Munich molester is still on the loose

Munich molester is still on the loose

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norman lebrecht

June 19, 2020

Siegfried Mauser, the former head of the Munich acaemy of music who was convicted of multiple sex offences against staff and artists, has yet to spend his first night in jail.

Mauser was sentence in May 2018 to two years and nine months for sexual assault.

But by taking refuge in Salzburg and flashing an Austrian passport he has managed successfully so far to stay out of handcuffs.

Mauser, who has powerful friends in the German and Austrian music establishments, is making a mockery of the law.

 

Here’s how the Abendzeitung presents it:

Actually, Siegfried Mauser should have been serving his prison sentence in Landsberg am Lech since the beginning of the year. In May 2018, the former president of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich was sentenced to a total of two years and nine months in prison for sexual assault in three cases. The Regional Court Munich I considered it proven that Mauser had pushed a singer onto the sofa in his office and, despite resistance, had performed sexual acts on her, which the latter denies.
 
In October 2019, this verdict was confirmed by the Federal Supreme Court. Mauser’s attorney filed a constitutional complaint. According to information from “Die Welt”, she asked for a stay of detention without formally demanding it. She also announced that, if necessary, she would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
 
In the meantime Mauser himself went to Salzburg and from there applied for permission to serve his sentence in a local prison. In addition to German citizenship, he also has Austrian citizenship, which he acquired some 30 years ago when he became Professor of Musicology at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. It protects him from extradition to Germany.
 
Mauser has so far been spared the Landsberg prison as well as the Austrian. In May, a spokesman for the Salzburg Regional Court had told the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” that Mauser had in the meantime been served a writ of execution with a corona-related delay. This decision would be legally binding after two weeks, and after another two weeks, Mauser would have to begin imprisonment.
 
This deadline has also passed in the meantime. Now the “Salzburger Nachrichten” has made enquiries.  Peter Egger, speaker of the Salzburg Regional Court, said on Monday that the convicted man had already been formally heard by the responsible judge on March 9th: “The judge ordered that the prisoner be served an order in Austria on April 24th. The order was served to the condemned man’s lawyers on May 6 and became final on May 20.
 
However, the ex-rector is not yet in prison. He has not yet received a request from the Salzburg court to begin serving his sentence on a specific date or within a specific period of time. According to the “Salzburger Nachrichten”, the Salzburg prison is also not yet aware of a concrete upcoming start of his sentence. The head of the prison, Colonel Dietmar Knebel, told the paper: “We have not yet received an open warrant for the case of the person in question.
 
The Mauser case has been the subject of heated debate since it became known. The pianist has numerous supporters in the Munich cultural scene who want to treat him as a special case, as with letters to the editor of various newspapers, and thus declare him the victim of internal intrigues at the music academy and the #MeeToo campaign. In November, an academic commemorative publication, edited by Dieter Borchmeyer and others, was published to mark the 65th birthday of the pianist, musicologist and music manager, whose preface explained Mauser’s crimes with a “world-embracing Eros that transcends the boundaries of so-called ‘bienséance’”.
 
The fact that Mauser is attempting to exhaust all legal routes in order to spare himself imprisonment and assert his view of things is not only his right, but, in this case seems to be a matter of course. But conversely, the impression should not be given that here only the minor criminals should be punished, with the more serious criminals being let off as long as they use all the tricks of the trade and have a sufficiently noisy crowd off stage.  

Comments

  • Ron Swanson says:

    Normally a European Arrest Warrant would see him extradited.

  • V. Lind says:

    The Austrian bloody police force should be handing him over. But God knows who they answer to.

  • Münchnerin says:

    Maybe it’s not the topic here, but — just saying — if he would have been an afro-american, he would probably be already in prision, or have been killed.

    • HugoPreuss says:

      In 2018 exactly 11 people were killed by the police in all of Germany. I seriously doubt that there were many African-Americans among them.

