Trumpf CEO Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller urges restraint over outrage in the AfD firewall debate. She sees no reason for an immediate exit from the family businesses association. Instead, she emphasizes the need for better policies to address real issues.
In an interview with the Stuttgarter Zeitung, Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller, CEO of toolmaker Trumpf based in Ditzingen, Baden-Württemberg, comments on the heated debate within the Die Familienunternehmer in Deutschland association regarding the AfD. The world leader in industrial lasers stresses having no sympathies for the party and feeling deep disgust at statements from its top figures. Yet she advises against emotional responses: 'In such situations, I tend to wait first, drink a glass of red wine, come down from the emotional highs, and then reconsider if it's a sensible step.'
Under president Marie-Christine Ostermann, the association recently decided to invite AfD representatives to events for substantive debate. Ostermann, who has done an 'admirable job' for years, argues that the AfD's worldview does not align with the members' liberal and market-economy convictions, but the firewall's ignoring strategy has proven ineffective. At a parliamentary evening on October 8 at Deutsche Bank in Berlin, Leif-Erik Holm, the AfD's economic policy spokesman in the Bundestag and candidate for minister-president in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, participated.
The shift divides the association, which represents about 6500 family businesses—including those with at least ten employees and one million euros in turnover. While some signal approval, western German mid-sized firms warn against breaking the AfD firewall; companies like Fritz-Cola, Rossmann, and Vorwerk have exited. Boycott calls target dm, whose CEO Christoph Werner had generally supported the stance. Dm responded: Political debates should be conducted 'with care'; the criticism confirms the importance of differentiated engagement.
Leibinger-Kammüller, who has never invited AfD representatives herself, deems a party ban too late. One cannot condemn all AfD voters, especially locally where mid-sized firms like Trumpf are rooted in Saxony. Instead, politics must tackle issues like overregulation, bureaucracy, high ancillary wage costs, rising health insurance contributions, and the sense of patronization, so people feel taken seriously.