German MPs criticized for bad behaviour in U.S.

San Francisco consulate assails visiting German MPs


Wow.

Nice. Sense. Of. Entitlement.

Read that article this morning.
Loved this bit:

"Sozialdemokrat Krüger, Potsdam-West ist sein Ortsverein, sann auf Abhilfe. Vor der Stadtführung fuhr er den Generalkonsul nach dessen Erinnerung an: "Wir brauchen einen Neger, der den Rollstuhl schiebt." Heute, so Krüger zum SPIEGEL, mag er "nicht ausschließen, dass ich das gesagt habe. Wenn die so ein famoses Gerät angeschleppt hatten, dann sollten sie wenigstens mit anfassen"."

I hope he wasn't planning on coming back anytime soon.

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,572742,00.html -- the Spiegel article.

Does anyone know the exact relationship between "The Local" and "Der Spiegel", because I read both and the articles are virtually word-for-word Deutsch/English.

If The Local is a Spiegel production, it seems kinda redundant to have a separate English language newsstream .. unless one is intended to be global and the other is intended to be, well, local.

TheLocal has nothing to do with Spiegel. Der Spiegel got the letter from the consulate so The Local had to cite Der Spiegel (as did every other news agency in Germany).

The Local is definitely more local and germane to day-to-day news than Der Spiegel.

I'm a journo in Berlin who has friends at both - FYI.

You're right. It might have been both articles quoting the letter in chronological order. Thanks.

Re "The Local", from their homepage:


There is a link to the English section of "Welt online" on the HP.

I find it quite irritating that the parliamentarians in question travel on tax money, seem to consider it a pleasure trip and above all leave such a bad impression. The trip was probably pretty unnecessary anyway.

Ooh this story has made it's way to the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/20/germany.usa
Hopefully all involved are fired.

As offensive as "Neger" is, I don't think it is the equivalent of "the N word" especially in the States. The cultural baggage can't be attached to a word from outside the culture, but I wasn't clear on whether it was originally said in English or in German.

Still, this is insane - and something tells me the Zollamt didn't rifle their baggage upon their return to Germany. It doesn't take many shoes to get above 175 Eur.

The Guardian

And in retrospect, no humility or apology - unforgiveable.

Regardless of the offensiveness of the actual word, to ask specifically that a black person be the one to do the job is equally offensive! Yikes. San Francisco is a very open and liberal city (I should know, I lived there for many years), and while this might look like just another day to a German, to a San Franciscan, this looks VERY BAD. yikes!!

Could it perhaps have been a miscalculated joke? Irony?...I know he's a German politician, but anything is possible...

"Germans don't do humor, they do beer".

The two often go together...in fact it is beer that adds that touch of humanity to them...

Well, I've always said that drunks tell the truth, so maybe he was drunk when he requested a nigger push the splendid contraption. LOL. oh, the humanity!

You'd think that by now he would have apologized and said it was a joke, but it seems he hasn't.

Oh absolutely. I was just nitpicking the Guardian's translation. This guy is obviously a racist jackass, but I react so strongly to use of the English slur, I wish they wouldn't print it if it wasn't _exactly_ what was said.

And to think, they were visiting San Fransisco - talk about not being "unter Gleichgesinnten"!

I have thought about this some more, and am starting to think he might have been trying to be humorous, and it was the consular official's nasty letter back to headquarters that took it out of context.

Some embassies and consulates are quite old. One can imagine they might have a first aid room with a canvas stretcher or army cot and perhaps one of those old wicker high-back wheelchairs one sees in period movies where the old dowager is being pushed around the deck of the cruise ship by a servant ... usually black given the historical context. He might have taken a look at it (remember, it was for his colleague) and said something along the lines of "that contraption is so old-fahioned-looking that one would expect it would come with a black servant to push it!"

Still, an extraordinarilly insensitive thing to say, but I'll bet the guy didn't really mean it in a racist way.

