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Former first lady sues over red light rumours

Published: 8 Sep 12 12:22 CET | Print version
Online: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20120908-44847.html

Bettina Wulff, the wife of German ex-president Christian Wulff, is suing a TV moderator and Google for helping spread rumours about her life before her marriage.

The 38-year-old filed suit against the multinational internet corporation and TV presenter Günther Jauch in a Hamburg court on Friday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported.

In recent months, 34 German and foreign bloggers and media outlets, including Stern magazine, Mediengruppe Österreich publishers and Berliner Zeitung newspaper, had signed cease-and-desist declarations related to the stories, the paper reported.

Political enemies of her husband within Hannover political circles have been spreading rumours since 2006 that Bettina Wulff once worked in the red-light milieu, in an attempt to damage her husband, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Her husband was then the Christian Democratic Union, CDU, state premier of Lower Saxony, with influential enemies within his own party and numerous other opponents.

The rumours spread like wildfire on the Internet in the days leading up to his taking the presidential post in 2010, the paper reported, with several news outlets taking them seriously.

Wulff resigned this February after a string of money-related allegations came to light – including that in 2008 while he was Lower Saxony state premier, he failed to declare a soft loan of €500,000 from a prominent regional businessmen.
The Wulffs were married in March 2008, two months before the birth of their son, Linus. Bettina Wulff, who had studied media management in Hannover, worked as a publicist before becoming Germany’s First Lady.

The lawsuit against Google is aimed to prevent the words like “Red Light past” and “Escort,” from coming up in a search under her name.

According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wulff’s attorneys asked Jauch, who now hosts a television program on the ARD network, in May to agree to a cease-and-desist declaration regarding quotes in an article about the alleged rumours. Jauch’s lawyer refused, the paper said.

The Local/mbw

What do you think? Leave your comment below.


Your comments about this article:

13:43 September 8, 2012 by darmstadt
Comment removed by The Local for breach of our terms.
20:45 September 8, 2012 by ukpunk1
Comment removed by The Local for breach of our terms.
09:08 September 9, 2012 by raandy
Welcome to the world of politics Bettina.
09:59 September 9, 2012 by Englishted
Shame the rest of us can't sue her husband ,to attempt to get back all the perks of the office he did so much to undermine.
11:47 September 9, 2012 by bwjijsdtd
One thing you have to say for the former president ... he has good taste in women. What a fox ...
14:45 September 9, 2012 by iseedaftpeople
ah, the old Barbra Streisand effect...

Nothing clears your name and thwarts suspicions quite like filing injunctions and threatening to sue people if they don't shut up.

You, Mrs. Wulff, are a media genius. You belong where you are now.
12:42 September 10, 2012 by TheWonderer
I just wonder:

These rumors started in Nov last year - and were not commented.

And now, just before she starts releasing a book, she goes to court?

What a starge coincidence indeed...

Besides: She does not want her son to find any such information in the internet.

Okay, I can understand that. But does she really believe her son will not read the book one day...?

Strange lady, that...

TheWonderer
02:26 November 5, 2012 by arlie
I absolutely believe she was a prostitute or a whore, and why not --- just because she married to a politician later on and became the 1st-"lady" of Germany, and that should erased all her past? Give me a freaking break !

Oh btw, we the Chinese not only believe all the bad mouthing about the Chinese leaders by the german media, but we also believe the truth said about the German officials by the media also! :)
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