We want to be the first city in Germany to end homelessness.

We have about 700 people in Düsseldorf living on the streets, and we want to provide housing for all of them.

And there is a program, a concept called Housing First.

So we try to acquire these small apartments for them.

And we said it must be possible to take care of all of them, in the next, for the next five years.

[music] Mr.

Mayor, what's the derivation of the gold necklace?

It's a German tradition that, mayors have a necklace like this.

Every city designs it in its own way.

This dates back to 1955, around about in the 1950s, it was newly designed.

The chain is made, elements, they are cartwheelers.

Because there's a tradition of kids in Düsseldorf doing cartwheels on the streets.

And there's several legends around all that.

This is composed of several stages of Düsseldorf history.

Like 1288 is our birth year.

We were granted city rights in 1288, following a medieval battle between two opposing sides in this region.

And, we were part of the victorious site and the landlord, the earl of this area, he granted Düsseldorf city rights.

So 1288 is what we call, was the beginning of our history.

And then there's several stages, like, this is the birth date of Heinrich Heine.

Born in Düsseldorf and great German author.

And you have 1945, following this picture with, graves and destruction, you know, so it's a symbol for the destruction of the Second World War.

Where Düsseldorf was badly destroyed.

And this is a phoenix like phoenix from the ashes.

So that's the last thing in that time scale.

And this is our coat of arms, and I wear it for special occasions, you know, like tonight when I awarded these prizes for young artists, I wear it, or if we, hand out other awards, or if I meet, important guests, like ambassadors, federal ministers, and they sign our golden book.

I wear this chain.

At a time of AI, I found it gratifying.

And I wonder if you do, too, to be bestowing a honor of these grants on the artists, these talented young artists.

It's a rarer and rarer thing to have the opportunity for the municipal government to support -the cause.

-That's right.

Yeah.

Well, we traditionally, Düsseldorf has placed great emphasis on supporting local artists, dating back to Jan Wilhelm, who was one of our famous guys in history.

He made Düsseldorf the capital of his regional state within the German Reich, German Empire.

And he was married to a woman of the House of Medici, Anna Louisa de Medici.

And they both started collecting arts here in Düsseldorf.

And that was the beginning of an arts tradition in Düsseldorf.

And we try to sort of keep up that heritage, you know, and give out these grants to young artists is one contribution to having a vibrant artist scene here in Düsseldorf.

Well, I know you're tired, but, you need some beer and schnitzel.

-That sounds good.

-Let's go have some.

We had an event on Monday night with, two former members of Congress.

Right.

They came to, they do a weekly tour through Germany, and they stopped in Düsseldorf and had a town hall meeting in that room -where we just were -Yeah.

Flannery hall.

And it was quite interesting, you know.

The overall topic was, are we still friends?

And... And we agreed.

Yes, we are still friends.

Good, good.

Mr.

mayor, thanks for having me.

-It's a pleasure.

-Cheers!

So this is... -This is Altbier, -Düsseldorf... Düsseldorf beer, not Cologne, dark.

There we go.

Cheers.

There are 4 or 5 traditional breweries here in the old part of town, and this is one of them.

And it's my favorite actually.

Excellent.

Congratulations on your recent re-election.

You've got a second term now, when you ran, I understand one of the commitments you made to constituents here was if you're unhoused, if you're mentally challenged in some way, we want to directly assist you.

We want to be the first city in Germany and maybe European wide, not European wide, but because in Finland, they were very successful.

We want to be the first city in Germany to end homelessness.

We have about 700 people in Düsseldorf living on the streets, and we want to provide housing for all of them.

And there is a program, a concept called Housing First.

It was developed in Scandinavia.

And that's why Finland was very successful.

You know, there's no homeless people in Helsinki from what I've heard, I've never been there.

So we try to acquire these flats you know, small apartments for them.

And we said it must be possible to take care of all of them, in the next, for the next five years.

And there's as a private initiative, who has been running this schedule for the last three years, and they have managed to find, to bring about 100 people into decent housing.

But they had no help from the city government at all.

So I said, if we help you and if we are prepared to give money for that program, it must be possible to take care of all of them.

And so we drew up a program that is, for the next five years, and we will do about 120, between 120 and 140 apartments a year.

But you also need, support from social workers because people living on the streets have numerous problems.

They don't have a home, but they also have health issues.

They have mental problems.

They, maybe have a drug problem.

They are bankrupt basically, they owe a lot of money to whoever.

But the concept is called Housing First because we believe that housing is the first issue that you have to solve once they are in a decent home, you can take care of the rest of all of these issues.

But to take care of all that, you need people to support them.

So, we say we need about one social worker for 15 clients.

So it's not only housing, it's also manpower.

