Deutsche Bahn
Once upon a time there was a girl who could only convince the world that she was a princess after she lay for a night on 20 mattresses and could not get a wink of sleep. The reason: a pea at the bottom of the pile that had somehow dug into her skin. She was hyper-sensitive and therefore noble.
I was reminded of Andersen’s fairy tale when I read this week that Hartmut Mehdorn, the thin-skinned Prince of Bahnia, has problems sleeping. According to Stern magazine, when it gets late on the 25th floor of Bahntower and the sensitive monarch is too wired-up for sleep, then he summons the notorious “Rotweinrunde”. “Komm doch mal rüber,” ordnet er dann per Telefon an. The courtiers then leave their apartments in Potsdamer Platz, abandoning their beds, and return to the office to hear the late-night thoughts of chairman Hartmut.
Now let me hasten to say – before my Chefredakteur gets another angry letter from Bahntower – I am not criticising or even judging this practice. Great leaders often function best at night, undisturbed by telephones. They have their best ideas after midnight. Fidel Castro was like that. Josef Stalin too. Insomnia is a professional hazard.
It is, of course, a tense time at Bahntower. Because of the Spitzel-scandal. Stern says there is a “Regime der Angst” in the headquarters which, according to my source – please don’t fire her! – an absurd exaggeration. You just think twice about using your email or telephone. My friend has closed her internet banking account but, she says, she would probably have done that anyway. Oh, and when we meet nowadays, we don’t go to Billy Wilder’s or any other bar on Potsdamer Platz. But that’s ok. Normal. You have to understand, Hartmut M. is under big pressure. Will he be sacked after the election? If so, he has to put his privatisation plans into place in the next six months. Everything else is a distraction.
The fact is I sympathise with the Prince, I am a Mehdorn-Versteher, one of the few. For the past few months, as part of the research for a book, I have been comparing the privatisation process in Britain, Iceland and Russia. It does not matter how mature the democracy is, corruption always creeps in – and usually in the 18 months before the Börsengang. So Mehdorn’s suspicions are probably not unreasonable; just as supermarkets have to ensure that employees don’t slip whisky or razorblades in their handbags when they leave the shop at lunch, so DB has to keep an eye on its team. Nobody wants privatisation to be poisoned at source. In fact, nobody wants privatisation, Schluss. Naturally, the DB detectives also have to obey the law of the land. But if they don’t that is not necessarily a reason to sack Mehdorn unless it can be shown that he ordered illegal actions. So far I can see no evidence of this.
No, the real reason to sack Hartmut Mehdorn is safety. It is months since ICE 518 came off the tracks outside Cologne station. The cause was a break in a Radsatzwelle and not surprisingly it made everyone in the railway universe a little nervous. Just minutes before ICE 518 had been travelling at 300 kph between Frankfurt and Cologne. It could have been another Eschede.
DB approached the crisis with what appeared to be its usual Alice-in-Wonderland upside-down logic. Trains were withdrawn from service so that they could be tested. This led to delays. Friendly DB staff gave out bottles of free mineral water to frustrated passengers. Who found, when a train eventually arrived, that the toilets had been locked since they were positioned, with all their heavy water tanks, over the possibly fatal axles (Achsen). So we crossed our legs tightly, and our fingers too (drückten unsere Daumen), and cursed the Bahn. But the Bahn behaved absolutely correctly: safety outtrumps comfort. The difficulty came a little later, last autumn, after the Eisenbahnbundesamt insisted that inspections of trains should be carried out every 30,000 kilometres instead of every 300,000 kilometres. Mehdorn protested in a furious letter to the Transport ministry: “Die jetzt geforderten Maßnahmen sind unverhältnismäßig und versuchen ein nicht existentes Problem zu bewältigen.” (Der Spiegel, Dez 1, 2008)
That was the moment, I believe, when Hartmut Mehdorn should have been asked to resign. Ok, safety is relative; risk can never be abolished. But people choose to travel by train partly because it is safer than flying or driving by car. It is part of the business profile of DB. Eschede hurt this image. After the discovery of defective axles, Mehdorn should have quickly ordered a complete replacement of suspect axles in all ICE-3 trains. I don’t know how much it would have cost but it would have been cheaper than the terrible human – and economic – costs of Eschede. That should have been obvious to an intelligent manager with a feel for his customers.
Yes, there would have been more irritating delays and a loss of revenue (Umsatzverlust). But a good Bahnchef would have gone on the offensive, used all of his persuasive skills to convince Germans that he wanted to reduce the “Restrisiko”. It would have required strong leadership, an open, humble, apologetic manner. To be Vorstandschef of Deutsche Bahn nowadays is to be more than a Beamter and more than a manager; one has to be a politician capable of entering a dialogue with citizens. Mehdorn has none of these qualities. He is arguing with the train manufacturers about replacement costs; he is in dispute with the Eisenbahnbundesamt, with the Verkehrsministerium, with his own employees; he is in a state of permanent war. Sometimes I think that Prince Hartmut has become King Lear. And every time an ICE makes an unusual noise, I will exchange anxious glances with my fellow passengers. That, and not his mini-Schnüfflerstaat, is why Mehdorn has to go.
