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Konrad Werner: Mozart balls

Konrad comes clean about his love for Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer.

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Photo by Dilma Rousseff (dilmarousseff; Flickr CC)

It’s time I cleared the air between me and Peter Ramsauer. There’s been so much tension for so long. I am in love with him. Why else, after all, would I keep mentioning throbbing man-swords and fecund streams of seed when I write about him?

If I am a seagull hovering behind the media trawler of German politics, the juiciest morsels of news to my discerning eye always seem to be shaped like a certain silver-haired Bavarian transport minister. I just can’t help it.

This week, my sinewy silver fox has released a CD of himself playing Mozart on a piano. That’s right. If you think this is an absurd publicity stunt aimed at milking his huge herd of fans, or “Ramsciples” as we might call ourselves, you could not be more wrong and evil.

As Ramsauer explains on the website, this is in fact a bold new policy. First, he identifies the problem: “Our streets are overcrowded. Every day, masses of people force themselves through the traffic to work. Especially in the cities, the transport infrastructure is on the edge of collapse.”

Shrewdly recognizing that he is the responsible minister, Ramsauer now carefully mulls the various options. One by one, the many solutions suggested by his advisors for increasing energy efficiency with a view to long-term sustainability were whittled away. Until, in the end, there was only one possible answer to the daily ordeal suffered by German motorists. Release a Mozart CD. Why? “To lower the accident rate it is helpful to drive slowly and calmly. Countless studies have shown that classical music can have a soothing effect,” the website points out, using science.  

“Brilliant!” a young transport advisor exclaims.

“But who should we get to play the piano?” another asks uncertainly.

The great man stands up. “Who is the flippin’ minister around here, for flip’s sake?” he snarls.

Later, at the press conference for the launch of “Adagio im Auto,” Ramsauer ejaculates pearls of wisdom into reporters’ faces. “There are more secrets in one slow movement by Mozart than in the entirety of federal transportation policy,” he says.

Next year, Angela Merkel is releasing a CD of herself reading Janosch stories to soothe people while their pension funds get deleted from the economy.