Men and women power and a support system for these people.

But we're quite confident that we're making good progress on that.

That's great.

As you're embarking on the second term, what else are you hoping to accomplish?

Housing is a different, is a big issue -beyond ending homelessness.

-Yes.

We face a great challenge with rising rent.

You know, Germany is a country where people rent, you know, that we have a very low rate of ownership of housing.

So about 60% of the population live in rented accommodation and if the rents go higher that's going to be a problem.

And Düsseldorf is a growing city, we have grown, about 50,000 people in the last 15 years.

And, housing is a very scarce, how do you say, resource.

You know, so we have to build more.

You know, we have to build more flats, more housing for everybody, affordable housing.

And we have a program in which we want to to build 8000 apartments till the end of 2030.

And then there's education, especially early education, kindergarten and primary schools.

We have to become better in primary schooling.

We also launched a program for the next four years where we spent 200 million euro in the refurbishment of our primary schools, extensions, you know, better equipment, and all this.

And also kindergarten, you know, because we find that, German families find it hard, to find kindergarten places, you know, so that both parents can go out to work.

So we have to get better in that field as well.

Then there's always public transport needs to be better in this city.

And there are some, big building projects.

We want to build a new opera house, which is unfortunately very expensive, but it's also necessary, you know, because we're a city of arts and culture.

And we have to rebuild one of the bridges across the Rhine.

So there's plenty of things to do.

But we got to get this man a schnitzel pronto.

You want to have a look at the menu?

There's more than schnitzel in this place.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Ah, the pork knuckle.

That's a huge piece of pork.

Very traditional.

Not exactly my favorite.

What could really be nice, could be the wildschweinbraten, that is wild boar.

Uh-huh.

Ah here, here we go, the sauerbraten.

That's very nice, too.

-That's very typical.

-Let's do that.

-Shall we do that?

-Yeah.

And the schnitzel.

And this is?

[laughs] In German, it's called mett.

It's raw meat.

You know, pork.

I'm going to skip that.

Okay.

-Is that all right?

-Yeah, that's all right.

-I never order it.

-Yeah, yeah.

But, in the Brauhäuser (breweries) it's very famous.

-Yeah.

-And people are really love it.

I've had to tartare before, but pork, raw pork.

Not for the faint of heart.

Yeah, I really agree.

Now, this is typical pub food, but is it also typical of what Germans eat at home?

Yeah, it is, or it used to be, you know, I mean time's changed and it's a very heavy, very meat, very dominant, you know.

So I think habits have changed, but, frikadellen (German meatballs), reibekuchen (potato pancakes) that is still very popular.

Yeah.

What did your kids grow up eating?

My kids are half Indian.

Because their mother, my ex-wife, we used to cook very international, you know, -Italian, -Yeah.

Asian, especially Indian.

You know, they really love Indian food.

But they like schnitzel and frikadellen they do like it.

I like that mustard very much.

Any good mustard, filled up your nose, nostrils.

So tell me more about the, program last night with the congressman.

And on the future of, I gather, US, German relations, German, US relations.

There is an institution in Cologne called the America House.

A German institution, sort of that, tries to promote American culture and, cross Atlantic ties.

And we are a member of that institution, and the city of Düsseldorf, although it's located in Cologne.

And they organize this program every year of two former members of Congress, members who have just recently left from Congress, and they always invite a Democrat and a Republican to tour around North Rhine-Westphalia.

And so they spent time in Cologne, some time in Düsseldorf, time in Dortmund, for example.

And on Monday night they were here.

And we always, organize a town hall meeting with them.

We invite the general public and around, about 200 people.

They give little speeches, do a little interview, or a moderated talk on stage.

And then people can ask questions.

And we ran the evening with the headline, are we still friends?

Although they were Republican and Democrat.

They were very unanimous on, in their views on Donald Trump.

The Republican was, sort of kicked out of Congress because he was anti-Trump, you know.

And I hope you also say they're unanimous in their view that we are still friends.

-They are.

-Good.

Well, one of my points that I made in my introductory speech was that no matter what national governments do, cities can still cooperate.

And, one of these congressmen used to be a mayor in Massachusetts, near Boston, somewhere, and he agreed very strongly on that.

He said, if you're a mayor, you don't wait for federal government to give you any help or financial support.

You just get on with things you know, and do things.

We just have to solve everyday issues, you know, and that's our common ground, you know, even if national politics is being very adverse, you know.

How does German federalism, if you will work compared to US federalism?

So your relationship to your state, to your mother country, how does it compare to the US system?

From what I know about the US system, the cities have a stronger position here.

You know, we have more financial, freedom.

And we're autonomous financially.

The states, on the other hand, are stronger in the US.

