The therapist said maybe he’d find it easier to think about if he wrote down everything that came into his head on slips of paper. That was his homework: ‘Write down what bothers you about your wife, Herr Scholl.’
Heinrich Scholl turned up at the next session bearing little slips of paper with notes on them. He had written:
Nannies me.
Doesn’t let me hang up my pictures.
Has a cleaning mania.
Treats me like a small child.
No love any more!
There were a lot of notes. Heinrich Scholl had to read each one out loud—every last reproach. It was easier than he had expected. He says it was only then that he understood how his wife’s constant reprimands had destroyed him inside. ‘I couldn’t react. Not ever,’ he says.
‘Herr Scholl, you put up with all this. Do you ever slam your fist down on the table at home? Have you ever really yelled at her?’ the therapist asked.
‘No, I can’t. I’m not the type,’ said Scholl.
‘Then you only have one chance of recovery. You must take some time off, or leave altogether.’
It wasn’t advice; it was an order. Heinrich Scholl returned to Ludwigsfelde determined not to put up with any more of his wife’s high-handedness. But it wasn’t easy. When she instructed him to rake the leaves on the lawn in the morning before he left for work, he said he could just as well do it in the evening. She said nothing. When Scholl got home that evening, she had raked the lawn herself. In return, she hadn’t made him any supper: his plate was empty. He went up to his room without eating. He was strong-willed; he could stick it out. That was his way of looking at it, his way of dealing with it. The house of the exemplary Scholls was witnessing scenes reminiscent of The War of the Roses. On one occasion, however, when there had been no supper for a whole week because Scholl had got back from a meeting half an hour late, he packed his suitcase and moved to a friend’s flat in Berlin. It was his second escape from home. When he returned after six weeks, his wife seemed pleased. She made him meals, called him ‘darling’.
Three weeks later, everything was back to normal.
‘She had this way of going on; she simply wouldn’t leave off,’ says her friend Karin Singer. When Heinrich Scholl came back from the health resort, it had been particularly marked. Suddenly someone was resisting her—challenging her. ‘He’d had psychological counselling there and had changed a lot. He thought he no longer had to put up with everything from Gitti. But he simply couldn’t assert himself. I said to her: “Just leave him.”’
On one occasion, when he had to go to hospital because of his intestinal troubles, she visited him there and was turned away with the words: ‘You’re my disease.’ Gitti was hurt. But she wasn’t prepared to change.
Heinrich Scholl was, nevertheless, able to persuade his wife to accompany him to couples therapy. A friend had told him of a vicar in Berlin who offered marriage counselling. Brigitte Scholl wasn’t keen, but a vicar sounded less menacing to her than a therapist. And Berlin was far enough away; there was no risk of anyone in Ludwigsfelde getting wind of it. She put on a nice dress and let her husband drive her to the capital.
The vicar greeted the couple. Then he suggested that he begin by speaking to each of the partners individually. Heinrich Scholl, who had made the appointment, was to go first; his wife should wait outside the door until she was called in.
This is perfectly standard procedure in couples therapy. The therapist likes the partner who has sought help to begin by explaining his or her reasons for doing so. Then it’s the turn of the other partner, and finally both are asked in together to find solutions to their problems.
Brigitte Scholl, however, saw only that her husband was being favoured. She was at this time a woman of sixty who had never learnt to talk about her problems. Her parents had drowned their worries in alcohol; her sister had washed hers down with pills. All she had to cling to was her authority. Now she sat outside the door, imagining her husband and the vicar hatching a plan to get her over a barrel. She thought it was a conspiracy, a put-up job. When the therapist called her in, she said: ‘My husband has paid you, I presume?’ Then she turned on her heel, leaving the two men sitting there.
Afterwards, on the phone to her friend Inge, she told her indignantly about the trip to Berlin. She and Heiner had been to see a vicar who wanted to accuse her of being taskmaster-in-chief at home. Inge Karther says she had always advised Brigitte not to fence her husband in so much; she had even told her once in his presence. ‘But anyone who knew her realised that there wasn’t actually any point. She didn’t mean any harm; it’s just the way she was.’ There was no changing her.
