Many men, mostly middle-aged and older, have come; there are hardly any women in the hall. The head of the Free Voters (FW) gives a short all-round lecture on the state of Bavarian politics, then he is ready to talk.
Farmers ask him what kind of “crazy” the authorities made in changing the regulations for tractor trailers. Self-employed small companies complain about excessive bureaucracy, which made everything more complicated.
The people “in the country” are dissatisfied with a lot of what “those up there” are doing. Aiwanger records it carefully, writes notes, answers. If he can't do that, he promises to deliver later. Aiwanger shows himself to be one of them, close to the voters.
Now Bavaria's Economics Minister and Deputy Prime Minister died suddenly and unexpectedly on Wednesday at the age of just 55. He was in Berlin to open his party's federal office there.
He canceled the appointment even though he wanted to come. He wasn't feeling well, maybe he had stomach flu, they said. He was no longer available later. Then he was found, dead in his room, in a hotel on Friedrichstrasse.
Aiwanger, the son of a farmer and a qualified agricultural engineer, was someone who was drawn away from his immediate environment and who wanted more, much more.
Aiwanger brought the group as a permanent fixture in Bavaria's state parliament, outdoing the FDP and becoming head of the parliamentary group. In 2018 he finally managed to form a coalition with the CSU, was Bavarian Minister of Economics and Deputy Prime Minister - until his death.
Within the Free Voters there were always quiet grumblings about his omnipotence. Aiwanger knew that and took it pragmatically: “You just can’t please everyone.”
Without the CSU, the politician Hubert Aiwanger would not have existed. In conversation he once talked about “back then” when he was 25 years old. In his birthplace, Ergoldsbach, and in nearby Landshut, nothing could be achieved without the Christian Socialists. Anyone who wasn't in the CSU was ironed out. This spurred on Aiwanger's spirit of resistance, which he always retained.
If there is a type of angular, extremely political Bavarian from the countryside with a conservative orientation, then that was Hubert Aiwanger. His parents were piglet farmers, and he once said: “If you have pigs, you have bills.”
He was a hunter, liked to show off proudly with a jacket and rifle on his perch, and owned forests. He himself knew that he stood for a Bavaria that was increasingly being pushed to the margins.
And so he attacked and damaged the CSU in rural areas with successful competition. Most recently, in the local elections in the spring of this year, the Free Voters took an astonishing number of district administrator positions from the Christian Socialists, which are more important in Bavaria than anywhere else.
Bavaria's Prime Minister and CSU leader Markus Söder had a difficult time with Hubert Aiwanger for years. Söder had committed to the alliance with him, but Aiwanger repeatedly defected from the government line.
During the farmers' protests, he took to the stage and gave fiery speeches. He supported opponents of the corona policy, refused vaccination for a long time, took part in demos and, as deputy prime minister, said that politics was probably “off its ass”. The relationship between Söder and Aiwanger has long been considered broken.
Aiwanger's demarcation from the AfD remained vague in terms of content. He described the right-wing radicals as a “weird party” and insisted on taking up the issues of the “angry citizens” from the country himself. One could discuss for hours whether the FW was to the right or left of the CSU in the party spectrum - or somehow across the spectrum.
A leaflet with anti-Semitic content that glorified the Nazi era caused a nationwide scandal. Written during Aiwanger's time as a high school student and distributed at his school, it was launched to the public shortly before the 2023 state election.
It was attributed to Hubert Aiwanger, but his brother publicly declared himself to be the author. In the election, this even brought the Free Voters two or three percentage points: Aiwanger switched to the mode of defamed and persecuted innocence.
People often laughed at the country man and yet enjoyed his Bavarian authenticity, which he conveyed so openly and bluntly in front of every microphone and every camera.
The way he pronounced “apple juice” in Lower Bavarian became legendary: “Opflsoft”. Many people made fun of it; he described the mockery as the “arrogance of the townspeople” – and yet he knew full well that the sympathies lay with him.
For years and decades, Aiwanger tried to establish the Free Voters as a federal political force. In Rhineland-Palatinate they were thrown out of the state parliament and in the EU Parliament they have three members. They never had the slightest chance in federal elections. Growth over the years: almost none. Aiwanger failed with that, but he took it with humor.
