Nothing works anymore:The casino affair in 1988

All trumps were lost. In the end, even the money for the payout of the prize was missing. On a Friday the 13th in November 1987, the Lower Saxony state government withdrew the license from Marian Felsenstein, the operator of the bankrupt casinos in Bad Pyrmont and Hanover. How could it happen that the "license to print money", as Wilfried Hasselmann once called the state-regulated business with luck, ended in insolvency? Finding out was the task of a parliamentary investigative committee of the Lower Saxony state parliament, which began work in January 1988. It was not only to turn out that the 63-year-old Felsenstein, as a manic gambler, had gambled away millions at the roulette table himself for years. Details also came to light that plunged the state government under the Christian Democratic Prime Minister Ernst Albrecht into a serious crisis. It culminated in the resignation of his party friend Hasselmann from the office of Minister of the Interior.

Casino boss helps himself from the till

It was already known in 1985 that Felsenstein owed at least 1.1 million marks to German casinos. The Ministry of the Interior in Hanover, which was responsible for supervising the casinos, then banned Felsenstein from playing in the casinos in Lower Saxony. Nevertheless, he was still the majority shareholder and head of the supervisory board of the casinos in Hanover and Bad Pyrmont. The casino operator not only fed his gambling addiction, which he now indulged in other federal states, with the income from the roulette tables. He also maintained the operation of his loss-making textile department store chain "Nylon-Vitrine".

Felsenstein and his business partners received the concession in 1974. A few years later, he began juggling loaned shares and sub-participations in the casino in order to get short-term money. Gerhard Roemheld, Senior Ministerialrat and top casino supervisor in Hasselmann's authority, did not intervene in any of these misconduct for years. If what two casino cashiers testified before the investigative committee in 1988 is true, there were good reasons for it:The witnesses stated that they had observed how Felsenstein slipped chips worth 2,000 marks to the high-ranking official. The entrepreneur with good connections to both people's parties obviously knew how to keep his contacts in politics and administration happy.

Casino law was highly controversial

The fact that there were casinos in Lower Saxony from 1974 for the first time since the Federal Republic came into existence was due to a law that had been passed a year earlier under Interior Minister Richard Lehners (SPD). However, opinions on the legalization of gambling were divided across the parliamentary groups in advance. Many deputies considered the business with the roulette wheel disreputable and vicious, some of the Christian Democrats had in mind - if at all - a purely state-run casino operation.

A former CDU friend testifies against the party leaders

In this context, Laszlo Maria von Rath, an advertising expert of Hungarian origin, heavily incriminated the top staff of the Lower Saxony CDU in his first testimony before the investigative committee on August 17. Von Rath had been active as a campaign worker and fundraiser for the Christian Democrats since the 1960s. "They knew very well that I was a useful idiot with whom they could achieve anything for the CDU," von Rath said in an NDR interview.

According to his own statement, at a joint lunch in the early 1970s, he proposed an extremely delicate deal to the CDU state chairman Hasselmann, his political foster son Albrecht and Secretary General Dieter Haassengier:The Hungarian was in contact with a group around the Hanoverian restaurateur Rudolf Kalweit, who was heard about the planned casino legalization and wanted to get hold of one of the concessions. In exchange for the CDU supporting a bill in favor of private casino operators, von Rath wanted - he swore under oath - to act as a straw man for the CDU within this group and allow the party to covertly share in the profits of the casino. According to von Rath, Hasselmann was quite open to the plan. Both Hasselmann and Albrecht denied the existence of such an agreement in 1988.

The award of the concession also makes the headlines for the SPD and FDP

The Lower Saxony casino law was ultimately passed in the interests of private concessionaires. 85 percent of the turnover flowed as a tax to the state, 15 percent could be divided tax-free among the shareholders after deducting the operating costs. The Kalweit group, however, lost out to Marian Felsenstein and his partners in the award of the concession for Hanover/Bad Pyrmont, despite alleged repeated verbal promises from the Social Democratic Interior Minister Lehners, a party friend of one of the innkeepers. Before the investigative committee, the unsuccessful applicants accused Lehners of having demanded a job and a condominium from them for his beloved. "What dirt is coming up! That sucks," Lehners rumbled when asked about it by a ZDF reporter.

Lehners' successor in office, Rötger Groß (FDP), was accused in 1988 of having unlawfully favored a group of applicants, the majority of whom were FDP members, in the awarding of licenses for the Bad Bentheim/Bad Zwischenahn casinos.

Was Albrecht's first Prime Minister election bought?

Von Rath played another card. After the age-related resignation of the Social Democratic Prime Minister Alfred Kubel, Albrecht was surprisingly elected as the new Prime Minister of Lower Saxony in 1976 as an opposition candidate with the help of two votes from the Social Liberal government camp. Von Rath testified before the investigative committee that Hasselmann had agreed over the phone to his proposal to promise an FDP ministry official the post of district president of Hanover, provided he could get an FDP vote for the Albrecht election. Hasselmann later denied having made such a commitment. It was definitely not fulfilled.

Hasselmann's resignation and further political consequences

Von Rath's statements - true or false - caused a stir. But what cost Wilfried Hasselmann his position was his own appearance before the committee of inquiry. There he stated in April 1988 that he had neither received party donations from the casino bankrupt Felsenstein nor had he maintained social contact with him. However, a thank you letter found in the casino's bankruptcy estate disproved this. As a result, Hasselmann received an envelope with a five-figure donation from Felsenstein at a private dinner in 1979.

The pressure on Hasselmann grew. His obvious false testimony and the hesitance with which he removed his top casino supervisor, Roemheld, from office, burdened an already crisis-ridden state government. The suspicion arose that there was a causal connection between the concealed party donations from the casino operator and the careless supervision of the ministry. When a second thank-you letter to Felsenstein appears, Hasselmann takes the consequences:On October 25, 1988, he resigns from the position of Minister of the Interior. Just a day earlier, in front of the television cameras, he had asserted:"I have a very good feeling that I did not lie to the investigative committee."

Dieter Haassengier, who was also involved in the affair and is now State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior, was transferred to the education department. The Albrecht government survived a vote of no confidence in December, but was voted out in the 1990 state elections. Marian Felsenstein no longer had to face his trial for embezzlement of casino funds. He died of a heart attack in July 1989.