2023 Author: Gabrielle Mercer | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 12:25
With his son Nicolas, a tough WEGA man like Markus also thinks about his gentle sides. Dad is so in love with the little one that he is on parental leave. The mom? Angelika Feigl, once press spokeswoman for Werner Faymann. We visited the small family at home.
When we get into the apartment, the little man is still asleep. But a few minutes later it is already there, the first squeak. "Yes, who's going to wake up?", Both parents run up and we follow them. He's cute, really! One eye half open, then the second and then the mouth, whole. Rrrraaaaaa. Hunger! Nicolas has been in the world for four weeks. An absolute dream child.
The mother is Angelika Feigl, 39, formerly the press spokeswoman for ex-Federal Chancellor Werner Faymann, now employed by a communications agency. The dad, Markus, 41, is a WEGA man. Without a surname, please. The bad guys, whom he repeatedly put in their place on his missions, don't need to know. And very soon he'll only care about one guy anyway. One that is still completely innocent.
Location: at home, between the cradle and the changing table. Trips: with the stroller. Armament: building blocks and rubber duck. Yes it is. Papa Markus is on parental leave for ten months. Does it do something that many men still shy away from. "It will be the best guarded baby," jokes the mom, who will go back to work from January after four months at home. She is, she says, the happiest mother in the world. But not so long ago she had actually already stopped wanting to have children. "It didn't work out, and I wasn't the youngest either." But then Markus entered her life. "And everything has changed." We want to know more about that now.
IT WORKED REALLY. "The first time we ran into each other in the corridor in the Federal Chancellery," he tells the story. "Nice, sympathetic," revealed the first glimpse of both of them. He was on the team that provided personal protection for the Federal Chancellor. You, as I said, its press officer. And then came Christmas 2014 and the associated company party, to which Werner Faymann also invited his bodyguards.
A conversation between Angelika and Markus started lively and ended with a spark. He was separated, was about to divorce. She was still married to a journalist. "But my heart was already free." "And I grabbed that right away," he laughs. And soon he presented his new love with his greatest wish: a child. "I've always been very fond of children. But with Angelika I was able to actually imagine it for the first time."
She, who felt the urge to have children less, agreed. "But only if you go on parental leave, I said." He was immediately hooked and pulled it off. Now, however, she doesn't even want to imagine having to go without her gold coin during the day. "When I think about it, I have to take my anti-baby blues drops right away," she says, half jokingly, explaining that Bach flowers are their support against postnatal hormone fluctuations. "I'm already built close to the water anyway." In front of us as witnesses, your loved one must promise her again immediately that she will notify her of every little progress made by her son. "Angelica is my grief anyway," he smiles. Because even if you are so well prepared when it comes to wrapping and co., Such a small person can, as is well known, drive you into the greatest helplessness. "And then no karate belt and no biceps are of any use."
What outshines everything, however, is the fact that you are so close to the "crime scene children's room". To be the first to experience every little progress made by the son. To build a unique connection to the offspring. "Nobody can take these ten months away from me."
TRUE STRENGTH. It was also no problem, according to Dad, to fix parental leave with the employer, the Vienna State Police Directorate. He could see a bit of astonishment among his colleagues, "because I've been going so long". It would be normal for someone to take up daddy month. In addition, "I think I am the first with us."
The most frequent comments were: "Well, if you can afford it." And in the opinion of the neo-dad, it is precisely the thing with money that makes many men shy away from taking longer maternity leave. "Usually the man earns more. And the fixed costs continue to run." With Markus and Angelika, it is she who gets more money every month. When it comes to childcare allowance, he has opted for the income-dependent option. It says that dad is entitled to 80 percent of the last salary, but not more than 2000 euros a month. Since March 1, there has also been a new model for childcare allowance: for each newborn there is an account with 12,377, 60 euros. Parents can choose flexibly how long they would like to receive this money. 33, 88 euros per day for a year or less money for a longer period of time.
19 percent of fathers in this country take parental leave. But at least the trend is increasing. The fact that a househusband is often still laughed at in the world of the "real men" does not affect the WEGA police very much. "Isn't it a great strength to choose your child?", He says and picks up the little one in his "pilot's grip". "He likes that!"
LIKE IN A NOVEL. Angelika is now making coffee. She is exhausted from the nights with little sleep, but she is happy. "I would never have thought that I would get pregnant so quickly," she sums up. How she "didn't think" so much. To find great love from one day to the next and shortly afterwards to have the "most beautiful and incomparable experience" of life as a mother, that is otherwise only possible in a novel.
Before that, she had left politics rather disillusioned. Seven years with the Federal Chancellor, from 2014 two more years as an advisor to Josef Ostermayer, Federal Minister for Art and Culture, until he too had to leave in 2016. "In politics you learn a lot about people," she says, "about loyalties and false friends. As she says, Werner Faymann can call her at any time if she needs something. And sometimes they meet by chance, at birthday parties together Friends, for example, but apart from that, she enjoys being “only an observer of the election campaign”.
DANGEROUS JOB. On the other hand, she is not always relaxed when her loved one is called to work that is not always completely safe. She can still see the pictures from the G-20 summit in Hamburg in July. WEGA men supported the German colleagues, Markus was there: "I had never experienced such potential for violence before," he confesses. It would have been very stressful for him to know that his heavily pregnant companion was worried. "But this mission was a huge challenge for me. And becoming a police officer was already my childhood dream."
In 2005 he, whose father had also been a detective, went to WEGA. "I knew there was action." Since then, the well-trained officer, trained in self-defense, has been part of the troop that is called to deal with delicate situations. The range of access targets ranges from gang crime to serious robbery and armed threats. "You always only know in retrospect what could have happened," says Markus. "At the moment of action, you are only focused on minimizing the risk."
OTHER PRIORITIES. To put his dream job on the back burner is no sacrifice at all for him. "Angelika made me the happiest person with Nicolas," he says happily. The priorities have totally changed. "We were never that party people. But now we don't even watch our favorite series like 'Homeland'", he explains. Fifty-fifty they shared the household. Although he thinks that he will have to hone his cooking skills for the dad days. "Actually, I can't do anything except frankfurter and schnitzel," he muses. But men are capable of learning. Markus is the best proof!