  • Allen says:

    This reminds me of the Jeffrey Epstein documentary 4-part series currently on Netflix

  • Karl says:

    It’s a non-story. Skip to the end: “Mauser is attempting to exhaust all legal routes in order to spare himself imprisonment and assert his view of things is not only his right, but, in this case seems to be a matter of course.”

    People have rights. Metoo mouthfoamers want to take away those rights so they get fake news stories published.

    • Fisher says:

      I have to agree. I believe that the Metoo mouthfoamers do not get easily upset when they find out that an accuser completely lied and nothing ever happened. They simply move on to the next “drama” in order to fill a big void in their life.

      • Debra says:

        Metoo mouthfoamers? You’re going with that? Name calling really doesn’t help your cause.

        We know Karl was falsely accused of something one time, so he’ll spend the rest of his days on a campaign to discredit anyone who accuses any man of anything.

        What you “believe” is completely wrong. I challenge you to give an example an accuser who “completely lied and nothing ever happened.” Then tell us about a “Metoo mouthfoamer” who found out and did “not get easily upset.” You know you’re completely full of it.

        It’s foolish to pretend to psychoanalyze “Metoo mouthfoamers” when it’s obvious you lack the most basic understanding of humans.

        • Karl says:

          There is a long list of falsely accused men. If people really believed women Joe Biden would have been replaced as a candidate.

          • Reed says:

            Karl, do you see your illogic? You use your handy compilation of falsely accused men to say every man from now on is innocent of every charge against him. Is this any different than people who support every accuser without knowing all the facts?

          • Karl says:

            I never said every man is innocent. You lose. Putting words in someone’s mouth is a tactic people use when they have no logical basis for argument. Often called straw man.

          • Reed says:

            It’s true that you never said every man is innocent. But you do consider yourself the arbiter of every sexual assault case that appears on this blog. And you do always land on the same side, authoritatively proclaiming, “Women are liars!”

            You’ve shared enough over the years for me to understand. Being falsely accused wounded you deeply. Your emotional reaction (“Mouthfoamers”) to this and other similar stories is proof that you still feel violated by that experience.

            If I knew how to calm down your emotions so that you could hear me, I would. Does it help to know that I’m very sorry you suffered terrible injustices?

            You’re not conscious of what’s driving you to turn each one of these stories into your own. Each time a man is accused, it’s another chance for you to attempt to prevail against those women who hurt you.

            No one has to lose here. You seem to have put your life back together. Those women and the restaurant are long gone.

            I feel for you, man.

    • Bruce says:

      I did skip to the end, as you suggested:

      “But conversely, the impression should not be given that here only the minor criminals should be punished, with the more serious criminals being let off as long as they use all the tricks of the trade and have a sufficiently noisy crowd off stage.”

  • I suspect that the Austrian authorities are not acting due to the current pandemic. Many countries have been temporarily furloughing prisoners or delaying incarceration. I hope hope the officials will catch up with Mauser, a convicted criminal, as soon as conditions permit.

  • Sue Sonata Form says:

    The law does a good enough job of making a mockery of itself with perversely lenient sentencing quite apart from what this man can or cannot get away with.

    I watch programs on subscription TV about world-famous serial killers. Without exception they all had prior criminal convictions, having served little time in jail for the most horrific crimes. The news about Mauser is mere bagatelle to me.

  • Jackson says:

    I enjoy this PC gossip greatly!

  • patrick G says:

    Can we talk about music?

  • Shlomo M. says:

    Well…he IS living in Austria…

  • Tamino says:

    Sentences based only on “she said vs he said” are never satisfactory. Nobody except the two people themselves know the truth, what was crime, overstepping legal borders, and what was unethical, unpleasant or even disgusting, but legal, behaviour.
    I don’t know anything about him or her or what happened. Neither does anyone else here apparently. Why are we discussing it here?
    Anything WE say about it, says more about us than about the case.

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