The mayor did not want an open conversation. Then he did not want a conversation one-on-one. What he wanted was control. To maintain that control, he placed his own administrative staff as a silent observer at the table, unannounced.
Preliminary Remark
I will be honest: there are moments when I find it hard to take any of this seriously anymore. Not because the subject does not deserve it, but because reality has now taken on such absurd dimensions that it is barely possible to write about it convincingly. Anyone who has not lived through it will read these lines and think: this is exaggerated. It is not. I was there.
Looking Back: The Architecture of Refusal
In January I offered Mayor Olaf Schulze and the party leaders of the SPD, CDU, and Greens a round table. Five people, one hour, one room. No public, no cameras, no obligation to take minutes. The goal: to end the toxic political atmosphere in Geesthacht through an open conversation.
The result was a coordinated rejection. Schulze justified it by citing a missing majority — a majority he himself had defined away. As an alternative he offered a one-on-one meeting. His office was open. They wanted to talk. They were willing to engage. They were, after all, democrats.
Despite all my reservations, I accepted the offer. Anyone who demands dialogue must be willing to try it even where the conditions are worse. On 13 May 2026 at 11:30 a.m. I entered the mayor's office. What awaited me there was instructive. Not in the sense of a conversation. In the sense of a diagnosis.
Torben H.: A Man at the Wrong Table
Imagine you ask your doctor for a confidential conversation about a diagnosis. You enter the practice, and the building's caretaker is sitting there. Unannounced. Silent. The doctor smiles at you as if this were the most natural thing in the world.
That is roughly how the appointment with the mayor of Geesthacht presented itself.
Sitting at the table was Torben H., head of the department for internal affairs and personnel at the city administration. His responsibilities cover staffing matters, internal IT coordination, and mail — in short: an administrative manager for internal operations. A man whose professional existence consists of ensuring that salaries are transferred on time and that the printers work. One cannot help but wonder whether the photocopier in the town hall is jammed and H. was not actually planned for me at all.
What does this man have to do with a political conversation between a mayor and a citizen who publicly and with documentation criticises the city's leadership? The factual answer: nothing. No jurisdiction, no expertise, no institutional mandate. Not a single agenda item came even remotely within his area of competence. Unless the mayor plans to restructure my payslip, something no one has informed me of to date.
The political answer: he was not there because he knew something. He was there because he was supposed to be present.
The Minimum Standard One Can Expect
Before I address the minimum standard, let one thing be noted, because it defines the character of this meeting.
I had not let anything about this appointment reach the public beforehand. Nothing. No post, no hint, no suggestion. And had the conversation taken place, I would have said nothing about it afterwards either. A conversation in private is a conversation in private — it is no one else's business. That is how I think. That is how I understand the term confidentiality. Others in this town hall apparently do not.
I am writing about it today because the conversation did not take place. Because the conditions were already broken the moment I entered the room. Anyone who believes I had planned this appointment as a stage is mistaken. The stage was not built by me.
Let us consider this purely as a human matter — a simple interaction between adults.
When two parties agree on a conversation and one side brings along a third person, there is a basic expectation: you say so in advance. Not as a formality, but because the other side can then decide whether they wish to appear under these conditions — and with whom.
I would have brought my solicitor. Not as an escalation, not as a provocation, but as a counterbalance. To establish a level playing field. But presumably a second department head would then have suddenly appeared on the mayor's side as well — responsible for street lighting, just to be safe.
That would have been the bare minimum, given the history. Because the mayor is the same man who claimed in writing in January that he had made me offers of conversation during 2024, which I had allegedly ignored. A claim I consider untrue and can refute with my own records. It is a remarkable characteristic of Geesthacht's administrative leadership that they send invitations which never reach the recipient, and then use that circumstance as evidence of his unwillingness to talk. The postal service in Geesthacht apparently operates selectively.
And yet: I appeared. Without a solicitor. Without witnesses. With a genuine attempt to have the conversation that had been promised. What I found was the same thing I had already experienced several times in the months before: the same sequence, the same method, the same message. The framework is set, the rules apply only to one side, and anyone who asks gets not a single word of explanation.
One might accuse a person of naivety for repeatedly putting their faith in communication despite everything. But the repetition of the same pattern is not a failure of the citizen. It is a testimony about the one who produces that pattern.
The Function of the Witness
An unannounced witness in a bilaterally agreed conversation simultaneously serves several functions. He documents. He disciplines. He sends a signal.
The documentation function is obvious: whatever is said is no longer confidential. Every word spoken by the citizen becomes a potentially usable data point. One might almost think that was the actual purpose of the appointment — not the conversation, but its recording.
The disciplinary function is subtler: the citizen is meant to feel that they are not speaking among equals. On one side of the table sits the citizen. On the other sits the administration in plurality, fully armed with responsibility for payroll.
The signal reads: this citizen requires special precautions. He is a risk that must be managed. With the means available to a mayor: a man who looks after the printers.
