King Kohl's account
Timothy Garton Ash
When Herr von Brauchitsch came to see me . . . he brought a sum of money in an envelope. I took it, thanked him, locked it away, and gave it to the treasurer at the next opportunity.' This is Chancellor Kohl explaining to a parliamen- tary committee how, as leader of the opposition, he regularly received contribu- tions to the Christian Democrat Party's funds from the managing director of the Flick company. 'Was it a plain envelope?' asks a (Social Democrat) committee mem- ber. 'Didn't it say "Herr Helmut Kohl"?' I must tell you I wasn't especially interested in the envelope. It's many years ago. I should tell the truth. That's why I'm here. I can't remember what was on the en- velope,' Did Herr von Brauchitsch tell you how much was in it?' Naturally."Did you check?"No. • • From Flick's internal books it appears that these cash payments averaged PM50,000 (about £13,000) a visit, and that M total more than £150,000 was paid out wg. Kohl'. `wg.' is short for wegen, and may best be translated as 'on account of'. Kohl himself admits to receiving about i40,000 for his party. He also admits that the CDU should, by law, have named the source of any donation worth more than DM20,000. His excuse: 'All the democratic Parties did not observe this legal stipula- tion.' Tu quoque. There are four circles of hell in `Ger- many's Watergate'. The first circle con- tains those directly implicated in the Flick company's alleged bribery of government Ministers (albeit by 'contributions' to their Party funds'), in order to secure a quarter of a billion pound tax waiver — a waiver which was granted by the last government, and has been revoked by this one. This charge should eventually be tried in court, with Count Otto Lambsdorff, Economics Minister until his resignation in July, and two former Finance Ministers in the dock with Herr von Brauchitsch. The second circle contains all the estab- lished political parties and most of 'West G'ermany's leading companies, who con- spired to break the law — or 'not to observe legal stipulations', as Chancellor Kohl more delicately put it. The law in question was particularly strict, making corporate contributions to party funds fully taxable. The original intention was to avoid even the hint of the 'sold democracy' of the Weimar Republic: the kind of thing depicted in a famour poster by John aleartfield, which shows Hitler with his arm raised in the Nazi salute, and a huge into capitalist behind him, stuffing banknotes the open hand. (It is captioned: Millions stand behind me'.) But the unfor- tunate result was that these same com- panies — many of them, like Flick, with a long tradition of party finance since the Weimar Republic — chose instead to `launder' their contributions through a shadowy network of charitable founda- tions, through Institutes of This or That, though the Societas Verbi Divini, the Bonn seminary of a monastic order, and, oh dear yes, through cash in plain envelopes.
Still more damaging, however, is the suggestion that leading politicians were personally 'bought' by Flick; that, indeed, party leaders were made or broken by the captains of industry, as if the Federal Republic was a 'banana republic' and Flick the United Fruit Co. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the credibility of West German parliamentary democracy has been brought into question by the jottings of one man. Herr Eberhard von Brauchitsch, nephew of Hitler's commander-in-chief, kept a minute record of every move, every telephone call, every discreet after-dinner chat, in his political lobbying campaign on behalf of Flick. The Brauchitsch papers are to the Flick affair what the Nixon tapes were to Watergate. As Chancellor Kohl plaintively remarked to the parliamentary committee: 'I would never have imagined that a private letter to my wife would be copied and filed, because the letter-writer had sent 250 grammes of caviar.' And he continued: `I do remember that Colleague Brandt received a pot of caviar from Brezhnev. . . I never thought that on this account he didn't defend German interests.' Very subtle, what? Alas, with Flick & Co. it wasn't just caviar. Last month, the Bundestag President, Herr Rainer Barzel, was forced to resign when it emerged that he had been sup- ported to the tune of more than £400,000 by Flick, after he stepped down as leader of the CDU in 1973 to make way for Helmut Kohl.
The embarrassing impression that von Brauchitsch played king-maker in the CDU is reinforced by his own extraordin- ary jottings — with which the news maga- zine Der Spiegel has been regaling us, week by week. For example, shortly before Barzel's deposition as party leader, von Brauchitsch noted: 'Decided on Aktion Kohl.' But, -he wondered, 'Where is K's leadership potential?' and answered him- self: 'a) hasn't had a chance, b) no one else around. So don't go down one-way street K. Therefore no adulation status (Adlatus- status).' Not very flattering for old King Kohl. Again, in 1976 Brauchitsch reported to his super-boss, Friedrich Karl Flick, that Barzel had rung up complaining that Karl Carstens was going to get the job of Bundestag President. By his own account, von Brauchitsch immediately rang up Kohl to give him a rocket. In the end, Kohl asked for an early appointment — during which (Brauchitsch reported) they would discuss the 'tax policy question'. 'I then propose to outfit Kohl and Gattum [Fi- nance Minister of the Rhineland- Palatinate] in the same fashion as the other gentlemen in Bonn.' Outfitting the gentle- men in Bonn' was one of Brauchitsch's favourite phrases.' Now Field-Marshal von Brauchitsch may have given a slightly exaggerated impression of his own com- mand, but these notes would seem to leave Chancellor Kohl suspended somewhere between the first and third circles of the Flick-hell.
The fourth and largest circle comprises those who have taken part in the attempted cover-up. It would be unfair to include in this category all who voted for the new law on party finances which came into force this January. This was a sensible measure, which should make the 'laundering' of donations through crooked monks and plain envelopes unnecessary in future. But leading members of all four major parties have made at least one concerted attempt to vote themselves a free pardon — in the form of an amnesty for all tax evasion on donations to party funds. And even those upright parliamentarians who refused this deal have been curiously reluctant to press for disclosure regulations on the American model. Only the Greens, and newspapers like Der Spiegel, have strung up the dirty linen with delight. And, of course, they too have their reasons.
Public opinion polls, and the recent local government elections in Baden- Wiirttemberg, show clearly that the Flick affair has been bad for the government and good for the Greens. No one should underestimate the staying power of Hel- mut Kohl. Yet there is a groundswell of alarm in the Christian Democratic party itself. The historian Golo Mann has public- ly reflected on the propensity of the CDU for dropping leaders who lose elections. And a king-maker could hardly note now, `a) hasn't had a chance,' nor indeed, `b) no one else around.' Herr Gerhard Stolten- berg, the Finance Minister, scores better than the Chancellor in the popularity ratings. Herr Lothar Spath, the CDU premier of Baden-Wurttemberg, has a lean and hungry look. If I was Chancellor Kohl, I should be worried about Stoltenberg and Spath.
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