Is this sentence from »Der Spiegel« lacking »zu sein«?

Question

The below paragraph comes from the article “Ermittlungen gegen Trump. Tatort Weißes Haus” in Der Spiegel:

Innerhalb weniger Wochen hat sich Mueller ein Team von prominenten und äußerst erfahrenen Ermittlern zusammengestellt, worauf einige Republikaner nervös reagierten. Mueller und seine Leute werden alle relevanten Figuren in der Affäre vernehmen. Das kann dauern, aber der Sonderermittler scheint an Tempo interessiert. Schon in dieser Woche will das Team angeblich den nationalen Geheimdienstdirektor Dan Coats und NSA-Chef Mike Rogers vernehmen.

Context (from Wikipedia): On May 17, 2017, Robert Mueller was appointed by the Justice Department as special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and related matters.

The sentence I highlighted in bold in the above-quoted paragraph does not read well to me without zu sein after interessiert. According to dict.cc, the relevant expression is: an etw. (Dat.) interessiert sein = to be interested in sth.

So, shouldn't there be zu sein after interessiert?

Answer 1

It's not mandatory to have an infinitive after "scheinen", sometimes just an adjectival phrase is enough. However, that usage often sounds somewhat stilted and seems downright wrong to me when it's with just a simple word. For example,

Es scheint problematisch, einfach so anzunehmen, dass ...

(It seems problematic to simply assume that...)

sounds perfectly fine to me, whereas

Das Auto scheint schnell.

(The car seems fast.)

sounds completely off. I feel the same way about the English translations though, so I guess you can just translate "scheinen" with "seem".

Therefore, the highlighted sentence in the Spiegel article doesn't sound completely wrong. It does sound slightly odd to me though, and I think it would have sounded better with "zu sein".

Answer 2

"zu sein" is possible here, but not mandatory.

An example from German Literature:

[...] seine Lippen schienen zu kurz, sie waren völlig von den Zähnen zurückgezogen, dergestalt, daß diese, bis zum Zahnfleisch bloßgelegt, weiß und lang dazwischen hervorbleckten.

(Thomas Mann: Der Tod in Venedig)