Heinrich Scholl’s attempt to salvage his marriage had failed. But separation was no more an option for him than it was for his wife. In this respect they were in agreement. Brigitte Scholl wanted to keep up appearances. Heinrich Scholl didn’t want to jettison all that he had worked hard to obtain in life. They were inseparable.
The less say Heinrich Scholl had at home, the more power-conscious he became at work. His portrait in oils now hung in the municipal museum. His office in the new town hall was at least three times the size of his old barracks office. He was used to getting his way and regarded any form of opposition as a personal attack.
‘Scholl was the uncrowned king of Ludwigsfelde,’ says journalist Jutta Abromeit.
Dieter Ertelt, Scholl’s longstanding deputy, had taken early retirement. This had not a little to do with his boss. Scholl preferred to do everything himself, says Dieter Ertelt—and always right away. ‘If he was determined to have something, he was…well, I don’t want to say unscrupulous…I once said to him: “You’re here for the SPD.” He said: “If the SPD doesn’t want me any more, I’ll just have to resign.”’
Dieter Ertelt wasn’t the only one to distance himself from Scholl. The mayor had a growing number of critics and his ideas found less and less favour. His proposal to sell council housing to private investors only just scraped through. The outlet centre under the motorway bridge didn’t. Scholl was thwarted, for the first time in his career. Before long, his great dream looked set to be thwarted too, the project that was to bring him immortality in Ludwigsfelde: the naturist thermal spa.
The old swimming baths, where Scholl had worked after his stint at the circus, were to be replaced with new ones. For two years, the mayor had been negotiating with a company that proposed to build an indoor pool with two saunas. The state of Brandenburg had promised funding; it looked as if everything was settled. Then up popped Heinz Steinhart, a new investor, who operated thermal spas and leisure pools all over the country. He took one look at Scholl’s swimming-pool plans and said: ‘Yes, of course, that’s the way everyone plans: a little of everything and nothing proper.’
It was one of those phrases that fired Heinrich Scholl’s ambition. Steinhart’s proposal might have been twice as expensive as the original one, but the mayor, who always had to be the best, did not want a run-of-the-mill municipal pool in his town; he wanted the best swimming baths in Germany. The thermal spa in Ludwigsfelde was to be his final project: baths worthy of the Romans, the king’s parting gift to his people. The only trouble was that his people weren’t at all keen on the gift. The town council was up in arms about the twenty-million-euro baths. They wanted a swimming pool, not a wellness temple. The minister of sports, Reiche, refused to subsidise the project.
Steinhart says that when he joined the project ‘in the preliminary stages’, he almost backed out again. ‘At that time, there were still old Russian barracks where the thermal spa is today. I couldn’t imagine bringing leisure to this town.’ It was Scholl who convinced him—and it wasn’t just the fact that his town had the lowest tax rate in Brandenburg. ‘He was a very strong mayor, very shrewd, very well connected. He once told me that he sometimes had to propose the opposite of whatever he wanted to achieve.’
The pool was Heinrich Scholl’s new mission. He had been in office for fifteen years and
was coming up to retirement, but he fought for the thermal spa as if he had everything to lose. He went to see Steinhart’s other baths, met up with architects, learnt the difference between hut saunas and grotto saunas, between hay steam saunas and rose-and-lavender steam saunas. He was always coming up with new ideas. The thermal spa should have an ice cream parlour. It should have a gallery with loungers, so that spa guests who went swimming by moonlight could look up through the glass dome at the stars. The naturist idea was his too. Of course it was.
When the baths were almost finished, Steinhart had said: ‘Herr Scholl, we need a selling point for this spa—something that no other pool in the region has.’
‘We could do naturism,’ Scholl replied.
