The wedding guests of Christian Lindner and Franca Lehfeldt received the bridal couple after the wedding on late Saturday afternoon in front of the church on Sylt. Bright petals swirled through the air when the Federal Minister of Finance and his bride came out of the St. Severin Church.
Afterwards, Lehfeldt and Lindner chatted with their guests in front of the church, and there was a champagne reception. In the evening there was to be a celebration in the “Sansibar” on the North Sea beach.
Before the wedding, the bride and her father arrived in a cabriolet at St. Severin Church in Keitum. She was wearing a backless dress with a long train and a bow at the nape of her neck and her hair was loose.
Lindner (FDP) wore a dark blue suit and a silver tie with a white rose as a boutonniere.
Shortly before the wedding ceremony, prominent guests also gathered in front of the church: Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz came with his wife, Brandenburg’s Education Minister Britta Ernst (both SPD). Bundestag Vice President Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP) and North Rhine-Westphalia’s former Prime Minister Armin Laschet (CDU) were among the guests, as was entrepreneur Frank Thelen, known from the TV show “Die Höhle des Löwen”.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz came with his wife Charlotte – both had already been spotted the night before when they arrived on a private plane.
Lindner (43) and Lehfeldt (33), who works as a political reporter for the news channel Welt, were married in a civil ceremony on Thursday. On Friday they celebrated their bachelorette party.
There was also a minor incident on Friday evening: around 35 punks stood in front of a hotel in Keitum and were loud but otherwise peaceful, a police spokesman told the German Press Agency on Saturday. Several media had previously reported.
The group’s aim was probably to disrupt the politician’s celebrations, the spokesman said. However, the punks would have made a mistake in the hotel. Shortly before midnight, the police issued the group with evictions and finally accompanied the punks on the train to Westerland.
The wedding of the Federal Minister of Finance and his wife continued to occupy the officials on Saturday. In the morning, for example, an unauthorized drone was sighted over the church where Lindner was supposed to get married in the afternoon.
However, the owner could not be found. According to the spokesman, police explosives detection dogs were also in action around the church. The spokesman did not want to say how many police officers are on duty for the wedding.
Numerous curious people also gathered on the other side of the church. There, “TV total” presenter Sebastian Puffpaff distributed T-shirts with various motifs of the wedding couple, canned beer and small flags. This place had to be vacated at around 2:00 p.m. In the meantime, several hundred people were waiting to catch a glimpse of the couple and their prominent guests. Some punks also came.
While the onlookers in front of the church were peaceful and curious about the couple, there was controversy on (social) media about wasting taxes and an inappropriate timing for the celebration, as well as about the couple getting married in the church , although both are said to have left the church. However, when he was sworn in as Federal Minister of Finance, Lindner took the oath with the addition “so help me God”.
The Protestant ethics professor Mathias Wirth criticized the wedding. He told the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” that this was a “little socially and morally sensitive luxury wedding of a minister who at the same time wants to cut the Hartz IV rates for the long-term unemployed”.
