Politics
As a larger mid-sized city, Marburg, like six other such cities in Hesse, has a special status as compared to the other municipalities in the district. This means that the city takes on tasks more usually performed by the district so that in many ways it is comparable to an urban district (kreisfreie Stadt).
The mayor of Marburg, Egon Vaupel, directly elected in January 2005 and in office since 1 July 2005, is from the Social Democratic Party of Germany. His deputy, the head of the building and youth departments, Dr. Franz Kahle, is from Alliance '90/The Greens. The majority in the 59-seat city parliament is held by a coalition of SPD (22 seats) and Green (13 seats) members. Also represented are the factions of the Chrisitan Democratic Union (14 seats), The Left (4 seats), the Free Democratic Party (2 seats), a CDU splinter group MBL (Marburger Bürgerliste- 2 seats), the BfM (Bürger für Marburg – 1 seat) and the Pirate Party (1 seat).
Among the left wing groups are ATTAC, the Worldshop movement, an autonomist-anarchist scene, and a few groups engaged in ecological or human-rights concerns.
The city of Marburg, similar to the cities of Heidelberg, Tübingen and Göttingen, has a rich history of student fraternities or Verbindungen of various sorts, including Corps, Landsmannschaften, Burschenschaften, Turnerschaften, etc.
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Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God’s infinite mercy, a last resort.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently.... Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“From the beginning, the placement of [Clarence] Thomas on the high court was seen as a political end justifying almost any means. The full story of his confirmation raises questions not only about who lied and why, but, more important, about what happens when politics becomes total war and the truth—and those who tell it—are merely unfortunate sacrifices on the way to winning.”
—Jane Mayer, U.S. journalist, and Jill Abramson b. 1954, U.S. journalist. Strange Justice, p. 8, Houghton Mifflin (1994)