Letters from Munich

Letter from Munich – the Joseph Affair – 23

EINE DEUTSCHE FASSUNG STEHT WEITER UNTEN.

15 June 2001

Dear Mr. Graf, dear friends,

“With George Bush in Europe this week,” said Carlotta, “I’m reminded of three themes that are only superficially unrelated – corruption, district attorneys, and the death of the boy Joseph in Sebnitz.”

She took a sip of tea from a delicate Wedgwood cup, and we waited for her to continue. “I’m reminded how similar the behavior of government is, whether in Europe or in the United States.” She picked up a copy of The New York Times lying on the highly polished parquet next to her chair. “’The administration,’ The Times wrote last Saturday, ’proceeds on the belief that no one would possibly question its wisdom and that anything can be sold with the proper marketing strategy and enough repetition of an unvarying script.’ Sound familiar? But listen to this: ‘In the old days . . . the press respected the confidence of officials because it respected their superior knowledge and good faith. But . . . respect for their good faith had died with their false promises and lies.’ All of that was written about America, but it might just as well have been written about Europe, about Germany, especially about Germany’s Christian Democrats, the esteemed party of Helmut Kohl and Kurt Biedenkopf.”

Before anyone could object, she went on, “There is perhaps one difference, though, between the New World and the Old. America is slightly less corrupt. You might have one or two district attorneys in the United States who try to bring off the sort of massive miscarriages of justice that are becoming routine in Germany, but in America you wouldn’t have whole clusters of them everywhere.”

Again there were objections, but Carlotta silenced them with an imperious wave of her hand. We were, after all, on her estate, with its spectacular view of the Italian Alps. (One cynical acquaintance once remarked during a visit, “I’ll bet Berlusconi could turn this place into a terrific Obersalzberg.” I had to ask her what Obersalzberg was, and even how to spell it correctly. And I still don’t understand the connection between Berlusconi and Obersalzberg. My friends are sometimes too subtle for me.)

Anyway, Carlotta went on, “In Germany, if your rich enough or powerful enough, you can get any district attorney anywhere in the country to find some excuse for suspending their investigation of you, or doing whatever else you want.”

“The recent bank scandal in Berlin wasn’t suspended,” someone pointed out.

“That’s true,” Carlotta responded, turning her head and smiling in a way that has always reminded me somehow of Marlene Dietrich. “But it was never thoroughly investigated, and the few bank officials who were fined were reimbursed by the bank itself. And the only thing that happened to the chief culprit, Klaus Landowsky, was that he resigned his post with the Christian Democrats.” She laughed and repeated, “Christian Democrats – what a name. That party would make me ashamed to be a Christian, if I were one, and it certainly makes me ashamed to be a democrat.”

“All right,” one young man asked, “so the Berlin district attorney is in the CDU’s pocket. But nowhere else in Germany do such things happen.”

I thought for a moment that Carlotta would lose her patrician composure. But more about that next week. This letter is already long enough.

Sincerely yours,

Robert John Bennett

Mauerkircherstrasse 68

81925 Germany

Telephone: +49.89.981.0208

E-Mail:  

” title=”mailto:rjbennett@post.harvard.edu