West Germany: The Shah Was Not Amused

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As political satire, the photo-montage in Cologne's Stadt-Anzeiger early last month was both toothless and tasteless. There sat the Shah of Iran hungrily eying a smiling former King Saud of Arabia. Into Saud's hand Austrian Freelance Cartoonist Harald Sattler had drawn a sheaf of banknotes with the Shah saying: "Okay then, make it 30,000 and you can have Farah Diba." Since Farah Diba is the proper Muslim wife of the Shah, and the Shah both a proud ruler and a properly possessive Arab husband, he found the pastiche not only unfunny but insulting.

By coincidence, the montage appeared the same day last December as West German President Heinrich Lübke's annual game hunt for diplomats in Westphalia, giving the Iranian ambassador opportunity to vent his indignation point-blank to the chief of state. Lübke's sympathy for the envoy's case was hardly reduced by the fact that the Stadt-Anzeiger had vigorously opposed Lübke's re-election as President in 1964. On a New Year's Eve TV program, he announced without mentioning names, that a journalist had "disparaged a friendly head of state in an unheard of way" and that the friendly head "has let me know that he feels deeply insulted and injured, and he is demanding the protection of our state."

The paper's editors had already felt pangs of remorse, printed an apology. Publisher Kurt Neven Dumont even offered to fly to Teheran to apologize personally to the Shah. But it was too late. Iran had vigorously protested to the German Foreign Office, demanding legal action under Article 103 of the German Criminal Code, which forbids slandering foreign heads of state. Prodded by Lübke, the Cologne prosecutor sent four investigators to raid 25-year-old Cartoonist Sattler's apartment, presumably in search of some evidence supporting dark Iranian hints that Sattler's acid pen had been dipped in Nasser or Communist money. They found nothing of the sort.

Still rankled by memories of the 1962 Der Spiegel press flap, when over-zealous German cops arrested staffers and raided the magazine's office after an article disclosing classified NATO information, the German press was predictably caustic about what the Sü'ddeutsche Zeitung aptly felt was "making an elephant out of a mosquito." At week's end the Cologne prosecutor had still not filed an indictment, and everyone was hoping that the Shah would decide to settle for Neven Dumont's personal apology and thus bring a quiet end to the tempest in an inkpot.