Steinhart, a Bavarian Catholic, was sceptical to begin with, as were others in town. How were they to organise school swimming lessons in a nudist pool? How were teachers to spend a relaxed Sunday at the spa when they had to live in fear of bumping into one of their pupils with no clothes on? Again, the mayor came up with a solution: two ‘swimwear’ days a week—Wednesday and Sunday—and the twenty-five-metre pool was to be separate from the nudist area. Heinrich Scholl tried to please everybody. But his opponents were forever finding grounds for criticism. The pressure on Scholl was mounting, and his intestinal trouble was worsening. When he talks about his first years in office, there is no mistaking his pride and surprise at having made it so far. When he talks about the last years, it’s all tales of envious people who begrudge him his success.
In his notes, he writes: ‘Tougher situation, unpleasant atmosphere, overt accusations—also, alas, from “friends” of my own party. After a great deal of trouble, the spa is completed. It all turns out beautifully—everything high quality, lots of marble, beautiful décor with jewels—but no one can summon up much enthusiasm. On one evening, feeling hopeless, I drink three bottles of red wine with Steinhart!’
For the opening ceremony on Good Friday, the spa was decked out in festive style. Heinrich Scholl and the chair of the town council stood to the ready. At the cash desks, the new cashiers waited for the first guests. Jutta Abromeit, the local reporter, who had followed the construction of the spa with scepticism, was not on the guest list. She came nevertheless and was thrown out by the spa operator. Barred from the premises.
The opening ceremony of the thermal spa was Heinrich Scholl’s last moment of glory.
In January 2008 he turned sixty-five and resigned from office. A number of his political fellow-travellers showed up for his farewell party: Klaus Wowereit, Manfred Stolpe, Matthias Platzeck and the social democrats from Lichtenrade. His wife took care of the table décor: she brought along tablecloths and homemade flower arrangements of moss, berries, pinecones and candles. Moss arrangements were Brigitte Scholl’s new hobby. She had set up a small workshop in the cellar, and when she took the dog for a walk at midday, she often took a basket with her and left the main path to walk deep into the woods and gather fresh moss.
It was a good party, with several speeches paying tribute to all that Heinrich Scholl had achieved for his town. He enjoyed the evening. For almost twenty years he had been mayor of Ludwigsfelde and it was time for somebody else to take over. It was only right. He looked forward to being able to lie in each morning and not having to go to the town hall every day.
His first day of retirement was just as he had imagined. He slept late, had a long breakfast, opened presents, read cards and letters of farewell, and at midday he went for a walk in the woods with his wife and the dog. After that, still buoyed up by all the speeches about his achievements and merits, he drove back to his office, had coffee with a colleague or two, went over the events of the evening, collected his remaining things and went to bed content.
On the second and third days, he realised that he missed his appointments, his secretary, his meetings, and lunch in his favourite restaurant, Da Toni’s. Scholl’s beautiful glass office was now occupied by his former treasurer. This new mayor was a quiet man from the West, who had previously worked in the audit office. One of his first official acts was to have tubs of flowers placed in the big square outside the town hall. Heinrich Scholl was horrified: the tubs ruined the general impression! But nobody seemed to share his annoyance.
For decades, everything Heinrich Scholl did had revolved around his job. His work had given his life rhythm and meaning. His colleagues had also been friends; he could go out for a beer with them in the evenings. Suddenly all that had gone—the work, the rhythm, the friends. He found himself sitting at home at a loose end.
The famous German comedian Loriot once made a film about a couple adjusting to the husband’s retirement.
‘What are you doing here?’ the wife asks at one point.
‘I live here,’ the man replies.
‘But not at this time of day!’ the woman says.
Some German cities have counselling services or therapy groups that prepare over-fifties for retirement. They meet regularly to talk about how to cope with the emptiness in their lives. Doctors rate retirement among the most stressful times in a person’s life, particularly for men, who never take time out or depart from their rigid routines. The risk of a heart attack increases at retirement age; some men are dead a week after their last day at work.
Brigitte Scholl was two years younger than her husband, and her beauty salon was doing better than ever. She had no plans to stop. Her customers came and went at the house from eight until twelve and from two until six, while her husband sat in the next room reading the paper. Heinrich Scholl could hear his wife talking and laughing. Sometimes she would open the kitchen door and summon him in to greet her customers. ‘Heiner, why don’t you come and say hello to Frau Weber!’