Imagine if you were standing in front of your consulate waiting for your consular car and a beat-up convertible VW Beetle pulls up instead of the brand-new Mercedes you were expecting. You might turn to your companion and say "this thing looks like a rickshaw ... I'm surprised it doesn''t have some chinese guy pulling it". A week later you're home and read a newspaper headline that you're a racist bastard.

Just conjecture on my part.

Fire the public servant and then he goes on the dole -w e're paying for him either way. You can't win with this ...

Not necessarily in Germany, if he's a Beamter then he won't have been paying Arbeitslosigkeitsversicherung and so would not be entitled any unemployment benefit (and if you're fired and/or quit then I think it gets reduced and/or you can't claim for a certain period of time). On the other hand, firing a Beamter probably requires a worse offence than a bit of thoughtlessness and/or casual racism.

fire them all but i will not be surprised if they all still have there jobs in a years time. one go reason to fire th old guy is well he is old.

Nobody can "fire" MPs ... at least in Germany

I may have misunderstood this because your English is awful, but it seems to me that you are saying that someone should be sacked purely because they are old. Can this be right?

Yeah, 'cause those hills are killer. Man.

"Neger" does not necessarily mean "negro" depending on the context. It is also often used colloquially as a synonym for "servant" or "assistant". But the term is not political correct since its historical root is the image of negros as servants and a politician who uses it is stupid.

Bullshit.

Ever heard of the saying "Ich bin doch nicht Dein Neger"? While literally translating into "I am not your negro" it means "I am not your servant". In colloquial German you also encounter people saying things like "Wir brauchen auch noch einen Neger, der uns die Bierkästen in den Garten schleppt" (literally: "we still need a negro who carriers the beer crates to the garden for us"). That sentence does not mean though that they specifically need a black person to carry the beer for them, instead anybody including a white person can fill that role of a servant. Context is always important when you try to translate things, you cannot simply look into a dictionary and assume that the translations given there will fit any context.

All this Neger bit is about nothing. I saw my first real Neger in 1945 when the Amis came through our town. It was until I left Germany a straight description of a person from Africa and as far as I know still is, even so many live elsewhere now. So, Neger (singular/plural= Neger)come from Africa, Indians (Rothaeute) from America, Asians (die Gelben) from Asia and Europaeer ( Weisse oder Bleichgesichter if you read Karl May) from Europe. No degradation of any kind implied. The word nigger I never new existed until I came to Canada and I never heard it used here either. I have been called a bloody DP and it never bothered me to begin with as I did not know what it meant and since I did not react to it the people gave up on it on their own when they did not get a reaction to it.

According to "Der Spiegel" this story is now followed by an unpleasant aftermath. Some CDU MPs who blamed the foreign ministry for making this story public, cut the ministry´s budget in a completely unrelated matter (some jobs in the embassy in Hanoi) while making unmistakably clear that this was meant as retaliation. "Bananenrepublik" is the term that comes to mind.

Mmmh, MLovett, care to elaborate on this? I'm sure you don't mean to say that Germans like to indulge on a daily basis in racist "jokes" while San Franciscans would be oh so sensitive to that. I mean seriously. I know you are unhappy about being in Hamburg, but this is stretching it a bit far, don't you think?

Interesting comment that. You are well on your way to 40, or had you not noticed?
You'll get there one day. Get back to us and let us know how you feel about it when someone thinks you should be fired "because you are old".

Was this guy Kruger in fact from the (National) Socialist Democrats? And, by the way Ann_MA, you're completely wrong about the level of offensiveness. It was a racist comment, why the hell are people so quick to defend Germans when they are blatantly guilty of racist behaviour? This guy is obviously a complete co**sucker, and as mlovett said do you not see something wrong in requesting a black person specifically to push a wheelchair?
Unbelievable.

It is not unbelievable, Neger in this sense is simply someone who does the (unpleasant) work. It is not racist in the normal Anglo-American sense. On the other hand, it's not exactly a positive description.