Overview
- Regional broadcaster RBB reported, and the Senate Chancellery confirmed, that Wegner played tennis from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday during the outage.
- The mayor had told journalists a day later that he spent the entire day at home on the phone and had shut himself in his office.
- In subsequent interviews, he said he took an hour of sport to clear his head, insisted his phone was on loud, and described his earlier phrasing as a mistake.
- The power failure followed a suspected arson attack on a cable bridge, initially cutting electricity to about 45,000 households and 2,200 businesses—roughly 100,000 people—with full restoration on the fifth day.
- Opposition figures from the Greens, SPD, and Left criticized his crisis leadership, AfD and FDP politicians demanded his resignation, and he declined to say whether he would step down.