Actually, Felix Banaszak only wanted to draw a harmless comparison at a press conference in May. In his criticism of Saxony’s CDU Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer, the Federal President of the Greens said: “Kretschmer is not the CDU district cashier in Rüsselsheim”. The quote spread through the media, and Rüsselsheim suddenly stood there as a small provincial city. In any case, Mayor Patrick Burghardt (CDU) took up. As a former State Secretary in Wiesbaden in dealing with the Greens in the then coalition, the CDU politician promptly invited the Greens. On Monday morning the time has come: Burghardt gave the tourist guide for Banaszak for two hours. “There is there,” said the mayor, who did not receive his guest in front of the town hall, but in the courtyard. Banaszak, all of the statesman, had climbed out of his electric car in front of the main entrance of the town hall to step up the entrance staircase, but was gallantly led around the town hall into the courtyard. Banaszak: “I apologize in all form for everything” from the Mayor he was given a Rüsselsheim lettering so that he always remembered the Opel city. And his green party friends, with whom he later met again in the Opel Alterwerk before taking a work tour with the Opel boss, gave him the bicycle of the Opel brothers. Before the tour of the city, the federal politician did: “I apologize in all form for everything. It was not a glossy performance,” he said. With his statement, he only wanted to show that Prime Minister Kretschmer was a deputy federal chairman of the CDU and not any local politician. “I could have said Berchtesgaden instead of Rüsselsheim.” The Mayor of Rüsselsheim heard it and acquaintances that he did not take Banaszak’s statements with anger at the time, but with a smile. And so the two initially strolled to the banks of the Main after the exchange of the courtesy – accompanied by a media road – in Traute Eintracht. The guest from Berlin admired the linen rider, the Opel-Manta made of concrete and the works of art on the banks of the Main. He compared the Opel villas with the Villa Hill. And the mayor described the concerns of the city during the tour. The finances in particular have been pressing the once wealthy municipality since the nineties, he said. Trade tax revenues of only around 25 million euros a year are not enough for a city of this size, especially against the background of constantly increasing social expenditure. Comparings to his hometown Duisburgbanaszak promised to work in Berlin for better financial equipment for cities and municipalities, because he currently hears similar complaints on his summer tour all over Germany. The Greens boss compared Rüsselsheim several times to his hometown Duisburg-and the comparisons on the Löwenplatz actually voted: the mayor spoke of a “backyard character” that had to be remedied. After all, the heart of the city actually beat here, because on today’s Löwenplatz the small workshop, from which Adam Opel and its five sons later turned a automotive plant. Dark factory halls, partly revealed to the decay, from which later something new should become something new and which could already be a shopping mile today according to the original plans, impressed the Greens sustainably. So far, he has only associated Rüsselsheim with Opel, now he has learned a lot more, said Banaszak. The mayor showed him everything-even the first workshop of Opel, in which bicycles, sewing machines and refrigerators were once built and in which skaters are moving their lanes today, so the Greens boss made himself grateful and refined on his way to his next visit: In the afternoon, he wanted to find out more about the structural change in Eisenach in an automotive city.
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