Schröder's Bond With Russia: A Little Girl, Now His Own

New York Times ^ | August 18, 2004 | MARK LANDLER

[OESY]

FRANKFURT, Aug. 17 - Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany has been a healer of old wounds this summer, traveling to France to take part in the ceremonies commemorating the 60th anniversary of D-Day; to Poland, where he honored those killed in the Warsaw uprising; and to Romania, where he laid roses at the grave of his father, a young soldier lost in World War II.

Now, Mr. Schröder has built an even more personal bridge to a former wartime foe: he and his wife, Doris Schröder-Köpf, recently adopted a 3-year-old girl from Russia.

The adoption, reported Tuesday by two German newspapers and by Russian news agencies, was not confirmed by the German government, which said it was a private matter for the chancellor.

According to Bild Zeitung, a German mass-market paper, Mr. Schröder and his wife picked up the girl, Viktoria, from a children's home in St. Petersburg several weeks ago. She has been living since then with the Schröders at their private residence in Hanover, in northern Germany.

The adoption was made under a veil of secrecy that would be inconceivable for a top elected official in the United States. No photographs or details about the girl were made public. The chancellor and his wife traveled to St. Petersburg on a private trip that was not reported here.

Ms. Schröder-Köpf has zealously guarded the privacy of her other child, a 13-year-old daughter, Klara, from a previous marriage. Mr. Schröder, who has been married four times, has no children of his own.

For those interested in symbolism, the adoption is yet another sign of the warming trend in Russian-German relations over the past few years. Bitter enemies in World War II, tense neighbors during the cold war, the two are in the midst of a burgeoning political and culture exchange.

Mr. Schröder has forged close personal ties with President Vladimir V. Putin, finding common ground, among other things, in opposing the American-led war in Iraq. Mr. Putin and his wife dropped in on Mr. Schröder in Hanover last April to celebrate his 60th birthday. The chancellor alerted Mr. Putin to the planned adoption, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

Ms. Schröder-Köpf, 41, a former journalist for Bild who has written a children's book, has been active in charities that care for young people in St. Petersburg, according to the newspaper.

A spokesman for Mr. Schröder declined to comment on the adoption, saying, "This is a private matter for the chancellor and his wife."

The government's nonresponse underscores how much privacy German leaders are still accorded. On the same front page of Bild that featured the Schröder adoption news, Germany's defense minister, Peter Struck, disclosed in an interview that he had suffered a mild stroke in June.

At the time, the Defense Ministry said Mr. Struck had been hospitalized for "circulatory problems." After that, he basically dropped out of sight. In the interview, Mr. Struck, 61, said that after convalescing and taking off most of the summer, he was ready to return to work.

Political analysts say the news media take their lead from the German public, which draws a line between the official and private lives of politicians. Reinhard Schlinkert, the chairman of Dimap, a polling firm in Bonn, said that before the last election, he had surveyed people about whether Mr. Schröder's serial divorces affected their view of him. "Nobody was interested," he said.

Still, even a German leader can benefit from a good-news story like the adoption of a young girl, Mr. Schlinkert said.

Bild, the most widely read paper here, gave lavish play to the adoption, calling it the "most touching story of the year." Analysts are already calculating how much the news will help Mr. Schröder, whose Social Democratic party has slumped to historic lows in public support because of the government's campaign to scale back Germany's generous welfare subsidies.

Mr. Schröder's personal popularity remains higher than that of his party. But Mr. Schlinkert said the afterglow of the chancellor's adoption, and its suggestion of closer German-Russian ties, would fade quickly.

"It won't help the party out of its hole," he said. "He will only be re-elected if the number of unemployed people drops and the economy takes off. But he does have two more years to go."

[Decombobulator]

Well I guess it's better to be adopted by some rich Germans than become a prostitute like all the other girls in Russian orphanages will become.