This is a rather amusing (yet serious) scandal story which has started up over the past two weeks.
So to explain this....Fritz Keller is the President of the German Football (Soccer) Association (DFB). It's a big deal and up until this point, Keller was probably one of twenty-five names in Germany....that people generally recognized.
Keller has a rather poor relationship with the DFB vice-president....Rainer Koch.
At some point in the past couple of weeks....Keller uttered the comment...comparing Rainer Koch to Roland Freisler.
Who is Roland Freisler? Well.....you could draw up a group of Germans, and ninety-nine percent would have no idea. Maybe if you'd gone to university and studied German law, or if you were really big into Nazi history (1930s to 1945)....you'd know that Roland Freisler was a big-time Nazi judge.
In simple terms....Freisler made the entire legal system of Nazi Germany into a Nazi-designed situation.
There is odd slant to the history of Freisler....he was a German junior officer in 1915, and ended up as a prisoner of the Russians. During this period (roughly 3 years), he got all into Marxism. Then the war ended, he was released.
But if you go and read up on the guy (I spent 45 minutes reading his life story).....he's fairly dedicated to the Communist cause but gets installed into a couple of Nazi positions in the 1920s, and somehow ends up as the Director of Reich Justice Ministry in 1934.
Legal mind? A number of folks describe him as extremely competent to writing legal texts....clever....and absolutely consumed when it came to arguing a legal point in court. He's not anywhere near being an idiot like half the Nazi-appointed authorities.
So getting back to Keller's problem....he used Freisler's name to compare this VP of the DFB, and it got out into the public.
Reaction by DFB? Well.....Keller has to go.
Having to pay Keller to go? Well....his annual salary is around 240k to 250k Euro per year. I'm guessing something has to be worked out.
Keller just resigning? No....that came out over the weekend.....he wants the DFB to fire him and I suspect a pay-off has to occur in that case.
Everyone jumping up to hype the slam against Nazis? That's an amusing part of this whole thing. Sports journalists, DFB officials, etc....all have some memorized two-line piece to say they hate Nazis.
Why Keller used the Freisler name or comparison? Unknown. Freisler, if you examine his entire career....was double-sided....he might have been a great five-star legal mind, who just happened to be pro-Communist on one-side and pro-Nazi on the other. You have to remember....a lot of crazy things came out of the 1920s/1930s, and maybe it's just 'luck' that Freisler is a officer in WW I and captured.
This all consuming the sports news? I'd say it's in the top five sports topics of the weekend, and likely to roll on for another two weeks.
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