Politicizing a Tragedy

This being an election year, Germany’s leading politicians knew themselves how quickly mourning could deteriorate into accusations and name-calling.

That’s why following the school massacre in Erfurt, Thurinigia, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his conservative challenger, Bavarian premier Edmund Stoiber, have refrained from personal attacks on each other and their policies.

Instead, they’ve let their deputies do it.

Stoiber’s interior minister in Bavaria, Guenther Beckstein fired the first salvo, accusing Schröder’s family minister and interior minister in interviews of not doing enough on the federal level to prevent Friday’s shootings, in which 17 people, including 19-year-old shooter Robert Steinhaeuser, died.

Family Minister Christine Bergmann’s failure to propose legislation banning violent videos and computer games, was "scandalous ignorance," Beckstein said over the weekend.

Schröder’s deputies responded quickly. Bergmann said Beckstein’s comments themselves were scandalous and said it was his state that kept the youth protection act she drafted in 2000 from becoming a law.

Interior minister Otto Schily said Beckstein’s comments were "shameless and obscene," and appealed for consensus, rather than partisan infighting following such a tragedy.

"I don’t think that this incident in Erfurt should be pulled into the campaign, like Mr. Beckstein has unfortunately decided to do," Schily said in an interview with Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "I find it shameless and obscene, that someone wants to make a campaign out of this incident."

On Friday Stoiber had named Beckstein his interior expert for the upcoming campaign, a sign that he might become interior minister should Stoiber win elections on September 22. But the chancellor-hopeful was anything but supportive of his expert’s comments on Tuesday, saying that though there had been disagreements in the past, he was in favor of a consensus "across party lines."

Call for harmony

It seems the bad press received by politicians critical in the days following the massacre has taught the rest a lesson.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who visited Erfurt Saturday with his wife and Schily, announced Tuesday that he was calling a May 6 meeting of all the state premiers to discuss the aftermath of the attacks. The announcement harmonized with a request by Stoiber for an "alliance against violence."

There was harmony also in the calls for a further reform of the gun licensing law and a closer look at what the government could do to limit young people’s access to violent videos and computer games.

No one knows how long the peace will last. For the time being, it has been a welcome relief for German voters.