He decided to look for work again and asked at Daimler whether he could make himself useful at the car works. In consultation with the spa operator, he arranged himself a job on a fee basis: Scholl was to convince the mayors of other towns to have big wellness temples built, like the one in Ludwigsfelde. He had visiting cards printed: Scholl Consulting—Local and Business Consultancy.
He set up an office for himself under the roof, where he could work and receive guests. But that proved difficult. He couldn’t work when Gitti was in the house. ‘Just as I was beginning to get somewhere, I’d have to go downstairs and chop parsley or what have you,’ says Heinrich Scholl. What’s more, his wife wasn’t keen on having people in the house. ‘My clients would have had to go upstairs and might have seen into the living room on their way up. Strangers from Daimler sticking their noses into her living room—that wasn’t on,’ says Scholl.
Heinrich Scholl did not have it easy. Only recently he had been the most powerful man in town, and now he didn’t even have a room of his own. His wife ruled that he only use the loo in the cellar and not the one next to her salon. Because of the lady customers.
His health was deteriorating at an alarming rate. Before long, he only weighed sixty-three kilos and was pumped full of drugs—chemotherapy tablets and cortisone. A specialist at the Charité hospital suggested surgery. His doctor in Ludwigsfelde advised against it. The spa operator recommended a clinic on Tenerife where former chancellor Helmut Kohl had gone for treatment. Heinrich Scholl tried everything, even Chinese medicine, but it didn’t get any better.
Herbert Walter*, who had worked in the town hall with Heinrich Scholl for many years, says that Scholl often went to see him and his wife at this time. The Walters are one of the oldest families in a village not far from Ludwigsfelde. They have a house with a big garden and a farm with horses, chickens and ducks. Their barn has been converted into holiday apartments and Herbert Walter’s wife takes care of the farm and the guests.
It’s easy to feel at home, sitting on the Walters’ terrace, drinking coffee. They are lovely people and there is always something going on: a friend dropping in, or a neighbour coming by to get flowers or fresh eggs. Heinrich Scholl came to visit almost every other day; he even came when his former colleague was out and only his w
ife was at home. He took them cake from the baker’s or a bottle of wine and told them about his doctors’ visits and the difficulties he was having finding an office. He redesigned their garden and helped their son decorate an old worksite trailer that stood in the yard. ‘He turned up one day with a straw hat on his head and painted the trailer with little trees and landscapes,’ says Ines Walter*.
She and her husband were somewhat surprised that Heinrich Scholl, who had never once been to their house before he retired, was suddenly seeking their company. They were astonished at the loneliness of such a successful, powerful man. Heinrich Scholl even toyed with the thought of moving into one of the holiday apartments on the farm and working from there. But the Walters were uncomfortable at the idea of the former mayor sitting in their barn and were glad when he told them on his next visit that he had found a flat in Berlin’s Zehlendorf.
Heinrich Scholl had not actually intended to move properly; he had been looking for an office in Berlin and soon realised that offices are more expensive than flats. But the moment he climbed the stairs and set down his suitcase, he knew that it was the best decision he had made for a long time.
The flat in Zehlendorf was right under the roof and came ready furnished. There was a narrow galley kitchen, an even narrower bedroom and a loft-like living room with sloping walls and a dormer window. Heinrich Scholl bought himself a desk, shelves, a new bed and a Swedish wood-burning stove. He fetched his oil landscapes out of the cellar in Ludwigsfelde and hung them on the walls and he put up two photos on the shelves: a picture of his town-hall mistress as a young woman and another of his favourite actress, Julia Roberts.
It was like back in the days in the circus caravan, only more comfortable. He could sleep as long as he liked, go jogging whenever he felt like it, and eat whenever and whatever he fancied. Nobody nannied him, nobody told him what to wear, nobody wrote him lists. He had told his wife that the flat in Berlin was his office—that it was the best place for him to work and keep up his contacts. If it ever got late, he would stay the night there. Heinrich Scholl says Gitti had agreed.
The Scholl Case Page 9