Letters from Munich

Letter from Munich – the Joseph Affair – 29

EINE DEUTSCHE FASSUNG STEHT WEITER UNTEN.

27 July 2001

Dear Mr. Graf, dear friends,

A continuation of the letter of last week:

It appeared to the entire country that the family would finally see justice done. Saxony’s Prime Minister, Kurt Biedenkopf, one of the leaders in the CDU, Germany’s conservative opposition party at the federal level, appeared supportive and sympathetic. The entire affair, though, was considered by some to be a personal embarrassment for Biedenkopf. He is not only the Prime Minister of Saxony, but is said to have ambitions for the German presidency, a largely ceremonial office but one that carries with it enormous prestige. The affair was also considered humiliating for Biedenkopf because he is also the de facto head of the CDU in Saxony. Whoever heads the CDU in Saxony controls and is responsible for everything in the entire state, since that party forms a kind of shadow government, in and out of power, one that extends to almost all areas of life, including all but a few areas of civil responsibility.

The Drs. Kantelberg-Abdulla ended their talk with Chancellor Schroeder, whom they have described as friendly and sympathetic. They even received a telephone number through which one of his representatives might be reached at any time if they had problems. They then returned to Saxony House, where they had been staying. Here, however, events began to move in a different direction.

Reports in the German media indicated that the family had been given an opportunity to rest in a remote cloister in Bavaria, under pastoral care and with “psychological counselling.” They were hundreds of kilometers from their home, in a German federal state whose conservative prime minister, coincidentally, has close ties with his counterpart in Saxony, Kurt Biedenkopf.

However, this episode of the stay in Bavarian cloister is described somewhat differently by the parents themselves, than the way it was depicted in the media. The parents report that after meeting the Chancellor, when they returned to CDU territory in Saxony House, they were told that “for their safety and security” they would be taken out of Berlin. They responded that no place could be safer or more secure than the German capital itself. At the very least, they wished to return to their home in Sebnitz. They were left with the impression, though, that they had no choice – and this impression was probably not difficult to give to a rather obedient German woman and a man who had grown up in an Arab dictatorship. They were pressured into an armor-plated car by a group of men that they describe in terms reminiscent of the Stasi functionaries – some might refer to them as thugs — who were once responsible for security when Saxony was a part of the GDR.

This letter will be continued next week.

Sincerely yours,

Robert John Bennett

Mauerkircherstrasse 68

81925 Germany

Telephone: +49.89.981.0208

E-Mail:  

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