Freiherr Doktor Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a fetching-looking young man of blue-blooded pedigree was until very recently the German Minister of Defense. He had been a shooting star/rainmaker with an attractive blond wife, sweet kids, a castle in northern Bavaria, the works.
Beloved by soldiers and with regular trips to Afghanistan where - critics murmured - he looked perhaps a little too dashing in his battle fatigues,
especially when he brought his wife, Stephanie (a princess of Bismarck pedigree, no less!), along in combat look too (I hasten to add: she paid the flight ticket herself).
Great things were expected from them, could they be the conservative Obamas of Germany in the future? After all, we haven't had a blue-blooded head of state since Kaiser Wilhelm II's somewhat hurried departure to exile in The Netherlands in 1918.
And the Austrian who followed him some years later was - in hindsight - an unfortunate choice, good to German shepherd dogs as he may have been. He wasn't even blue-blooded either.
For the "fabulous Guttenbergs" as a news magazine called them
"The sky was the limit.", to quote Tom Petty.
It all went pear-shaped three weeks ago when via the internet it came out that Baron and Doktor zu Guttenberg had cut and pasted his doctoral thesis (a comparative law work covering US and European unification from a constitutional angle) - or, even worse, had someone else do it for him - from other works (more than 70%) without citations. In Germany and with Karl-Theodor's education and academic title-conscious conservative constituency that is tantamount to being caught having sex with non-consenting, minor-aged animals you are closely related with. And not paying tax while doing it. He wriggled and writhed, stumbled and fell. First gave up the Doktor title and then as criticism even in conservative quarters did not die down (in his career he had gained some sort of notoriety in doing away with subordinates who had made alleged mistakes that might have hurt his image, "Drown him in ze castle trench, sofort!", old habits die hard) he did the inevitable and stepped down. Who knows what else might have come out, you never know what goes on in the stables in those lonely castles and who belongs genetically to whom.
Why am I boring you with this? Our former
Verteidigungsminister, der Herr Baron, never made a secret that he loved AC/DC, but when he had his honorable dismissal before the troops ("
der Große Zapfenstreich") his musical request was even more unexpected, a piece from noted English classical composers Blackmore/Gillan/Glover/Lord/Paice:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zij_DYyFrE&tracker=FalseYou can't argue with the man's taste, conservative or not. Come to think of it, however, and given the unfortunate academic events surrounding his political demise, a song that uses similar notes as Smoke on the Water, albeit performed by Humble Pie would have perhaps been even more apt?
I saw a splendid version of that song performed by an erstwhile lead guitarist of Humble Pie yesterday, but that, children, shall be the topic of another thread.
Let's not ignore the possibly prophetic content of Smoke on the Water though: Smoke has the habit of settling down eventually and water cleanses from guilt,
der Freiherr kommt vielleicht zurück?!Uwe
