Three days of party: Christian Lindner and Franca Lehfeldt celebrated a lavish wedding party on Sylt. Also present: top-class political celebrities – and a few excitement.
Registry office, bachelorette party, church: Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner and journalist Franca Lehfeldt celebrated their wedding on Sylt with a lavish party.
The three-day party marathon reached its climax on Saturday with the wedding ceremony in a church in Keitum and the subsequent party in the «Sansibar». The wedding provided the most beautiful topics of conversation: celebrity guests, a beaming bridal couple, many classic details – and all this with a fairly stiff North Sea breeze.
Around 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, the bride arrived at the church with her father – in a backless dress with high slits, a long train and a bow at the nape of her neck. She wore her hair open – “a perfect Hollywood look”, some commented on the net. Bridegroom Lindner came to the wedding in a blue suit and silver tie, and he wore a boutonniere – a white rose. After the ceremony, bright petals twirled through the air for the couple, with some guests cheering. Eventually, the two climbed into a black convertible decorated with flowers and headed to the party.
Celebrity Wedding Guests
Among the wedding guests were Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his wife, the Brandenburg Minister of Education Britta Ernst (both SPD), Vice President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Kubicki (FDP) and entrepreneur Frank Thelen, known from the TV show “Die Höhle des Löwen”. CDU leader Friedrich Merz attracted the most attention. He landed on Friday with the private plane on the island. Merz himself was in the cockpit of the plane, with his wife Charlotte at his side. On Saturday at the wedding, to which he came with sunglasses and a blue suit, he met his party friend, the former Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Armin Laschet.
There were also a few strange events on the fringes of the wedding. “TV total” presenter Sebastian Puffpaff distributed T-shirts with various motifs of the wedding couple, cans of beer and small flags among the onlookers near the St. Severin church. As early as Friday evening, the police moved out because of several loud punks who had gathered in front of a Sylt hotel. A police spokesman said the group’s aim was probably to disrupt the politician’s celebrations. However, the punks would have made a mistake in the hotel. They remained peaceful, but there were still evictions. The police accompanied the group on the train to Westerland.
Police secure area
On Saturday morning, the police secured the church and the area lined with a frieze wall. The streets around the church grounds were partially closed to traffic at noon. Onlookers and journalists lined up hours beforehand on the bike path and footpath, hoping to catch a glimpse of the couple.
The North Frisian island is a popular celebrity holiday destination. The church that Lindner and Lehfeldt chose for their wedding ceremony is one of Sylt’s landmarks with centuries of history and is also a popular wedding location for celebrities. In 2018, for example, fashion designer Guido Maria Kretschmer tied the knot with his long-term partner Frank Mutters.
While a peaceful and curious mood prevailed among the numerous onlookers in front of the church, the (social) media discussed wasted taxes and an inappropriate timing for the celebration, as did the couple getting married in the church, although both are from the should have left the church. 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”.
Second marriage for Lindner
It is the second marriage for the 43-year-old Lindner. He was already married to the journalist Dagmar Rosenfeld. Lehfeldt is also a journalist. The 33-year-old works as the chief political reporter for the Welt news channel, which belongs to the Axel Springer media group.
It was announced last October that she and Lindner had gotten engaged. Shortly before, in an interview with the magazine “Bunte”, Lindner also talked about his wishes for the future together with Lehfeldt. Starting a family is very important to him. “Yes, Franca and I have that wish,” he replied when asked how the topic of having our own family looked. His greatest wish in life is “soon to have two, three or four girls or boys.”
