Not long ago, we came across a portrait of a former German foreign secretary in a major German paper. Not knowing much about the gentleman, we decided to read it. The fact that a decision was needed is owed to distrust in any sort of piece that come under a variant of the headline Portrait of the Politician as a Young Man.
This one was standard fare for the most, until the following critical quote: Everybody who wanted to know knew in 1983 I was gay.
Wait, wasn't doing the gay thing illegal in Germany until fairly recently? We went back a couple of years to our post Holidays by numbers: 420 and 175 and verified some timelines.
A quick call to the K-Landnews friend you know as OMG (Old Mustached German) brought certainty.
Yes, it was illegal. Remember the story I told you about me having breakfast every morning before work at the O Club with the German officer?
Not the details.
Okay. This was the mid 80s, and, for a time, I had breakfast at the O Club before I'd shuffle through the gate. There were only a few people there at that time of the morning. Pretty much everybody had breakfast at home and went straight to work. I'd done this for less than a week when this young officer struck up a conversation, and from there on out we shared a table in the morning. My gaydar wasn't all that well developed at the time, though I recall I did have a "hmmm?" moment, if you will. This went one for a month or so, and then the man disappeared. He was just gone. I didn't think much of it, people to split from one day to the next in that line of work, and we hadn't become friends, you know, who would share plans and such. I really don't remember how long afterwards it was that I happened to run into two other officers talking about him. It was along the lines of 'you heard about so-and-so?', 'no, what happened?', 'he took to hanging out at the NCO club after work, so they transferred him asap'. Sounded like some were in the know, and they let him be until he started to try and make friends with the lower ranks.
This was around the same time that everybody in the party of the up and coming political leader knew and everybody who "wanted to know" knew too.
OMG had no idea how the life of his one time breakfast mate had subsequently unfolded, but it is rather certain that he did not make a stellar career in the German military after the unrequested transfer.
As opposed to the young politician.
Ah, well, double standards are awful. At least as long until one does not benefit from them.
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