You know, German federal states, they are in charge of police and in charge of education, but that's it.

But they have a say in federal politics, you know, there is a, our second, chamber of Parliament is a state's maybe a bit like the Senate in the US.

So the prime minister, of North Rhine-Westphalia, he does not have a great responsibilities here at home, but he has a very important voice in federal politics.

And manages the "governors," if you will, of the respective states.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So since Chancellor Merkel has left political life it's kind of bonkers to think how long she led.

And I've always considered her, and Macron, part of a kind of triumvirate with the United States to preserve democracy.

But the interesting thing is, she and Macron both have led for so many years.

I don't know if it will be a decade plus for Macron, but for her, it was, more than ten years.

What was the impact of that on political life in this country?

To have someone occupy that seat for so long?

The era of Angela Merkel was a very stable time, you know, it was a stable government, quiet governing, but also a time where, we missed out on sort of modernizing the country.

And that's one of the great criticism towards Merkel.

She governed very smoothly.

And, you know, there were no conflicts.

And we showed some international leadership.

But, when it comes to, modernizing the economy, modernizing our infrastructure, she, was not very active.

She was not transformational.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I had the opportunity to interview Bill Browder at this conference.

I don't know if you know him, but he's written a couple of books on Russia.

He was an American investor.

He says in his book that Merkel's reliance on Russian energy, essentially facilitated the war in Ukraine.

I mean, the... I agree, I fully agree.

I think that's one of, she has a lot of credits, you know, and, Merkel years were good years for Germany, but, she made some historic mistakes and one is the energy dependance on Russia.

She decided almost single handedly that Germany sort of moves out of nuclear energy and German technology, and the nuclear field was leading in the world.

We had the safest nuclear plants in the world, and we were the first ones to cut them off, you know, and they were replaced by cheap Russian gas and oil.

And that was a big mistake, as we know now.

And also the kind of appeasement politics towards Russia after they invaded the Crimea Peninsula.

I think if we had developed a stronger stance towards Russia than the war in Ukraine would never happen.

It was almost common sense in German politics that Russia was a potential partner -Right.

-not an enemy.

So it was not her only fault.

But I was surprised.

And maybe this is emblematic of nothing.

So I'm not here to judge.

I'm just observing that the Munich train station was inferior from just a modernization perspective.

Inferior to the old Penn Station in New York City.

Okay.

Not the new Moynihan Station.

I don't know if that is indicative of what you're conveying about -It is, it definitely is.

-infrastructure.

It's road infrastructure.

It's rail infrastructure.

Education system, you know, schools and universities, sort of, it's digitalization.

But was that happening behind the scenes at all during her tenure?

It was not only behind the scenes we sort of, for the last 15 years mayors have been saying, cities are underfunded, infrastructure is underfunded because people, feel that in the cities, you know, it's where they notice first.

If your railway station, is sort of going down the [gestures].

Then people in cities realize first that there's things to fix, you know.

We kept addressing that to federal politics.

But with little success, to be honest.

Well... Cheers!

Thank you.

You like it?

I'm going back for seconds.

I like it.

Mr.

Mayor, I can tell you take your job seriously, as one should in any profession.

But I know that a city never sleeps.

What's your routine like?

I usually start my day around 7:30, 8:00, in town hall.

And the first thing is reading briefings.

Normally there's internal meetings, you know, with members of my staff, for example, or well, with my deputies, you know, we are organized like, basically, like a government.

You know, I have like ministers, you know, and I have seven deputies who are responsible for a certain field of local government, you know.

And, we meet as a group once a week on Tuesday mornings.

But I have almost every day I talk to one of them and we go through their agenda, you know, and what's on in their field of government.

We have 92 councilors.

It's like a city parliament.

Would they agree with our earlier characterization of housing as the top issue?

Yeah, they do.

They strongly do.

Housing was one of the main topics in the electorate, in the mayoral campaign in September.

And everybody agreed that that was the topic that needs to be addressed most urgently.

You know, Düsseldorf has a strong tradition and people are very down to earth here, and very keen on traditions.

You know, just look at the food, you know, it's very traditional.

But, Düsseldorf is also a very international city.

You know, we have the largest Japanese community in Europe.

We have a strong Chinese community, and the Indian community is growing.

And, there's people from 180 nations living in Düsseldorf, you know, so people from all over the world are here, you know, and there's quite a quick turnover in population as well.

And that makes it just very open, you know, open international, very tolerant and, liberal.

And that's what people like.

And it's functioning, you know, public transport is okay.

Education is okay.

We have spent almost 2 billion in the last ten years in our education system.

So that works quite well at too.

And people like that.

A friend of mine recently said, do you know how much we spend every day on the military industrial complex?

