The Curious Craftsman

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
with silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus, 1883. The poem was written to help fundraising for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, and mounted on a bronze plaque in the base of the Statue in 1903.

I have reached the limits of my strength.

Germany’s defense minister Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg (this is not a joke, but his full name) in his resignation statement, amid a flood of plagiarism allegations regarding his doctoral thesis. His Alma Mater, Bavaria’s Bayreuth University, revoked his doctoral title. A criminal investigation is pending.

Dear German Media,

Please have your journalists, especially those at Financial Times Deutschland, Focus magazine, Stern magazine and Spiegel Online, read the first line of the first quote above. This one:

Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp.

Why would I suggest this? It’s not about politics. It’s about not doing your homework. It is about your recent “reporting” that a new career awaits the fallen Bavarian volks hero zu Guttenberg in “Amerika”.

Granted, the United States of America may have taken in some quite colorful characters from the ancient lands of Berlin and Bavaria over the years: Baron Wolfgang von Strucker. Florian Maria Georg Christian, Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck. Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter.

Enough already. This one you can keep.

But you, Financial Times Deutschland, quote a “leading headhunter” as saying:

I would advise him […] to move to USA. There, I can see him immediately joining the board of a large corporation, not just because he speaks excellent English […] I can see him on the boards of Microsoft or Apple.

And you, Focus magazine, report:

According to Focus information, he has a job offer from America […] According to Focus information, he already has a job offer from an American consulting firm

You, Stern magazine, write:

Off to America […] America is calling, supposedly - and according to experts, that’s where he belongs […] There are worse places to live […] Cupertino instead of Kulmbach?

And you, Spiegel Online, quote the Financial Times Deutschland, and add a little twist:

In the U.S., they [headhunters] envision Guttenberg even at Apple.

Dear German media, did you at least try to get Apple’s and Microsoft’s take on the topic? I didn’t think so. Any ideas where that “leading headhunter” from Germany gained his boardroom insights? Brazil? Borneo? Berlin-Kreuzberg?

Well, I doubt he has ever set foot in the U.S.. For starters, we have homegrown candidates with better - TV, not Adelskalender! - pedigrees and references than Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. They come with about the same amount of hair gel, and with less delusions of grandeur. Like Charlie Sheen, for example.

In Hollywood, you know, and in the eyes of the average American boardroom alpha male, being not married to two 24-year old professional “goddesses” at home easily beats being married to some “Stephanie” from Tschörmany, even if she was born Stephanie Gräfin von Bismarck-Schönhausen (Countess of Bismarck-Schönhausen) and heads up an NGO named “Innocence in Danger”. Duh.

(Tip for zu Guttenberg: Before coming to America, consider a radical lifestyle change. It can get you a million Twitter followers or more, in just one day! That is something to work with. Germany’s BILD rag will gladly feature, on page 1, any “kernige” Bavarian “goddesses” you can come up with, perhaps from the dorms of  Bayreuth University. One last thing - this time, the less Dirndl, the better.)

No, there will be no boardroom seat at Apple or Microsoft any time soon for this representative of Europe’s “storied pomp”, according to reliable Curious Craftsman sources.

Here are the five main reasons why NOT:

1. Even a junior copy room assistant in Cupertino has to undergo a more diligent resume and background check than seems to be required by the government of Germany, a NATO ally, when promoting someone to Defense Minister.
2. It may be hard to believe in Germany, with universities like in Bayreuth cranking out doctorates as if their funding depended on it.
   
   But even with the limitations of the New World’s educational system, most of the local male candidates here in the U.S. for those coveted board seats at Apple and Microsoft actually have learned to speak excellent English, too!
   
   Also, most of them answer to first names like “Bill” or “Steve”. That may seem a little bit plain to you, dear German media. But it reminds me: Do you know that American joke about the confusion usually surrounding board-level corporate types from Germany visiting the U.S.?
   
   It’s been said that they all insist on being called by the same first name - “Herrdoktor”. That sometimes tends to complicate things, you know.
   
   
3. A non-issue, you say, dear German media? Because the University of Bayreuth has already revoked zu Guttenberg’s doctoral title? Well, there’s still a catch.
   
   In a boardroom with Bill and Steve, with the pressures of quarterly earning reports of publicly traded U.S. corporations, the “storied pomp” introduced by a board member stuck up on his status and titles can put the brakes on the process of maximizing profits.
   
   Just imagine the chairman of the board welcoming the new director, who prefers to be addressed as Defense Minister a. D. Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. Perhaps even with one or two “Dr.”s or “Prof.”s and “H.C.”s thrown in, if he managed to fly in from Munich with a quick title-shopping stopover in Haiti or Santa Lucia…
   
   ….and before you know it, time’s run out, and the quarterly report is due. While the board is still stuck with Item 1 of its session agenda! Not going to happen in this country. (Granted, with more time, we could build better cars.)
   
