How do you manage not to despair because of the constant stream of bad news? Our author Walter Wüllenweber, who wrote a bestseller years ago with the beautiful title “Glad Tidings”, reveals in our cover story how we should not lose heart because, despite all the horror, the world is not a terrible one.
I have long since found my formula for success for cloudy days; it consists of one word: Loriot. When sadness eats into my soul, I like to recite Loriot sentences, such as: “My name is Lohse, I shop here.” Or: “Waiter, can we perhaps bring you something?” I used to memorize Loriot sketches, for example about the lottery winner Erwin Lindemann. I tried it, I can’t get it recited anymore – age! I was all the more pleased when I found out that the star has a Loriot story. Well, not an uncomplicated one: “I never want to see that guy in the star again,” Henri Nannen is said to have once exclaimed. For Loriot’s 100th birthday, my colleague Amonte Schröder-Jürss went into the archives and spoke to family, publishers and friends to better understand what kind of person gave us so much laughter. I hope that after unpacking our reading package he wouldn’t say, “There used to be more tinsel.” (page 72)
The most sensitive documents relating to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s (SPD) cum-ex affair are well protected. As our author Oliver Schröm writes, the safe stands man-high in a windowless room not far from Hamburg City Hall. Only selected people are allowed to open the heavy doors and then take the files into the neighboring reading room, where members of the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry can view them under supervision. But now something is missing from the safe, as Schröm has researched: two laptops with more than 700,000 emails, including from Olaf Scholz’s office manager and Hamburg’s mayor Peter Tschentscher. They were actually supposed to bring new insights into the affair in which there are so many strange gaps in memory and files. According to information from stern and “WAZ”, chief intelligence officer Steffen Jänicke (SPD), of all people, removed the devices from the investigative committee’s security room. Schröm, who has been researching Cum-Ex for years, writes that he ordered “that access to the files (…) will initially be suspended,” as Jänicke told the committee chairmen. “Sometimes you just don’t have the words. Palermo is on the Alster,” comments Schröm. The latest revelation comes at a time when Chancellor Scholz is worried about other legacy issues from his time in Hamburg, such as the Elbtower, an unfinished billion-dollar project by the financier René Benko, who is in acute trouble. (page 86)
Since we are talking about possible opacities, the hint is apt: For the fifth time, stern CRIME is organizing Crime Day together with the Penguin Random House publishing group. Crime professionals like Charlotte Link talk to police, justice and forensics experts like Michael Tsokos about the morbid charm of fictional murders and the sensitivity needed to do justice to the horrors that shape real life.
