Holger Baumann

Holger Baumann, the company lawyer for Meyer Engineering Works, moves through the case as a representative of corporate interests: first seeking to contain the consequences of Hans Meyer’s murder, then trying to shape who may participate in the trial, and eventually offering Caspar Leinen money to bring the proceedings to a swift end. His actions connect the firm’s anxiety about publicity to a direct attempt to influence the defense.

Corporate Role and First Response

Within hours of the murder, Richard Mattinger and a young lawyer from his chambers speak with Baumann by telephone. Baumann describes Meyer Engineering Works as a large and successful international company, employing more than forty thousand people worldwide and reporting profits nearly four per cent above the industry average. He also says that the firm is close to completing the biggest deal in its history. Against that commercial backdrop, he calls the murder of Hans Meyer, the former board chairman and principal shareholder, a catastrophe.

Baumann’s immediate concern is that the company should not become a subject of newspaper coverage. He recalls unwelcome press attention from a bribery case involving one of the company’s subsidiaries several years earlier, when Mattinger represented a senior employee. The previous publicity gives his concern a concrete corporate precedent, but it also frames the new crisis in terms of reputational exposure. The murder is only hours old when Baumann says he is sure it has nothing to do with the firm, despite conceding that no one there knows why Meyer was killed. The certainty sits uneasily beside the acknowledged absence of an explanation.

Arranging the Company’s Place in the Trial

Baumann tells Mattinger that the board wants him to represent the company in the murder trial. Mattinger explains that this cannot be arranged in the way Baumann proposes: only a family member can ask him to act as accessory prosecutor, a procedural point that many civil lawyers may not know. Baumann promises to look into it. An hour later, Mattinger receives a fax from Johanna Meyer, Hans Meyer’s granddaughter and sole heir, sent from London. The sequence shows Baumann working through the legal obstacle by turning to the family member whose request is required; Mattinger then assures Johanna that he will take care of everything and plans to contact the Berlin public prosecution office.

Baumann’s later meeting with Leinen in Munich reveals how little the company knows about the killing. At the Meyer Engineering Works branch, in a conference room Leinen remembers from childhood visits with Hans Meyer, Johanna sits in the place her grandfather once occupied. Baumann has arranged the meeting, but he has no useful information about Fabrizio Collini. He says that the company has searched its archives and found no record of any invoice to or from anyone named Collini. His general assurances and repeated suggestions to stay in contact do not produce a substantive exchange. Once Baumann realizes that Leinen is equally baffled, the conversation ends quickly. The meeting’s practical purpose, as Leinen understands it, was to find out what the defense planned; it yields no answer.

The Offer to Leinen

Baumann later finds Leinen at a gathering at Mattinger’s house by the Wannsee. Mattinger has told him where Leinen is likely to be, and Baumann remarks that Mattinger knows the younger lawyer well. The encounter shifts from the company’s earlier search for information to a direct approach to the defense lawyer. Baumann says that he does not care what sentence Collini receives and urges Leinen to give up the brief. He also reveals that the company knows Leinen has been to Ludwigsburg, though the available account does not explain how it learned this.

Baumann then proposes compensation for Collini’s cooperation and specifies that a considerable sum would be paid to bring the trial to an end quickly. Leinen takes a moment to absorb the proposal and identifies its implication: the company is trying to buy a man’s past by paying for the defense to be abandoned. He asks whether Baumann seriously means to pay him not to defend Collini properly. The offer thus goes beyond the earlier wish to keep the company out of the papers. It is an explicit attempt to change the course of the trial by approaching the appointed defense lawyer with money.

Narrative Role and Significance

Baumann’s changing methods make him a measure of the company’s response to the case. At first he speaks in the language of corporate scale, commercial success, and public image; when the company’s records cannot explain Collini’s connection to Meyer, he turns toward learning the defense’s plans. Finally, he attempts to stop the trial quickly through a payment to Leinen. These are distinct steps, but they share a focus on managing the proceedings and their consequences for the firm.

The contrast between Baumann’s initial assurance that the murder has nothing to do with the company and his later effort to influence the defense is significant without proving that he knows the motive or the full history behind the killing. The evidence presents him as a company lawyer acting in the firm’s interests, not as someone who solves the mystery. His importance lies instead in making corporate intervention visible: the case is not only a criminal prosecution but also a contest over what will be investigated, heard, and allowed to reach trial.