Steffen Seibert: The German chancellor’s voice for a decade

How a well-known German TV journalist became the government’s spokesperson and one of Angela Merkel’s closest advisers.

Berlin (dpa) – He speaks for the most powerful woman in Germany, and when she appears, he is almost always by her side.

Steffen Seibert, who turns 60 this Sunday, is the spokesman for the German government. When Chancellor Angela Merkel appointed him 10 years ago, it was a major shift for him to go from asking questions to answering them.

Seibert was a journalist with German public TV broadcaster ZDF. With an audience of millions, he is one of the best-known faces in the country. Now he remains an ever-present figure in Germany’s federal government, holding the position longer than any of his predecessors, and one of Merkel’s closest advisers.

When the previous head of the federal press office stepped down, Seibert was quoted as saying: “For a passionate journalist, this is a quite unexpected, fascinating new task.”

But it’s perhaps a task that a TV journalist is well-suited for.

Karl-Rudolf Korte, a political scientist from the University of Duisburg-Essen, tells dpa that Seibert has outshined his predecessors “because he has this special relationship to caution. And he is aware that image and sound belong together. Because he is a television man, the visual programme of the performance counts.”

Korte adds: “He is a central power broker for the chancellor. He plays an important role in the anteroom of power.”

But unlike his predecessors, Seibert “is not a communicator on an ego trip. Although he is aware that he plays a central role in communicating the chancellor’s policies, you can tell that he wants to remain invisible,” says Korte.

That’s a departure from Klaus Boelling, who was the spokesman under Helmut Schmidt. “He was a self-promoter. He enjoyed the glow of doing politics himself – at least that’s how it seemed,” Korte says.

Seibert is a much more private person. And that makes him the perfect spokesman for a chancellor “who refuses to be indignant and communicates politics in this sober, disciplined, even emotionless and unaffected style.”

At the thrice-weekly press briefings in Berlin, Seibert presents himself as an experienced spokesperson who doesn’t get distracted by ideologically fuelled questions. Some journalists might be annoyed that Seibert never allows himself to be provoked, but he is also appreciated for his unagitated, polite and courteous manner.

Seibert, who was born in Munich, studied history, literature and public law before starting a traineeship at ZDF in the late 1980s.

In the 1990s, he was a foreign correspondent in Washington, and then hosted the ZDF’s morning news show.

Between 2003 and 2010, Seibert was the presenter of the “heute” news and “heute journal” shows. A colleague at “heute journal,” journalist Dunja Hayali, joked that Siebert was “leaving me for an older woman” when his departure for the government spokesman position was announced.

“Of course, I was sad, because I would have liked to continue working with him,” Hayali told dpa. At the same time, she could understand that after 21 years with ZDF, “you want to take on a new challenge. His departure opened new doors for both of us.”