Friedrich Schiller had all sorts of obnoxious characters appear on stage, but the most unspeakable was a character from “Intrigue and Love”. Schiller christened it “worm”.
Which says it all: the man is slippery, squirming, essentially blind. “Earthworm” would have been an increase, but Schiller didn’t want to do that to someone who was extremely despised.
And so to Coburg, where once a year pillars of society from all over the country gather: the “Coburg Convent”, a coalition of student associations. They learned attitude from scratch, because if the young academic spirit was not willing, they would hit each other with weapons. That’s why the gentlemen “arms students” supposedly do it: for breeding and self-control.
Well, there are said to be locals in Coburg who don’t consider vomit in the front yard to be the crowning glory of self-discipline. But drinking seems to be a constitutive part of male bundling, old-school bliss and the endeavor – according to the Convention – to educate one another “to become capable people”, “in an honest, open-minded and liberal spirit”.
Open-minded, of course, preferably when the other person ticks like you do, for example raving about the good old torchlight procession. Coburg’s Mayor Dominik Sauerteig – who has been in office for three years – does not do this and has let the gentlemen know. And since a leaked mail traffic (declared to be authentic by the convention itself) one now also suspects how old gentlemen exchange ideas with each other when, for once, they don’t fight for “freedom, friendship, fatherland”. The Lord Mayor? Be, it says in an email, an “earthworm”.
The social democrat who was declared a worm had to say something at the recent public feast, as one does when there are guests in town. And has decided to tell the 3000 high-powered mercilessly to their faces what he thinks of it. He spoke of a “blatant lack of respect”. He wondered: “Is that the usual way educated leaders deal with people who have different opinions?”
And what did the Coburg guests who had been beaten off at their own party do? They clapped well-behaved and perfectly docile. Schiller might have known what he calls such characters.