It's extraordinary, and some of it is necessary for sure, but I think it's also enlightening when you say that, when you use that billion number for education.

I don't think I've spoken to a lot of mayors in the United States who are using a billion figure.

Yeah, right.

When it comes to education.

What was the calling of public service for you?

What inspired that in you?

Two things, I wanted to do some work for the common good, you know.

I did my legal training in one of the large law firms here in Düsseldorf, and I thought, this will never be satisfying, you know, just dealing with contracts, and mergers, and acquisitions, and these kind of things.

That's what they did in that firm.

Thank you sir.

There was one very idealistic reason.

And the other one is that, when I did my training, I saw that everybody who was working there was, you know, starting at eight and finishing at midnight.

And, that was a time when we were thinking about starting a family.

And, I said, if I think I work 60, 70 hours a week, you know, I mean, this is not possible, you know.

Which is what I do now, but, for a better purpose.

So, what is this here?

This is sauerbraten.

Kind of like a brisket?

Is that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right.

Ah, nice!

And it's marinated for quite a long time, you know.

Mm, that's good.

My mother use to marinate it for at least three days.

That is good.

When I was in Lisbon with Mayor Moedas.

He was just anticipating the beginning of that election period.

I was actually, I interviewed him the day before that, accident.

The funicular accident.

And he won, he won re-election.

But at that point, it wasn't even legal for him to start campaigning.

In other words, the moneys that infiltrate political life in the US are just, it's like termites, like a house has termites.

It just [gestures].

It's for federal and state elections that has a public funding.

Yeah.

For local, there's not.

So, I do fundraising, you know, but on a, I think on a much smaller scale than in the US.

And my campaign was, I was campaigning for maybe 2 or 3 months, you know, it's very dense.

By law, there's a definition of a six week period before Election Day where you can put out posters in the public you can... -So, that is legal.

-Yeah.

But, there's no law prohibiting that you start -a social media campaign.

-Right.

-For example, you know.

-Right.

And that's because you were asking, earlier on, yes, I am on social media.

I have my own social media accounts and Niels is running the city account, you know, so we have two systems.

Got it.

Got it.

The one is my personal, -where I can be a politician, -Right.

where I can say, vote for me.

And on the accounts run and financed by the city, I do the official business.

-Right.

-Yeah.

You feel a little better now?

I was hungry.

I know you were a little tired.

-I'm glad.

-No, I'm fine.

I like the darker beer.

If I were being fully candid, I'd say I like the latkes better in Cologne, but I like the beer better here.

How have things changed in the country since the new chancellor took office?

They were expecting significant changes in migration, sort of, a stop of uncontrolled migration to Germany.

And they had some success on that.

But there was also great hope of, social and economic reforms, lower taxation, more stability for pension funds and reform of the health system.

And, efforts to cut bureaucracy, red tape, as the British say.

And that hasn't happened yet, which I keep saying it's unfair to say it hasn't happened yet because it's more or less half a year, you know.

They managed to set up a fund of 500 billion for infrastructure for the next ten years, which is, widely acknowledged as a good step forward.

And, that is just now being put into operation, you know.

We were notified that we had about, 280 million from that money for Düsseldorf.

Which is, not really a lot if you consider that it's a ten year program, but it helps, you know.

So what's your response to constituents who want lower taxes but want better infrastructure?

Well, we don't promise lower taxes, you know.

And nobody asked for lower taxes except, business taxation.

You know, that's the great promise because, in Germany -we have the highest rates, -Right.

in company taxes, you know, and we have to do something about that.

But there's no sentiment that... So you don't think that lowering taxes on the businesses would inhibit at all the desire for or the implementation of infrastructure modernization.

No, I'm quite confident, we have to manage, what we have to aim is at is, that the economy starts growing again, you know, where we are in this stagnation or have been in stagnation for the last five years.

Our economy is the same size as before Covid.

Right.

So everything that ignites growth is good.

So if you lower taxation and if you cut bureaucracy and stop some of this overregulation that Europe has to fight, we just hope that the economy will grow again.

And that is eventually generates more revenue than higher rates.

Right.

All this time, I was calling you mayor, Mr.

Mayor.

No, Stephan.

No, I know, but you're also a doctor.

-Legal PHD, yeah.

-Legan doctor, that's great.

Well, I hope I didn't offend you by calling you mayor, instead of doctor.

No, call me Stephan.

Thank you a pleasure, a privilege.

Yeah, it was a great night.

[music] Continuing production of The Open Mind has been made possible by grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Angelson Family Foundation, Robert and Kate Niehaus, Robert S. Kaplan Foundation, Grateful American Foundation, Draper Foundation, and Lawrence B. Benenson.