FORMER GERMAN chancellor Gerhard Schröder has denied he was in the passenger seat of Lutheran bishop Margot Kässmann’s car when she was stopped for drink-driving last February.
The one-time German leader has taken out an injunction against a blog that made the claim, adding a new twist to the rumours that continue to swirl around Bishop Kässmann.
On the night of February 20th, she was stopped by police in Hanover after running a red light. She was found to be well over the legal blood alcohol limit and charged. Days later she stood down as head of Germany’s Evangelical Church after just four months in the job.
Two rumours about the night are still swirling around the offices of German tabloid newspapers. The first rumour is that Bishop Kässmann, a divorced mother of four, is reportedly in a new relationship with a married man. The second rumour, that she was not alone in the car at the time, found its way on to the blog of Hamburg lawyer Joachim Steinhöfel.
“I have it on good authority that the passenger in Bishop Kässmann’s legendary alcohol trip is no one less than Putin’s paid lackey, ex-chancellor Schröder,” he wrote on his blog. One of Mr Schröder’s post-chancellery jobs is as consultant to a Russian-German gas pipeline consortium.
Yesterday, Mr Steinhöfel was served with a court injunction by Mr Schröder’s lawyers, best remembered for a legal dispute over media reports the former German leader dyed his hair.
Mr Steinhöfel said he has two independent sources confirming his version of events and was optimistic about his chances should the case end up in court.
“In such a scenario, witnesses would then be called,” he wrote on his blog. “It would be conceivable that Mrs Kässmann would be called by the defence to prove that Mr Schröder was in the passenger seat.”
A week ago Mr Schröder signed an affidavit stating: “I was not the ‘passenger’ of Bishop Margot Kässmann in the night from 20th to 21st February 2010.”
With his injunction, Mr Schröder has attracted huge media attention to Mr Steinhöfel’s blog. Yesterday the Hamburg lawyer went into great detail about the legal steps taken against his claims, which Mr Schröder’s lawyers say are “completely made up”.