Built by Kohl in 1970, the State Chancellery's wine cellar in Mainz reopens for CDU control after 35 years of SPD use

With a change of government in Mainz this spring, the Christian Democrats regained possession of a remarkable piece of the states political furniture: a wine cellar built inside the historic State Chancellery by Helmut Kohl in 1970. The new Minister-President, Gordon Schnieder, has now stepped inside for the first time, ending a 35-year period during which the unique room was largely invisible to his party.

A chancellors blueprint for informal power

Kohl, who served as Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate from 1969 to 1976, installed the cellar in a former coal store on the ground floor of the protected Neues Zeughaus building. His explicit goal was to bypass the rigid rituals of cabinet meetings. The State Chancellery today states that Kohl wanted a place for informal communication and found the Ministerrat too formal and ritualized.

Helmut Kohl was particularly concerned with creating a place of informal communication. The meetings of the Council of Ministers seemed too formal and ritualized to him. And so he met with his cabinet or other guests for evening wine rounds to discuss state matters.

The room was designed by architect Horst Römer of Kaiserslautern, who used original regional artifacts: barrel staves from Edenkoben, ceramics from Bad Ems, and a cast of the Fröhlicher Steuermann sculpture taken from the Neumagen wine ship. The wall paneling and circular shape recall a giant wine barrel, and even today a faint odor of cellar and wine hangs in the air.

Thirty-five years of SPD custody

Since Rudolf Scharping became Minister-President in 1985, the cellar remained in Social Democrat hands. Schnieder admitted that hardly anyone from the current CDU parliamentary group had ever seen the interior. Marcus Klein was the first to just go in, he said, referring to his chief of the State Chancellery.

I knew the legendary wine cellar, but I had never been inside it myself.

For 35 years hardly any of us saw it. I believe nobody from the current parliamentary group.

A hazardous seating plan

Kurt Beck, the long-serving SPD Minister-President, recounted a story that led to one of the few physical alterations to the space. The large circular table originally had no passages, forcing everyone on the upholstered bench to stand up or clamber over the table if someone wanted to leave. Above it hung a heavy barrel lid with a sharp steel rim.

Bernhard Vogel seriously injured his head on it once.

Beck subsequently ordered the barrel lid taken down and two openings cut into the round table, a pragmatic modification that did not otherwise disturb Kohls original design. Schnieder confirmed that, aside from those passages, everything is still original from back then. Beck also emphasized that the cellar visibly demonstrates that Rhineland-Palatinate is wine country.

A cool refuge with an official future

During the summer heat, the cellar remains one of the few tolerably cool spots in the historic New Armory. Apart from the large circular arrangement, the room contains two smaller tables. It has previously hosted prominent guests such as the French chansonnier Gilbert Becaud and is occasionally opened to the public on open days.

Today the cellar serves a more routine function. Schnieder stated it is used primarily for internal meetings, closing evenings, and press briefings. Beck recalled that in his time it was deployed when you wanted to bring a bit of relaxation into the discussions, a purpose seemingly inherited by the new administration as it reacquaints itself with Kohls architectural legacy.