Fossil lobby connections: zero. Only paid side activity: €3,500 annually at Signal Iduna. Connemann literally sits below Reiche — and would be better placed above her.

Anne König. Mathematician, the only CDU woman in the Bundestag with direct committee experience in climate protection and energy. Came to politics from teaching. Fossil lobby connections: zero. A math teacher from Münsterland versus a Westenergie CEO with a Guttenberg connection — the contrast between chalk-stained hands and gas lobby business cards would be comedically unbeatable.

Julia Klöckner. Served three and a half years as the CDU/CSU’s economic policy spokesperson — the central opposition voice against Habeck’s economic policy. Regulatory experience, EU negotiation leadership. Fossil lobby connections: zero. Merz “promoted” her to the representational post of Bundestag President. The woman with the economic policy expertise was elegantly sidelined; the E.ON subsidiary CEO got the ministry.

Maria Flachsbarth. Doctoral-level natural scientist, deputy chair of the CDU’s Federal Committee on Climate, Environment, and Energy Policy. Fossil lobby connections: zero.

Five women. All without gas lobbying ties. All more qualified for the position. The satirical core message isn’t that there were no alternatives — it’s that the CDU apparently confused fossil lobby experience with energy competence.

8. Job Search for Katharina: A Public Service

After the firing, Katharina Reiche will need a new job. As a public service, I offer satirical career counseling.

Satirical fiction. The following résumé is entirely made up and serves as satirical exaggeration. Any resemblance to real CVs is intentional but overstated.

Résumé:

Professional experience: 10 years gas lobby (VKU, Westenergie/E.ON). 1 year Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs.

Skills: Oiling revolving doors, circumventing cooling-off periods, getting lobby register entries deleted (processing time: 1 business day), transferring verbatim passages from industry papers into government documents, replacing 8 out of 10 department heads in under 6 months.

Languages: Fluent in industry jargon (“Energy security first!”, “H₂-ready,” “technology openness”), basic transparency (receptive only).

References: E.ON CEO Leonhard Birnbaum (former boss), BDEW President Dohler (“she can rattle off the energy industry’s concerns on command”). Please do not contact the Federal Cartel Office.

Recommended positions:

Return to Westenergie/E.ON. Proven path. The revolving door is already on its third rotation. Mind the cooling-off period this time — the law has been in effect since 2015. Then again: Reiche has proven she can exit before laws take effect.
GovRadar GmbH. Her partner holds one percent. The ministry approved €287,236 in funding. The startup scene could use fresh energy. Guttenberg has experience with fresh starts — after his 2011 resignation he founded a consulting firm, earned a new doctoral degree in Southampton, and got entangled in the Wirecard scandal. Career resilience knows no bounds.
SOCAR Representative Office Berlin. The Azerbaijan contacts are fresh, the SEFE contract runs ten years. Freedom House 7 out of 100, but the pay is right.
Federal Cartel Office. Chair of a new department for non-jurisdiction. Fits the track record.

9. Farewell Ceremony Playlist: Spotify for Katharina’s Send-Off

Tradition: At the Grand Tattoo — Germany’s military farewell ceremony — the departing official gets to choose three musical pieces. Guttenberg chose “Smoke on the Water” in 2011. Merkel chose “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen” by Nina Hagen.

For Katharina Reiche, I suggest:

Track 1: “Smoke on the Water” — Deep Purple Because her partner set the precedent. And because smoke actually rises above gas power plants. A family tradition.

Track 2: “Burning Down the House” — Talking Heads Literally: the house is burning. The boiler is burning. The energy transition is burning. Baden-Württemberg is burning. “Energy security first!” — yes, the house is on fire, but it’s secure.

Track 3: “Money, Money, Money” — ABBA For the revolving door. For the €287,236 GovRadar subsidy. For the €4,000 fee threat on freedom-of-information requests. For the diesel prices. And for the €17.5 billion hydrogen funding gap that someone else will have to fill.

Bonus track for the Spotify playlist: “Highway to Hell” — AC/DC. For the ministerial car that drove 1,300 kilometers empty to Tyrol.

10. The Next Sugar Daddy

The question remains: Why is it so quiet?

Why doesn’t BILD write “Gas Hammer” headlines? Why is there no “Lobby Grinch”? Why does a minister with 13 percent approval, a revolving-door biography, a failed fuel price model, and a lost state not receive a tenth of the media firepower that Habeck endured?

Friede Springer, born 1942, is 83 years old. CDU member. Honorary citizen of Berlin, bestowed by CDU Governing Mayor Kai Wegner. Merkel’s husband sits on the board of the Friede Springer Foundation. She transferred her voting rights to Mathias Döpfner. Döpfner, the man who wrote to his editor-in-chief: “Please boost the FDP”³¹. The man who called East Germans “either communists or fascists.” The man who sees climate change as an opportunity: “Civilizational phases of warmth have always been more successful than those of cold”³¹.

Since April 2025, Springer has been debt-free and entirely family-owned for the first time since its 1985 IPO. Döpfner and Friede Springer together hold 95 percent³². KKR is out. In March 2026, Döpfner bought the Telegraph Media Group for £575 million³³. Goal: “the most read center-right media outlet in the English-speaking world.”

Center-right. The CDU is center-right. Reiche is CDU. The math checks out.

When Friede Springer is no longer around one day, Döpfner will become the sole power holder over Europe’s most influential media empire. BILD, WELT, Politico, now Telegraph. And who will then ensure that a CDU minister with a lobbying biography, a consultant affair, and failed energy policy gets treated in BILD the way a Green minister with a children’s book was? No one. The asymmetry isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.

