By Knut Engelmann
Zurich - The photogenic wife of Switzerland's ambassador to Germany hit the headlines again on Saturday, provoking media outrage for a revealing picture spread in a German glossy magazine.
The shots of former Texas beauty queen Shawne Fielding, 31, in the lifestyle magazine Max - said to have been taken with her husband's approval - dominated front pages and prompted debate about Switzerland's long-standing policy of staying out of the diplomatic limelight.
The magazine pictured Fielding wearing a tight mini-skirt on the Berlin embassy roof, draped on a horse in the entrance hall and wearing the US flag and brandishing toy guns with a dollar sign tattooed above a revealing cleavage.
"The Germans turned her into a hussy," mass circulation Blick screamed in a front-page headline. "No doubt, she matches the criteria of a hussy: she is long-legged, erotic and curvy," the tabloid said.
Fielding and her husband, Thomas Borer, have become regulars on Berlin's social scene, eager to portray Switzerland as an open society despite its relative diplomatic isolation in remaining outside the European Union and the United Nations.
But Fielding has landed her husband in trouble more than once.
Foreign Minister Joseph Deiss admonished Borer six months ago after his wife was pictured in a mini-skirt on the lap of a German pop star.
But this time the couple appear to have pushed tolerance too far in a country that prides itself on its traditional, if sometimes less than exciting, way of life.
Even the conservative Neue Zuercher Zeitung joined the fray, gravely calling on Deiss to take action.
"You can't send her off to a monastery. And to transfer him (Borer) to outer Mongolia would be an overreaction. But what is needed now is a clear acknowledgment of an 'error of judgment' on the part of the ambassador's vivacious wife," it said.
Zurich's Tages-Anzeiger also criticised Fielding for lack of judgment, but said the real problem was the "dramatically growing isolation of Swiss diplomats abroad".
"Switzerland runs the risk of being left behind, overlooked, and simply forgotten," it said on its front page.
The Foreign Ministry has so far kept out of the latest debate, merely saying it is looking into the affair and will decide what to do in due course.
An unrepentant Fielding shot back at her critics on Friday.
In a written statement sent to Swiss Television, she said she was "deeply concerned and disappointed by the narrow-minded reaction of a small group of people bent on ruining my marriage and the career of one of Switzerland's best sons". - Reuters