Christian von Boetticher, Schleswig-Holstein's Christian Democratic Union leader and top candidate for regional state elections in 2012, wipes tears as he gives a statement to the media after a board meeting in Kiel, Germany. Photo: ReutersChristian von Boetticher, 40, the successful state legislator at the top of the Christian Democratic Union's ticket in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, resigned as head of the party there during a tearful news conference on Sunday. He admitted to the affair, which was legal under German law, and to making a misjudgement, but insisted that he had nothing to be ashamed of because it was "a very unusual love".
It is also an unusual scandal — not only because of the girl's age, which was at the border of permissible and punishable, but also because of the role played by the social-networking site.
Long before news of the affair became public, colleagues expressed concerns that Boetticher dallied on the site too much, sharing information about his social life in status updates the party might have preferred remained private.
He posted about polo parties and expensive bottles of Brunello di Montalcino wine he had just opened. Der Spiegel magazine reported that he had skipped a political discussion to watch a lunar eclipse, then posted about it on his wall.
Voters in Germany usually ignore politicians' sex lives, but they also tend to value privacy and modesty more than Americans do. This month a German regulator asked Facebook to disable new photo-tagging software over concerns that it amounted to unlawful data collection on individuals. Facebook has an estimated 20 million users in Germany out of a population of 82 million.
Technology continues to redraw the border between the public and private spheres for everyone, but perhaps most noticeably in the heavily scrutinised lives of politicians.
(In the United States, Representative Anthony Weiner demonstrated all too clearly this year that politicians had as much to lose as they did to gain on social media.)
According to Boetticher, the girl's parents as well as his friends knew about the relationship. The girl, now 17, who has not been named, defended her former lover in newspaper interviews.
"To this day I can't say anything bad about Christian," she told Cologne's Express newspaper. "Behind the politician there is also a person with feelings."
But she probably also embarrassed him as she described the hundreds of Facebook and text messages he sent her before that first meeting, not to mention that they spent two straight days in the Steigenberger Hotel in Duesseldorf, having sex the first time they met.
For Chancellor Angela Merkel, struggling with the European debt crisis and falling poll numbers at home, the sight of Boetticher wiping his tears away in front of a CDU logo Sunday evening — a clip now with its own life on the internet — could hardly have come at a worse moment. Already, her party's brightest young star and federal minister of defence, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, had resigned in March after it emerged that he plagiarised his doctoral dissertation.
Merkel hoped Boetticher would help the party reverse recent setbacks in state elections. Instead he has further damaged its reputation at a time when conservative voters were losing faith in the chancellor's centrist approach.
Adding to the sense that the real problem was Boetticher's use of social media, a number of German commentators disputed the importance of the affair itself.
In the Berliner Zeitung, columnist Jutta Kramm expressed surprise that Boetticher thought it necessary to step down over the affair, which she described as a very American phenomenon. US morals are often viewed with indulgent condescension in Germany, where nude sunbathing and explicit sexual scenes on public television are widely considered normal.
"Extramarital affairs, illegitimate children, first and second wives or husbands, libidinous escapades or particular sexual preferences indeed may provide fodder for rumours and offer excellent material for gossip and scandal, but they have almost never been a reason to resign," Kramm wrote.
Or as the Hamburger Abendblatt put it, "Leading a double life has not been cause to step down for some time."
Even the socially conservative Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel's Christian Democrats, elected Horst Seehofer as party leader after it was revealed that he had impregnated his girlfriend in an adulterous affair.
Schleswig-Holstein, located between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea on the Danish border, is also known for the island resort of Sylt, where Boetticher enjoyed the beaches and the polo matches, all of which he shared on Facebook. Last year he wrote a status update that said he "has been sitting since 9 o'clock in the Statehouse in Kiel!!! One meeting after another. That's enough!"
The Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung reported that a fellow politician said, "I think I need to register with Facebook so I can communicate with him."
"He was always seen as something of the dandy type, and he liked to play the role, and Facebook was a part of that," said Rainer Burchardt, professor of media studies at the University of Applied Sciences in Kiel, the state capital. "But he must have known quite clearly that what he did with this girl was unacceptable and that it was not politically tenable."
The scandal refuses to go away. On Monday, Boetticher also resigned as the party's leader in the state Parliament. On Tuesday German newspapers published photographs of a Nevada marriage certificate from October in Boetticher's name, suggesting that the ostensibly single politician may in fact have married his 34-year-old girlfriend a few months after ending the affair with the girl.
As he stepped down Sunday night, Boetticher conceded that "although legal in a judicial sense, many people would have understandable moral reservations" about his relationship with the girl less than half his age.
Shortly before he gave that resignation speech, Boetticher deleted his Facebook profile. His successor, Jost de Jager, does not have one.
The New York Times
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