German minister’s suicide linked to coronavirus crisis
- Thomas Schaefer, the finance minister of Germany’s Hesse state, found dead near a railway track
- ‘His main fear was whether he could manage to meet the public’s enormous expectations’
A rising star in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party committed suicide apparently because he had become distraught over the economic turbulence and financial distress that the coronavirus crisis is causing for Germany, the governor of Hesse state Volker Bouffier said on Sunday.
Bouffier said that Thomas Schaefer, the Hesse state’s finance minister since 2010 and long seen as his successor as governor, had killed himself because he was in despair about the financial crisis resulting from the coronavirus pandemic even though Schaefer had worked hard to organise stimulus support measures for businesses in the state, which also includes Germany’s financial capital of Frankfurt and the country’s largest airport.
“His main fear was whether he could manage to meet the public’s enormous expectations – especially as far as the state’s financial rescue efforts are concerned,” said Bouffier. “I have to assume that those fears just overwhelmed him. He evidently saw no way out. He was distraught and left us.”
Authorities said that Schaefer, whose body was found Saturday morning alongside a high-speed Intercity Express (ICE) train track linking Frankfurt and Cologne, had left behind a suicide note. German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung quoted police sources saying the coronavirus crisis was mentioned in the note.
Schaefer, 54, was considered the top candidate to succeed Bouffier, 68, in the next year or two as the governor of Hesse, one of Germany’s wealthiest and most important states.