German election diary: Never work with kids; Greta and the Greens

week of Germany’s election campaign, it was children, apparently prompted by mischievous television-programme makers, who turned out to be the sharpest political interviewers. They caught out Tino Chrupalla, one of the two co-heads of the far-right Alternative for Germany (f), who says he wants more German songs and poetry taught in school—but could not name his favourite (or indeed any) German poem. They asked Armin Laschet, the chancellor-candidate of the conservative Christian Democratic Union () and its Bavarian sibling, the Christian Social Union (), whether Hans-Georg Maassen, ex-boss of the domestic intelligence service, was “a Nazi”. (Mr Maassen, a member of Mr Laschet’s , after being accused of downplaying far-right violence and having links to the f.) And one of the told Olaf Scholz, the chancellor-candidate of the centre-left Social Democrats () and the country’s finance minister, that his mother lost all the money she invested in Wirecard shares. So, he went on, could Mr Scholz—whose ministry oversees BaFin, the financial regulator that missed the brewing problems at the payment-processing company—have prevented Wirecard’s spectacular collapse?__________For weeks has shone as the unexpected in the campaign. But in recent days he has had a bumpier time. On September 20th he is due to be summoned for questioning by the Bundestag’s finance committee. The / bloc has stepped up its attack on the finance minister over three scandals on his watch: the failings of BaFin in the Wirecard affair; a multi-billion tax fraud through “cum-ex” share deals; and irregularities at the Financial Intelligence Unit (), Germany’s main anti-money laundering agency. Public prosecutors carried out searches last week at the finance ministry in Berlin as part of an investigation into alleged obstruction of justice at the . They are investigating whether staff of the unit failed to communicate warnings from banks about possible money-laundering to the police. __________