And let one thing be stated clearly here, because it goes to the heart of the matter: I am the last person who would have a problem conducting a substantive discussion in front of a thousand people. Those who know me know that. The difference is: when a thousand people listen, a thousand people listen. They form an opinion. The exchange takes place in the light, visible to all, assessable by all. That is the public sphere, and I welcome it.
What took place yesterday in the mayor's office was the opposite. Not a public framework in which arguments count. But a silent witness behind a closed door, whose presence was neither announced nor explained. Not transparency, but its simulation. Not dialogue, but its control. Anyone who avoids the public but still brings witnesses wants neither the one nor the other. They only want the upper hand.
Tone Policing: The Last Line of Defence
When I questioned H.'s presence, the mayor shifted terrain.
He did not explain why H. was sitting there. He did not comment on the breach of the agreed conditions. He said: "Do calm down."
One must appreciate the elegance of this manoeuvre. The citizen enters a meeting agreed as a one-on-one, finds an unannounced witness, asks for the reason, and the answer is not "I will explain it to you" but "calm yourself." As if he had asked for directions to the station and received an assessment of his emotional state.
Tone policing delegitimises a substantive argument by referring to the tone in which it is presented. Suddenly the question is no longer why an unannounced third party is sitting in the room. Suddenly the question is whether the citizen is presenting his concern with the correct temperament. The correct posture in Geesthacht would apparently be: eyes forward, refrain from asking questions, accept the observer, show gratitude for having been admitted at all.
I ended the conversation and left the room. Not out of anger, but as a consequence. A conversation that begins by breaching its own agreed conditions and responds to questions with tone policing is not a conversation. It is a ritual of submission.
What I Consider an Abuse of Office
Torben H. is a civil servant with a defined area of responsibility, a job description, and an accountability to the community that indirectly finances him. Yesterday morning he fulfilled none of these things.
When he sat in an office and, in my assessment, functioned as a buffer between the mayor and an inconvenient citizen, he was not doing his job in that moment. He assumed a political protective function for which he was neither commissioned nor qualified. What I regard as an abuse of administrative personnel for purposes of political self-entrenchment can be described simply: the citizens of Geesthacht finance, through their taxes, the presence of a department head in conversations that concern nothing pertaining to him. You really do get everything for your money.
A city administration is not a private company that makes loyal employees available to its boss as meeting companions. It is an apparatus acting on behalf of the general public. When employees of this apparatus are deployed — in my perception — to unsettle or place under surveillance politically inconvenient citizens, a line has been crossed that goes beyond the personal.
The Fish and Its Head
Because I do not wish to be misunderstood at this point, I will say it explicitly.
After years of looking closely, I know countless employees of this administration who genuinely do their jobs well. People who make an effort, who get things done, who want to improve — and who are crushed by structures they themselves say are the real problem: control and bottleneck behaviour at the top. I hear this not once, not twice. I hear it repeatedly, from different people, in different positions. It is not a rumour. It is a finding.
These people do not deserve blanket criticism. They deserve recognition for what they achieve despite everything.
But the more I see, the clearer it becomes to me: the fish rots from the head. Not across the breadth of this administration, but at one very small, very specific point right at the top. A few people — but a few people in the wrong place — are enough to make the operation a daily ordeal for everyone else.
What took place in that office yesterday was not the mistake of an overstretched apparatus. It was a decision. And decisions have authors.
Conclusion: A Leadership That Cannot Hold an Open Conversation
Let us record what the past four months have documented.
The leadership of this city is incapable of holding an open conversation with a citizen. Not as a group — the round table was blocked in January. Not one-on-one — the private meeting was filled with an unannounced witness, without prior warning, without explanation, without any willingness to provide one. In Geesthacht, that is called: willingness to engage.
This is the mayor of a medium-sized German city who finds himself unable to sit across from a single citizen without a safety net. Who brings along a department head responsible for printers and payroll as a meeting companion. Who responds to the question of why with "Do calm down." If that is the benchmark for leadership strength in Geesthacht, then it explains quite a lot.
One could laugh at this scene if it did not reveal so much. It reveals that confidence in one's own position is so fragile that even a conversation seems too risky. It reveals that administrative staff are deployed — in my perception — as instruments of political self-protection. And it reveals that the word dialogue, which appears in every party manifesto in this city, is exactly what it always was: a phrase for the brochure.
Anyone who cannot speak in private has something to hide. What exactly that is — that is a question Geesthacht should ask itself.
FAQ
Was the meeting agreed as a one-on-one?
Yes. The mayor himself had offered it as an alternative to the rejected round table. He apparently meant it differently than understood.
Why is this being reported now?
Because the conversation did not take place. Had it been conducted under the agreed conditions, these lines would not exist.
What is Torben H.'s area of responsibility?
Personnel, IT, and mail for the city administration. No connection to political citizen meetings — unless the conversation was to be sent by internal post.
Could Erdal Torun have brought someone too?
Of course — had he been informed in advance. That is precisely the point.
Why was the conversation ended?
Because the agreed conditions were broken without announcement and without explanation.
Is this an isolated incident?
No. It is the consistent continuation of a pattern that began in January 2026. Geesthacht's administrative leadership is remarkably reliable in this regard.
