It was late in the morning when Norbert Schneider, Head of the Bad Loans Department of the X. Bank called to tell me that he was coming over with Frederic Steiner (nicknamed ‘Freddie’), the Bank’s compliance officer.
The Bank was an important client of our firm. Further, Norbert and Freddie were friends of mine. This, of course, did not mean they were in one another’s good books. Despite their ostensibly amiable modus operandi, it was easy to spot the underlying antipathy. I had had pleasant luncheons with each. But never had they called on me together.
Our law firm had its premises in downtown Singapore. The walk from the Bank to the firm would take about five minutes. Whilst Norbert and Freddie were on their way, I reflected on their backgrounds and their respective posts.
Before he became a banker, Norbert Schneider had been an antiques dealer in Frankfurt. He opened his business shortly after graduating from a well-known German university. He specialised in prints and ceramics. Regrettably, the business did not thrive. In the early seventies, Norbert closed it down and joined a well-known German bank. Before long he revealed a talent for recovering “bad loans”.
In 1990 Norbert took up the post of Head of the Bad Loans Department of the X. Bank’s Singapore office. We met shortly after I retired from my professorship at the Law School of the National University of Singapore and joined a law firm as a consultant.
The friendship between Norbert and myself was nourished by our common interest in ceramics and, odd to say, by an understanding based on our respective experiences during the Second World War. Norbert, who was partly Jewish, had remained with his parents in Frankfurt during the Third Reich period. I do not know how they managed to survive. My parents had fled from Vienna and, in due course, migrated to Palestine. I grew up as a predominantly Israeli youth. Still, mother’s influence had directed my mind to German culture, literature and philosophy. All in all, I liked the subjects. So did Norbert.
Unlike Norbert, Freddie came from pure Aryan stock. His parents, though, were persecuted on political grounds. After the end of WWII, they settled for a while in East Germany but in due course migrated to Australia. Freddie grew up in Sydney but spoke German at home. After obtaining a law degree, he joined one of Australia’s local banks as a trainee. In 1994, when he was in his early thirties, he joined the X. Bank in Singapore as their compliance officer.
Freddie’s post made him an unpopular figure at the Bank. In this regard, he suffered the fate of most compliance officers. Their task was to expose loopholes or technical errors in bargains, such as the absence of a required signature on a contractual document or a failure to comply with a local Statute. In consequence, a compliance officer often frustrated deals on which an account officer had worked for months. When this occurred, the account office lost his anticipated commission and was unable to list the deal in his annual progress report.
Often a compliance officer was a thorn in the flesh of the staff dealing with the recovery of bad loans. Their task was to recover outstanding debts by legal means. Frequently, the compliance officer wrecked a settlement by discovering a loophole or an inadequacy. In such cases, the bad loans officer’s inclination was to proceed with the deal despite the irregularity. He hoped for the best. To do his job, the compliance officer had to exercise his veto.
This differences in tasks and in business philosophy would have been an adequate ground for the constant tension between Norbert and Freddie. But there were additional reasons for their mutual dislike. Norbert had managed to stay put during the Holocaust. He had remained culturally German. To my delight, he had read Kafka and Heinrich Böll. All in all, though, he remained a conservative and a believer.
Freddie had grown up as an Australian. His cultural ties with Germany were related to his parents’ home. But they were also cultural. He was attracted by German classical literature and, to my surprise, by the literature of East Germany. He had, for instance, drawn my attention back to Lessing and Kleist – both early nineteenth-century playwrights I tended to ignore – and to Völker Braun, a modern East German writer. Ideologically, Freddie remained a left-winger and an agnostic.
These differences in outlook were, I suspect, of limited significance. Both Norbert and Freddie were tolerant men. The main problem related to my two friends’ characters and life philosophy. Norbert was a shrewd conformist. He knew how to handle difficult situations and was always in control of his temper. Freddie, in contrast, was a rebel. Quite often he spoke his mind even when common sense dictated silence. On such occasions Norbert was put off by Freddie’s plain words. Freddie, in turn, was repulsed by Norbert’s “live and let live” philosophy.
Their mutual differences did not affect their respective friendships with me. I was about twenty years older than Norbert. Freddie was my junior by some thirty-five years. Despite these age gaps, both found it easy to communicate with me. Lunch or morning coffee with either was never dull. Years of experience at universities and in law practice had taught me tolerance, discretion and, most importantly, to have low expectations in everyday life. I was, for instance, pleasantly surprised when Freddie lent me a rare edition of Kleist’s plays. A fine illustrated edition of Böll’s short stories, given to me by Norbert, has continued to grace my collection. So did a porcelain piece he sneaked out of Dresden before the fall of the iron curtain.