For eight years, he was the 'mainstay' of the German SPD Party, their 'boss' and chairman. Quietly today, Sigmar Gabriel gave notice that he's retiring and leaving the party in November. No real party....no statue.....nothing.
From 2009 to 2017, he was the front guy for the party and had his image on TV almost every other night. He was the guy who emphasized the common worker and little-guy throughout Germany.
Quietly, the party in 2017 staged things to ditch him, and move him on out. When the smoke had cleared, there were a significant amount of hostility with SPD-voters over how it was handled, and to some degree, it probably opened the door for some voters to walk out.
Gabriel stayed around in the Bundestag for the past two years, but it's mostly a chance to watch the party dissolve and lose more public clout. He's got a pension, and he'll go to write a book or two on public frustration with German politics.
Some regular Germans (the folks over the age of forty), will say that there's some need for a Gabriel-like politician to come and rescue the nation. Others probably will suggest that the time and place for guys like this dissolved away in the 1980s.
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