Head of Defense Finds He Needs One

Getting back to work after vacation is hard for anyone, but German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping has elevated that challenge to a personal Armageddon.

As the German government resumes business today after its long summer break, Scharping is facing demands that he resign triggered by a high-profile frolic on the Mediterranean island of Majorca.

His sin seems to have consisted of having a roaring good time with his new girlfriend while the rank and file of the cash-strapped Bundeswehr, the federal army, were preparing for dangerous duty with the NATO mission in Macedonia.

So enamored of Countess Kristina Pilati is the head of the German armed forces that he allowed the glossy Bunte magazine to photograph them nuzzling and splashing in the waters of the Spanish resort--an image of fiddling while Rome burns that conservatives found offensive.

Adding insult to injury, Scharping also made liberal use of military transport jets to shuttle between nagging government business and his beloved--once for a mere eight hours at a cost of nearly $200,000. With the Bundeswehr so saddled with funding cutbacks that troops have been asked to ration toilet paper, the imperatives of his ardor have exposed him to accusations of insensitivity and abuse of office.

What began as this year’s summer theater has escalated into a genuine crisis for the 53-year-old Scharping and, by extension, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who has already lost half a dozen Cabinet members to scandal in the less than three years he has been in office.

But the “Case of the Lovestruck Minister,” as the media have dubbed the very public Scharping-Pilati affair, also illustrates the discomfort many Germans still feel when confronted with intimate details of their leaders’ personal lives that have long been considered nobody’s business.

Before the more serious allegations of excessive use of government aircraft surfaced last week, Scharping was under fire only for having the bad taste to present himself and Pilati as the latest glamour pair.

Both Schroeder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer are popular targets of the paparazzi, with stylish wives (the fourth for each of them) young enough to be their daughters. But the public petting between the bony countess, also 53, and the balding, bespectacled Scharping, who dumped his wife of 29 years for his new romance, provokes more mockery than admiration. In its edition dated today, for instance, the influential weekly Der Spiegel condemns the defense chief for “conducting himself in the manner of a pubescent schoolboy.”

Noting that the Bunte vacation layout has subjected the charisma-challenged Scharping to public ridicule, Free Democratic Party chief Guido Westerwelle told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that “a defense minister without authority can hardly stay in office.”

Michael Glos, a prominent conservative, told NDR radio: “Not everything within one’s rights should be made so excessively obvious as Scharping has been doing. There are boundaries of good taste, and they were long ago overstepped.”

Glos and a leading member of the Christian Democratic Union, Friedrich Merz, are among those calling for Scharping to step down. On Thursday, they were delayed for several hours en route to visit German troops serving with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Macedonia when Scharping commandeered the military plane they were to take to ferry him from an eight-hour visit to Majorca. Merz’s briefcase had already been placed on board and was reunited with the fuming opposition leader 24 hours later.

After his return from vacation Saturday, Scharping was quoted in Sunday newspapers as saying he’s done nothing wrong and has no intention of resigning.

“I interrupted my vacation three times for professional reasons and followed the rules [for using state-financed transport] to the letter,” Scharping told Welt am Sonntag.

Schroeder, too, defended his beleaguered colleague.

“The rules for using government planes were adhered to,” he told reporters outside the chancellery.

The Bild am Sonntag newspaper quoted Scharping as saying he is extremely careful with taxpayers’ money and that he returned from Majorca this weekend aboard a no-frills charter flight.

But Bild claimed that Scharping has logged extensive time aboard the Defense Ministry aircraft that is at Cabinet members’ and lawmakers’ disposal, shuttling between Berlin and his Frankfurt political base--and Pilati’s home--three times a week on average.

The Christian Democrats have scheduled a Tuesday debate on the defense minister’s behavior, during which a lot of political posturing but no definitive action is expected, since the decision to keep or fire Scharping rests with the chancellor.

Still, the overheated affair that has kept German newspaper readers entertained through late summer could inflict lasting damage on Schroeder and his Social Democrats as the campaign for federal elections next year gets underway.