[A-List] Germany: political crisis

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Chancellor's wife denies split

John Hooper in Berlin
Friday January 17, 2003
The Guardian

Doris Schröder-Köpf, the German chancellor's wife, broke her silence about
reports of a marital crisis yesterday to denounce them as "sheer madness".

Her intervention coincided with a crucial political victory for Gerhard
Schröder. A parliamentary committee set up to investigate whether he had
tricked his way back into office decided at its opening session not to
interrogate him before the next big test of public opinion, the state
elections on February 2.

Both matters have a bearing on the same issue: the trustworthiness of the
most powerful man in Germany.

While opposition MPs have been accusing him of duping voters before last
September's general election by hiding key economic figures, part of the
press has been hinting that at the same time he was fooling his wife, who
played an important part in his re-election.

Ms Schröder-Köpf said in an interview published in the magazine Stern
yesterday that the reports about her marriage were "quite clearly a
campaign".

Mr Schröder, whose fourth marriage this is, has been the subject of rumours
and allegations about his private life ever since taking office.

But the whispering grew louder last year after his wife moved from Berlin to
his home town, Hanover.

Last month Mr Schröder announced that he was seeking an injunction to
prevent an east German paper repeating a claim that when he returned to
Hanover at the weekends he slept elsewhere.

Ms Schröder-Köpf said flatly: "He spends the night with me and we are very
happy with things that way."

A Berlin court will hear his application next week. His wife made no direct
comment on a subsequent report in a British Sunday newspaper linking Mr
Schröder to a German television presenter, but she pointed out that his
movements were constantly monitored, as were hers.

"We can account for every second of our lives," she was quoted as saying.

Ms Schröder-Köpf, who is 19 years the chancellor's junior, said: "We are
happily married. We have a marriage that works well."

She expected the marriage to last "at least as long as that of my parents'"
marriage, which ended with her father's death.

The private lives of German politicians are meant to be protected by law and
rarely became a public issue. But the normal rules have been thrown to the
wind since September's general election as the press and public have reacted
with outrage to the re-elected centre-left coalition's imposition of a
string of wholly unexpected tax rises and benefit cuts.

The measures were taken to fill a gap in the public finances far bigger than
anything acknowledged by government politicians before polling day.