Kevin Kühnert, former general secretary of the SPD, confessed that the role had left him in a state of chronic doubt. “The horror was always the committee montage” he told “Der Speziell” as he recalled how his calendar filled itself automatically during Bundestag sessions. In the evenings he would ask himself, “What have I actually achieved today?” The pressure to communicate had worn him down. “A general secretary is, by definition, a generalist” he explained. “In good times that means you’re allowed to engage with everything. The downside is that you have to speak on everything”.
Kühnert held the post for roughly three years under Olaf Scholz’s traffic‑light coalition. He described that period as “storybook‑like, illustrating how one can become a spinning plate of development”. “They said I wasn’t biting hard enough, and that turned out to be true” he acknowledged, noting that he was 36 at the time of his resignation, which he announced unexpectedly in the autumn of 2024.
After a break, Kühnert has returned in several roles. He writes a column for “Rolling Stone”, has been appointed to the pension commission of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), hosts the Berlin talk show “Missverstehen Sie mich richtig” and works as a lobbyist for the citizen movement “Finanzwende”, which campaigns for a fairer tax and financial system. He has not ruled out a future return to elected office.
