Politicians often don’t come under pressure for what they fail to do, but for what they fail to say—or fail to say correctly. This is also true of Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) and his actions during one of the worst crises in recent Berlin history—the power outage in the southwest that lasted from Saturday morning until Wednesday afternoon.

At first, Wegner showed no presence whatsoever. While crisis teams were ramping up, Economics Senator Franziska Giffey (SPD), responsible for energy, was visible and audible across multiple channels, and Stromnetz Berlin was gradually making the true extent of the disaster public and preparing people for a five-day outage, nothing was heard from Wegner. It was not until 5 p.m., when both the political background of the attack and the extent of the damage were clearly apparent, that he first spoke out on the platform X.

Initially, Wegner Justified His Absence by Citing Work from Home

The next morning at 11 a.m., he appeared on site for the first time. By then, District Mayor Maren Schellenberg (Greens) and Giffey had already spent half the night working in crisis teams and emergency centers. At the Cole Sports Center on Hüttenweg, Wegner felt the people‘s anger. In front of the cameras, he seemed strangely detached and uninspired, while Giffey and Interior Senator Iris Spranger took center stage. He justified his late reaction on the first day of the crisis by saying he had been working from home, speaking by phone with key figures at the federal level to organize assistance for Berlin. Later, he also visited the Charité hospital in Steglitz and the crisis team at Zehlendorf town hall.

When Wegner and his spokesperson Christine Richter took note of the predominantly unflattering press coverage on Monday, they felt compelled to launch a communications offensive on their own behalf. For Tuesday noon, they invited a few journalists to a conversation in his office at the Red City Hall before the official press briefing. The details of that discussion cannot be reported. But it concerned an account of Saturday. Wegner wanted to dispel the impression that he hadn‘t cared. However, he didn’t say a word about the now-public one-hour tennis match with his partner and Education Senator Katharina Günther-Wünsch (CDU).

In the Conversation with Journalists About His Saturday, He Should Have Been Honest

That would have been the opportunity to come clean and give reporters talking points about his sports break. Had Wegner said he‘d stepped away for an hour after the most important conversations had taken place, he might have emerged from the situation relatively unscathed – because even politicians are also allowed to take a break on difficult days.

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Even so, the helpers outside and the workers at the power grid construction sites would have already found it odd that the city‘s top politician wanted to „clear his head“ in the warm tennis hall while they were toiling in sub-zero temperatures. The fact that he didn‘t mention the tennis outing in Tuesday‘s conversation because it „wasn‘t on his radar,“ as his spokesperson put it, is completely implausible. The meeting had been specifically convened to explain his actions on the first day of the crisis.

In the End, Politicians Raced to Announce the Good News

But the broader political communication was also much worse than the overall crisis management. That Giffey and Wegner only vaguely hinted on Tuesday that power restoration might happen sooner is not the problem. Understandably, they preferred to aim for a positive surprise on Wednesday rather than raise expectations they might later have to disappoint.

When the good news was confirmed on Wednesday at six in the morning—after the restored cables had passed testing—the communication chaos continued unabated. Instead of making a joint statement about the positive message, as had actually been agreed, Spranger, Giffey, and Wegner also engaged in a race over who would be first and how to announce the end of the blackout. Until the very end, Wegner remained the runner-up. Once again, it was Franziska Giffey who, at the end of the press conference on Wednesday at the Red City Hall, was able to announce that the last households were now back on the grid. Compared to what came crashing down on Wegner after his tennis match during the early phase of the crisis became known, that was certainly still bearable.

This article was originally written and published on the 8th of January in German. It was translated in English with the use of Artificial Intelligence.