“Hello, let’s get to know each other, I’m Steffen Krollmann.” Krollmann, Chairman of the Frankfurt District Association of Workers’ Welfare (AWO), who has been in charge of its fortunes since 2020, has the wife he met in the corridor of the labor court hand there, never seen before. It is Zübeyde Feldmann, the estranged wife of Frankfurt Mayor Peter Feldmann (SPD), from whom she now lives separately.
Zübeyde Feldmann is an employee of the Frankfurt AWO. In September 2014, she, who was then still called Temizel, applied for the management position of the German-Turkish AWO daycare center Dostluk, which she took over as manager in 2015. This process is a part of the big AWO affair, in which numerous people are being investigated and in which charges have already been brought against some former executives, including the couple Hannelore and Jürgen Richter, on suspicion of fraud. Frankfurt’s Lord Mayor Peter Feldmann was also charged and has to answer to the district court from October onwards for accepting benefits: He is accused of having enabled his then partner Zübeyde Temizel to be employed as head of the Dostluk day care center because of his official position as Lord Mayor, while she was without ” objective reason” has been granted a salary in excess of the collective bargaining agreement and a company car.
However, according to the AWO, Zübeyde Feldmann hardly worked as a kindergarten teacher. Her daughter was born in the summer of 2016 and she went on parental leave. She has been on sick leave since August 2020, as AWO lawyer Norbert Pfluger explained in court. She had missed offers for operational integration management, her position in an AWO daycare center in Sossenheim could only be filled on an interim basis. Pfluger went on to say that the AWO also did not know how things should continue in the future, since it was not known what Zübeyde Feldmann was ill with. That is why the AWO gave her notice, against which she is taking legal action. On Tuesday, the parties met at the labor court for a first hearing, which was about the possibility of an amicable settlement.
Feldmann’s lawyer denied that her client had refused the operational integration management. She was definitely interested in continuing to work at the AWO and made corresponding offers, which, however, were rejected “outright”. “I don’t have time for games,” said Krollmann. He doesn’t know Frau Feldmann and has no interest in harming her. But he is responsible for ensuring secure daycare operations and opening up perspectives for the provisional management. “You are welcome to work from 9 a.m. tomorrow,” said Krollmann. There is a job, but no severance pay. “Do you want to work? Are you healthy?” asked Krollmann.
He didn’t get an answer. Instead, Feldmann pointed out that the AWO employs people who have passed on information about them to the media in the past. Pfluger rejected the judge’s proposal for mediation. Therefore, the court scheduled a hearing before the chamber.
