Rivals vie to bag Olaf Scholz’s old satchel
Olaf Scholz in the Bundestag with his battered bag, which he also uses for government business abroad
MICHAEL KAPPELAR/DPA/ALAMY
For 40 years Olaf Scholz has carried around the same leather satchel containing briefing notes, reading glasses, his party membership file and often a book: the novels of Thomas Mann and Günter Grass or a dense history.
Now chancellor of Germany, Scholz is still seldom seen without the increasingly battered bag, which has travelled to Kyiv, Washington and Tokyo.
For a man with a strong taste for privacy and an understated appearance, it has become the closest thing there is to a Scholz trademark: a symbol of a politician who prizes routine, diligence and cautious professionalism. The satchel has taken on such a status that two institutions are already vying to secure it for posterity once he is done with it.
Scholz said some colleagues have called his satchel worn, but he thinks of it as “patina”
KAY NIETFELD/ALAMY
The House of History