   
4. Let’s be frank here. Hoodwinking millions in a title-awed nation which has a fare share of (very) elderly citizens who still fondly remember their “Herr Doktor Goebbels” does not take a rocket scientist. It’s more like shooting fish in a barrel.
   
   Hard to believe, but zu Guttenberg failed anyway. Having “reached the limits” of one’s strength by unsuccessfully doctoring your CV does not qualify for corporate asylum in the U.S.. It may qualify as “wretched”, though.
   
   If he were a rocket scientist, zu Guttenberg might stand a chance to make it in “Amerika”. After all, not so long ago, this country took in another blue-blooded, snappy German, who had once been at the forefront of German military innovation.
   
   The guy soon became very famous in “Amerika”. They even have a song named after him! It never made it into the German billboard charts, though. Some petty issues with his wartime CV taught our hero to tone it down a bit and go by “Wernher” in the U.S., rather than to insist on “ancient lands” formalities like “Herr Doktor von Braun” with his new friends.
   
   But back to zu Guttenberg. He didn’t do rocket science. He’s a politician who once did something with law. On which side, is now under investigation. His cut-and-paste dissertation was titled “Constitution and Constitutional Treaties – Constitutional Steps of Development in the USA and the EU”.
   
   That, dear German media, has turned the whole affair into just another (constitutional) lawyer joke in your country already, plus The New York Times, and then some, on this end. As for the U.S. in general, most people here are pretty sick of politicians and lawyers anyway. That includes politicians (and lawyer jokes) that are past their expiration date in Germany.
5. Last, but not least: The United States of America have more than enough homegrown government and corporate crooks. We certainly don’t need to import them - “Made in Germany” or not.

Which brings me to

A suspicion about “leading German headhunters”

Is it possible, dear German media, that other members of your elites who have been recently tossed by legal tempests, are listening to the same “headhunter”, the one quoted by “Financial Times Deutschland”?

The same one who basically said that for those who screw up “storied pomp”-style in Germany, there still lies a great future behind the “golden door” of boardroom America?

You probably know why I am asking this. Whenever law enforcement had to investigate a member of your country’s storied elite recently, sooner or later the person of interest was reported to contemplate a blitz career in the U.S. - at least according to you, German media.

But let’s have look what has really happened since to…

…Dr. Thomas Middelhoff? When the former Bertelsmann CEO’s grandiose strategies of media world domination turned into the wet dream of Corporate Litigators Worldwide, LLP, you of all, German media, should have known better. Instead, you bought into the PR myth of him going to corporate heaven, courtesy of AOL / Bertelsmann in the U.S..

Well, oops. Last time I looked, AOL/Time Warner had parted ways. And the Doktor still had to put up with the less refined manners of German police, as in “Ex-Arcandor Chief Middelhoff’s Home, Office Searched in Probe” - in Germany.

…Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Margot Käßmann? Bishop Käßmann was the leader of the federation of Protestant church bodies in Germany. You, German media, celebrated her as a youth role model and outspoken critic of “Amerika”. Which, from journalist lingo, translates to: she could always be counted on to express interesting opinions on a wing and a prayer.

Then, one night in 2010, the church politico was stopped by police after running a red light in the city of Hanover, with a blood alcohol level well, well, well! over the legal limit.

Other than Herr zu Guttenberg, this Frau Double-Doktor at least did the honorable thing. She resigned immediately from her leadership position.

You, German media, learned pretty soon - from a “leading headhunter”? From BILD? - where she was going next…

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

…yes, to the home of the breath-alyzer, land of the free! Only this time, the reporting was based on facts, not fiction.

What could have resulted in a cross-cultural train wreck, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Mothers Against Drunk Driving protecting campus freshmen at Methodist Emory University in Atlanta, GA didn’t take issue, perhaps because Käßmann copped with honesty to what had happened back in Germany in her official English-language CV. Respekt, Frau Professor!

Moreover, in a move unheard of for a member of Germany’s self-proclaimed “elite”, she even published a blog about her encounters in the U.S.. I admit to having fun reading it, while it lasted. The blog (in German only) showed that the guest lecturer from Germany used the opportunity to acquire first-hand knowledge about her host country, for a change.

And she’s not even a journalist, dear German media! So, next time when you ponder the career chances of a compatriot celebrity in corporate America, please take a page from her book - and go straight to the source.

Don’t call or email your favorite “leading headhunter” in Hamburg to read the tealeaves.

Instead, ask Charlie Sheen. At least, he knows what he is talking about.

Update 11/24/2011: “Former defense minister dodges prosecution with charitable donation,” reports Deutsche Welle, Germany’s official voice to the world. 20,000 Euros? That’s a steal, given that whole families in Germany have been ruined as a result of authorities cracking down on their kids for copyright violations - downloading music from Internet music sharing sites.