SPD General Secretary Kühnert resigns

SPD General Secretary Kühnert resigns Article by dpa • 37 minutes • 1 minute reading time A good year before the federal election, Kevin Kühnert is resigning as General Secretary of the SPD. The 35-year-old justified this step in a letter to party members and the public with health problems. "I will need the energy required for my office and an election campaign in the foreseeable future in order to get healthy again. That is why I am drawing the consequences," he wrote. He has therefore informed party leaders Saskia Esken and Lars Klingbeil that he is resigning as General Secretary today. He will not run again as a member of parliament in the federal election. This means that the Berliner is withdrawing from politics for the time being. "These decisions have cost me a lot of courage and they hurt me because I put my heart and soul into my political work," he explained. But he bears responsibility for himself and for the SPD. "By focusing entirely on my health now, I believe I am best able to meet my dual responsibilities." The full commitment of the entire SPD is necessary for an election victory. Kühnert has been Secretary General of the Social Democrats since 2021 and entered the Bundestag in the same year. Before that, he became known nationwide as chairman of the Jusos - among other things because he organized a campaign against a grand coalition of the Union and SPD. In 2019, he played a decisive role when the party's left-wingers Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans came to the top of the SPD in the runoff election against current Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Klara Geywitz.