There are a lot of things one could say about Juergen W. Moellemann. And I am pretty sure that the German media is going to say pretty much all of them in the coming days and hours of reporting the details of the circumstances surrounding his dramatic death earlier today, when he – in what clearly looks like suicide for an experienced parachute enthusiast who often performed jumps as campaign events – jumped, then separated himself from his main parachute and did not use the spare one. Only fifteen minutes before this happened, the German Bundestag had lifted his Parliamentary immunity and police had entered several of his houses and his company’s offices with search warrants investigating several charges, especially tax related campaign funding fraud.
Despite his political record as federal minister, his self-declared role as vocal advocate of Palestinian cause, and last year’s unfortunate and eventually unsuccessful attempt to push the German Liberals even further to the non-economic right than they had gone on their own – including some forays into what many said was a verbal anti-semitism previously unheard of in post-war German politics that caused a huge stir of protest, and ultimately led to his latest political downfall, the sort-of-forced resignation from the party whose deputy leader he once was – most people will probably remember Juergen Moellemann for his abilty to crash and rebound. The teacher-turned-politician’s all-too-evident desire for public attention was certainly helpful to achieve this. And his ability to perform a good political show is hardly matched by anyone in the German political arena.
Political commentators in Germany have often dwelt upon how Moellemann’s high-risk hobby reflected his high-risk political life. Today, it seems the latter one was indeed the riskier activity. He had manoevered himself into a situation where he apparently felt that no parachute would assure a safe landing.
So he decided he did not need one anymore.
PS: Check Stefan Sharkansky’s Shark Blog for English coverage of the story.
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Jean-Michel
TODAY, I wanted to read you, dear Tobias !I have read about Moellemann’s death, when I was online.What a shock !You know that we have loads of politicians in France, who were involved (still are…) in dark affairs (corruption, corruption, and corruption…)As good as my memory is, they never commit suicide. Or they are kindly helped in their suicide attempts (I mean for instance our former Premier, Pierre Bérégovoy, who did not exactly look like unclean, but was rather naive and might have knew a bit too much about some of his political mates)As you said, Moellemann seemed to love to take risks.He must have felt completely “out of game” (financially and politically) to kill himself.What a difference with Helmut Kohl’s behavior too !To me, I feel that Moellemann has felt a complete non-sense, failure and emptiness in his life.How terrible, that he thought that he had nobody among his friends and relatives to share the burden with.I am quite sad for him.Actually, I found you a bit hard on him.After all, his alleged antisemitism killed nobody and could have found appropriate nurture from Palestine and Israel…I agree with you that he needed to be admired, to be “somebody”.A poor guy to me.May he find eternal rest.Jean-michel
Lilli Marleen
I’m still waiting what the research will bring. I yet won’t exclude either an accident or even the “helpful hands” of someone else in this. Moellemann was too much into publicity for not having left any goodbye note or something like that before he jumps. Only it was a completely sponaneous decision, which seems also difficult because of this second parachute automat. But well, let’s see what the police will find out and then look what might be the right one. I feel for his family and also for him, since, whatever he has done, suicide shouldn’t be an option.
Mitch
It’s incredibly sad to think that of the options he felt he had, good or bad, he chose (apparantly) this one. It should never be that bad.
Thomas Nephew