Posted on 04/12/2002 5:35:42 PM PDT by dighton
THE question "does he or doesn't he?" gripped Germany yesterday as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder went to court to counter claims that he dyes his hair.
Meanwhile, grey-haired Edmund Stoiber his election rival for the chancellorship, was being accused of faking his drinking prowess by filling his Bavarian beer mug with water.
The suave Mr Schröder, represented by a lawyer and backed by affidavits from his Berlin hairdresser, opened a legal battle to clear his name in a Hamburg court that was besieged by the media he is trying to muzzle. After brief opening formalities, the judge announced that a decision on the hair dyeing issue - a far bigger story in Germany than soaring unemployment or the economic recession - would be postponed until May 17.
Michael Nesselhauf, the chancellor's lawyer, emerged to explain why his powerful client, who has an impressive head of dark brown hair despite being 58, had thought it worth drawing attention to such a personal issue.
"In an election year," said Mr Nesselhauf, "it can become unpleasant when this claim is spread because it is always put about with intent." The controversy flared after the DDP news agency quoted a public relations adviser as saying: "It would do Mr Schröder good to admit that he dyes his greying temples."
Although the agency later ran a statement from a furious chancellor saying that he did not reach for the dye bottle when locked in the bathroom, DDP refused his other demand that it must sign an injunction agreeing never to repeat the claim. Mr Schröder then asked the courts to enforce the gagging order.
Yesterday DDP said it would take the matter to the Federal Court if it loses the first round so it seems that the row over the chancellor's hair may be unresolved for months, if not years, to come.
But there was some good news for Mr Schröder yesterday as a campaign by the centre-Right opposition to portray him as a fake, personally and politically, seemed at risk of backfiring. Reports surfaced suggesting that Mr Stoiber might not be quite the beer-swilling Bavarian that he is often depicted as in the press.
Die Welt newspaper said Berlin was alive with gossip that the 60-year-old Mr Stoiber, who is head of the centre-Right Bavarian Christian Social Union, often had his pewter beer mugs secretly filled with water or tea when photographed - vessel aloft - at beer festivals.
"Interested parties are spreading the word in the capital that Edmund Stoiber is not authentic. At beer festivals where beer is tapped he only has the strong beer in his first mug, if it all. Almost always he has water in his mug. Or even worse . . . Edmund Stoiber sometimes even has sage tea in his mug."
One well-placed political source in Berlin said: "It is well known within the opposition that Stoiber is a virtual teetotaller and that it is water or tea in those mugs."
A spokesman for Mr Stoiber said it was a "myth" that he did not drink any alcohol. But he had to be careful how much he consumed because of his workload. "He does drink some beer but he could not do all his work if he had too much."
It was true, he added, that on occasions during the last election in Bavaria in 1998 he was given sage tea because his voice was failing. For Mr Stoiber, creeping doubts about his beer capacity and Bavarian credentials could be damaging if they take hold in the run up to September's election.
His supporters have been quick to ridicule Mr Schroder over the hair story. "A chancellor who dyes his hair also fakes statistics. That is the truth," Karl-Josef Laumann, a CSU MP, told the Bundestag.
What, Mr Schröder's Social Democrats reply, about a chancellor who downs water from a beer jug?
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2002.
a.cricket
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (:-D
The youthful Siegfried, some decades later, had he not met with a boar.
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