Is it any wonder fashionable architects in Germany are shaking their heads in amazement that such a drab, uninspired house could have been the centre of the storm that forced the German president, Christian Wulff, to resign last week?
In 2008, when he was premier of the province of Lower Saxony, before he became president, Wulff borrowed €500,000 ($660,000) at a favourable rate of interest from a friend to help buy the house. He later appeared to mislead the state legislature about it. He also holidayed at rich friends’ houses in Florida and Spain. Accusations of exploiting his position to his advantage were among a string of complaints of diverse misdemeanors that were considered incompatible with the virtuous conduct expected from the President of the Republic.
Some older Germans may remember a scandal on a somewhat different scale. In 1933, President Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
How boring the Germans have become! Once appointing budding mass murderer to the Chancellorship now a meer plutocrat with poor taste and a distaste for candour falls from the presidency. Perhaps, there is a Greek tragedy minus the recent German gifts at play here? But I speculate….
You are right.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn is more interesting.
That house is so… I am lost for words so I recommend “Dictator Style: Lifestyles of the World’s Most Colorful Despots [Hardcover]
Peter York (Author), Douglas Coupland (Foreword)” as it describes …”Welcome to the fabulous lifestyles of the cruel and despotic. Running with the idea that our homes are where we are truly ourselves, Peter York’s wildly original and scathingly funny look at the interior decorating tastes of some of history’s most alarming dictators proves that absolute power corrupts absolutely, right down to the drapes. Mining rare, jaw-dropping photographs of interiors now mostly (thankfully) destroyed, York’s hilarious profiles of 16 inner sanctums of the scary leaves no endangered tiger pelt unturned, from Saddam Hussein’s creepy private art collection to General Noriega’s Christmas tree to the strange tube and knob contraption in the Ceausescu bathroom. All your favorite dictators are here: Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Tito, Mussolini, Mobutu, Idi Amin, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos—each with their own uniquely frightful chic. An interior decorating book like no other, Dictator Style is a welcome tonic for a world in need of a good laugh at the expense of the all-powerful.”