The boiler keeps burning. And the only ones writing about it are those who can’t afford carpal tunnel syndrome — but do it anyway.

Sources

All facts in this essay are source-verified. If you don’t believe that lobbyist-in-the-morning, minister-by-lunch is possible: German Bundestag lobby register, registration number R001813, May 6, 2025, deleted the same day. If you think the verbatim passages between Reiche’s ten-point plan and the E.ON/RWE position paper are satire: Table.Briefings, Malte Kreutzfeldt, September 2025. If you think the Austrian Model failure is exaggerated: ADAC press release, April 7, 2026. All quotes are direct quotes with traceable sources.

What is satire is marked as satire. What is fact stands as fact. Artistic freedom protects the exaggeration. The facts protect themselves.

Why is this on a blog called buildinganyway? Because someone in this country needs to stop oiling revolving doors and start pouring foundations — for wind turbines, solar parks, power grids, and a democracy where ministries don’t function as branch offices of energy corporations. There’s a hell of a lot more to build in Germany than fucking gas power plants. buildinganyway stands for joy, wonder, laughter, and hope — the joy when Katharina Reiche finally clears her desk; the wonder that the CDU actually has more competent women for the job; the laughter this article hopefully caused; and the hope for an energy policy that wasn’t copy-pasted from an E.ON position paper. The world can be better because of what you build today — even if it’s a satirical essay on a Wednesday evening with a glass of wine.

LobbyControl/Meltwater analysis, “‘Heating Hammer’ used almost 70 times”, November 2024 ↩ ↩²
Kobuk.at, “The BILD Campaign Against Habeck”, Vienna University of Applied Sciences, February 2023 ↩
Die Zeit, “Döpfner Leaks: Private messages of the Springer CEO”, April 2023 ↩
abgeordnetenwatch.de, Martin Reyher et al., “The Lobby File of the Merz Government”, May 6, 2025. German Bundestag Lobby Register, Registration No. R001813 ↩
LobbyControl, Ulrich Müller, press release on cooling-off period timing, February 3, 2015 ↩
LobbyControl, Christina Deckwirth, “With Ms. Reiche, an energy executive is being made Energy Minister”, April 28, 2025 ↩
ZfK (Zeitung für kommunale Wirtschaft), Werner Graf (Greens), “Dark Voldemort of the energy transition”, May 2025 ↩
taz, “Economics Minister visits former colleagues”, ca. June 5, 2025. BDEW Congress, STATION-Berlin, June 4, 2025 ↩ ↩²
Table.Briefings, Malte Kreutzfeldt, “Striking similarities between Reiche’s ten-point plan and E.ON/RWE position paper”, September 2025 ↩
Greenpeace, Karsten Smid, “28 content changes to EWI monitoring report — commissioned opinion dressed up as science”, December 2025 ↩
BDEW press release on Federal Budget 2026: “Decarbonization of Industry” funding cut from €24.5 billion to under €7 billion ↩
Bloomberg, “SEFE to announce 10-year deal for gas from Azerbaijan”, June 9, 2025 ↩
Freedom House, “Freedom in the World 2025: Azerbaijan”, Score 7/100. Comparison: Russia 19/100 ↩
European Parliament, Resolution of October 5, 2023 on Nagorno-Karabakh, 453 to 31 votes: “ethnic cleansing” ↩
Munich Higher Regional Court, Judgment of January 22, 2026 against Axel Fischer (CDU) — first conviction under § 108e StGB. Sources: ZDFheute, taz, Transparency International ↩
Baden-Württemberg State Electoral Commissioner, Final result state election March 8, 2026: Greens 30.2%, CDU 29.7% ↩
taz, Nick Reimer, “The Fossil Fukushima”, ca. March 2026. Jürgen Trittin blog, March 10, 2026 ↩
ADAC press release, April 7, 2026: “It is not a fuel price brake. Prices are going in only one direction: up.” ↩
Federal Cartel Office, MTS-K Quarterly Report, March 27, 2026: “Notable decoupling of diesel wholesale prices from crude oil” ↩
Federal Cartel Office, Fuel Market Sector Investigation, 2011: “market-dominant oligopoly” ↩
taz, report on Röttgen dismissal, May 2012: “ninety-second icicle statement” ↩
Tagesspiegel, report on Schavan resignation, February 2013: “Schavan at least made it easy for her friend” ↩
ARD Deutschlandtrend, April 2026: 84% dissatisfied with government, Merz 21% approval ↩
NZZ, Friedrich Merz portrait: “Merz, who would rather be liked than criticized” ↩
Volker Resing, “Friedrich Merz: The Climber”, chapter “The Divorce: Merkel’s Masterpiece” ↩
queer.de, Article 14209, May 10, 2011: Reiche on Sat.1 “One Against One” ↩
queer.de, Article 17212; BILD interview August 21, 2012 ↩
Campact blog, updated January 31, 2026: “To this day, the Federal Minister has not distanced herself” ↩
Berliner Zeitung: “She does not represent the East” ↩
t-online, July 27, 2025: CDA Federal Vice Chair Christian Bäumler calls Reiche a “misappointment” ↩
Die Zeit, Döpfner Leaks, April 2023: “Please boost the FDP”, “Civilizational phases of warmth” ↩ ↩²
BusinessWire/Yahoo Finance, April 2025: Springer debt-free, 95% family ownership ↩
Fortune/Bloomberg, March 2026: Telegraph Media Group purchase for £575 million ↩