A diplomat and a musician: Walter J Lindner shares some notes on diplomacy

On this day, on any other year, the residence of the German ambassador in Delhi would be teeming with 2,000 to 3,000 guests from across professions and countries. Many of them would come in their exotic national dresses to celebrate a historic event that changed the world for the better: The unification of East and West Germany. But this is no ordinary year. A pandemic has put paid to any chance of hosting such a vibrant celebration.

However, letting this day go by uncelebrated was also not an option. After all, this October 3 marks 30 years of German reunification. “It is quite an anniversary,” says Walter J Lindner, German Ambassador to India.

Turns out that it pays to have a person from the creative fields as your ambassador, especially in a country as culturally rich as India. A trained and active musician, arranger and music producer, with several CDs to his name, Lindner got down to work at his world-class recording studio in his residence at the embassy complex. “I didn’t want to have another webinar or digital discussion,” he says.

Instead, he decided to put together a song that would capture the spirit of the day. And what better song than “Wind of Change”, which was composed specially for this occasion and performed at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate by German rock band Scorpions in the presence of 100,000 people on October 3, 1990. But the iconic German song, he felt, needed to also have an Indian flavour. So, after recording all the basic tracks on guitar, piano and synthesiser, he reached out to his musician friends in India, some of whom he had performed with — Rakesh Chaurasia (flute), Vikash Maharaj (sarod), Prabhash Maharaj (tabla), Abhishek Maharaj (sitar), vocalist Chetan Dominic Awasthi, better known as Chezin. Each of them recorded their bits for the song remotely and sent them to Lindner who then put it all together in his studio.

The result is a heartwarming song of hope and peace, softer than the original and endorsed by Scorpions’ frontman and lead singer, Klaus Meine, who introduces it in the video. “He was blown away by it. He couldn’t say it is better than mine, but he was short of saying it,” says Lindner, his eyes twinkling from behind his colourful mask that has red-and-orange fish printed on it.

I am meeting this unusual ambassador at his residence late morning. Our greeting earlier could have been called absurd in normal times. Standing at a distance, he had briefly pulled his mask down and said, “This is what I look like.” And I had reciprocated the gesture before we had promptly secured our masks back in place.

A tall man in a ponytail, who prefers jeans, avoids the tie and would rather have a vibrant pink or purple stole around his neck, Lindner looks every bit a musician. But a musician who chose a career in foreign service.

“I was born in 1956 and grew up in the hippy times in a generation just right after Woodstock,” he says, taking a sip of his creamy, milky coffee. I am sticking with water, glugged from a disposable bottle. He was 12 when the Concert for Bangladesh (organised by former Beatles guitarist George Harrison and sitar legend Ravi Shankar) was held at Madison Square Garden in New York. “For the first time, Indian and Western musicians played together: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, and Ravi Shankar, in his crisp kurta and with instruments I had never seen before. It opened a world of Indian music to youth like us.”

He took up music, first guitar, then the flute, and then decided to study it classically at Munich, where he was born. “Bach, Beethoven, composing and conducting the orchestra, I did all. I was a serious musician.”

But at 21, he was confronted with a life altering question: Is this what he wanted to do forever, play in an orchestra? “I was young. I want to play both rock and classical. The world seemed like a bit of a cage.”

Thus began a journey of self-exploration. “I did taxi driving and truck driving, earned money, saved up and set out to travel the world.” He spent six months in India, then went on to Bangladesh, Thailand, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Fiji, Australia, California, South America, New York, London… and finally returned to Berlin four years later.

Sustaining the passion for music and wanderlust, he realised, required money. So he studied and practised law for a few years. “But as an artiste, it was tough being around stiff lawyers,” he says. So he entered the diplomatic service — “because I wanted to continue to travel and see different cultures”.

As his job took him from place to place — Turkey, Nicaragua, New York, Seychelles, South Africa — he also picked up distinct musical influences, which have taken the form of an album, A Journey’s Song Book, “because it brings four decades and four continents together”. This, too, was put together during the Covid months when he was confined to his residence. Confined by his standards, that is. Since he did head out to the historic Chandni Chowk to see for himself how it looked after its central avenue from Red Fort to Fatehpuri Masjid was redeveloped and made a motor-free zone.

In India — his final posting, one that he asked for — he has gone across the country, meeting all kinds of people and soaking in different experiences. Far right, far left, centre, fence-sitters — he has met people of every ideology, and sometimes even got trolled for it.

“That’s my take on being a diplomat: To come to a country and understand its DNA,” he says. “To feel, for instance, what it means to be an Indian.”

He’s been here one-and-a-half years now. “India,” he says, “is such an intense country. It comes right between your eyes, nothing sugarcoated here — the good things and the bad things. It’s intense even in its incredible landscape, its colours that are to die for, in its monsoon or its heat.”

His coffee is finished. He has evidently enjoyed it. “I begin my day with coffee and end it with it,” he says. His puritan friends and colleagues, he says, cringe when he says he is a Starbucks fan. “I could have my second home in Starbucks.”

Lindner has completed 35 years in the foreign service. After this, he intends to go back to travelling and to his music. “My studio will go to Berlin with me. I will do some teaching and conducting.”

In the porch outside his residence is parked a red Ambassador. It’s his car of choice in India. “It was here when I arrived. It was grey then and had curtains on the windows,” he says. Unlike modern automobiles, the Ambassador, he says, feels like a real car. “When you are driving it, you can feel the road beneath you. It’s a feeling to be experienced.” Like India, which he hopes he gets another chance to explore.