Adenauer's Achievement
HOTTELET, RICHARD C.
Cabinet conflicts are an indication of the country's increasing political maturity Adenauer's achievement: Germany grows up By Richard C. Hottelet Bonn There has, in recent weeks, been a good...
...Gooseflesh is a legitimate campaign weapon...
...In terms of a reporter's experience and of statistical evidence, he is far out in front in public favor...
...However patriarchal his rule and haughty his "solitary decisions," however contemptuous he may be of his colleagues and his contemporaries, Adenauer has helped to introduce or to anchor in German life certain attributes which have stabilized democracy...
...The coming election campaign, which may well be enlivened by new Soviet overtures, will put this conclusion to the test...
...Some aspects of the present picture are by all odds negative...
...There have been periods when his word was law and when everything he touched turned to votes...
...The Allies must take this Germany as it is, with its faults and weaknesses as well as its talents and accomplishments...
...In the end, they won out completely, forced the state government of Lower Saxony to remove an unsavory right-wing politician as Minister of Culture, and probably ended his political career...
...Cabinet conflicts are an indication of the country's increasing political maturity Adenauer's achievement: Germany grows up By Richard C. Hottelet Bonn There has, in recent weeks, been a good deal of apprehensive speculation in the United States about political developments in Germany...
...After two ruinous inflations in little more than 20 years, many Germans get the vapors when prices begin to rise...
...The reunification dithers still grip some quarters and manifest themselves in wild demands that the Government "seize the initiative," "take action," or "pin Russia down...
...No man in public life remains constantly at peak popularity...
...Only a precise and objective inventory can provide a sensible basis on which to continue or to alter American policy in Europe...
...Reporters have pointed to signs of instability in German affairs...
...But there has never been any shortage of criticism...
...Commentators have announced the "end of the Adenauer era...
...But what does the "end of the Adenauer era" actually mean...
...Certain other activities are less easy to categorize...
...Politics is not a physical science...
...Will that mark the end of his "era...
...The Germans are learning to live in a new world with new political standards...
...The Opposition maintains that the "Adenauer era" has ended...
...It is my contention that they are not a serious force, that they do not impress the great majority of the people, and that they do not affect the Government...
...It is unlikely that the Social Democratic party, together with the FDP and the other splinter groups, could get the Bundestag majority they would need to elect their own Chancellor...
...When the dust settled, the Chancellor had reimposed his authority on the Cabinet, but at the cost of political black eyes and bruised feelings...
...Though as mortal as the next man, the Chancellor is medically sound...
...The manner in which these are decided will determine whether the SPD will be able, even in theory, to form a coalition government with the CDU or the FDP in 1957...
...The rise of democratic institutions has taken some highly positive forms...
...This fabulous old man is now 80 years of age...
...It is this behavior pattern, rather than the figure of the Chancellor, which really marks the "Adenauer era...
...For all the Bundestag's new responsibility, it is pretty obvious that pure politics has helped delay the defense program and keep open the issue of the length of military service...
...It was an unmistakable rebuff, solid proof that his prestige counted for nothing with those voters...
...There is not the slightest suggestion that his disaffected followers would remove him if they could, and no reason to believe that his opponents will find it possible...
...They have no real program, except that they can do things better...
...Nothing is certain in human relations, and "a policy" cannot be a timetable for a Cook's tour through the future--at least, not without chaining it to events which are unpredictable from week to week, and winding up trying to patch vast cracks in a tottering structure of ideas...
...A glaring error of judgment by him and his advisers split the Free Democratic party, sent its majority into opposition, and stirred up a hornet's nest which will have the political scene buzzing until the 1957 election...
...Konrad Adenauer will, however, one day die or retire...
...This is not the millennium, but it is an impressive beginning...
...In the matter of defense legislation, the delay that has attended the establishment of a German army, embarrassing the Chancellor and depressing NATO, is a by-product of a salutary development...
...are trying to put their house in order for the election campaign...
...Movement upward can be as easy as loss of ground, and the last word is not lightly spoken...
...The Christian Democratic party is a novelty in German life, a party which combines Catholic and Protestant, north and south, city and country, labor and middle class, conservative and liberal...
...Viel Feina", viel Ehr '" has joined "Blut und Eisen" and much other sinister sentimentality in the ash can...
...There have been rebellious rumblings in his own Christian Democratic Union, together with public criticism of his high-handed behavior and his choice of associates...
...He has also suffered a number of political jolts and setbacks in the past twelve months...
...Although he is, by all available evidence, in first-class condition both physically and mentally, he is obviously approaching the end of his career...
...The Free Democrats, having left the coalition, are embarked on a search for an independent political existence...
...But it would be more than premature to mourn (or celebrate) his downfall...
...The Bundestag set up and maintained a screening commission for senior officers...
...The Social Democrats, too...
...No useful purpose is served--indeed, great damage can be done--by regarding this vital nation and its epic problem with either uncritical admiration or hypercritical spleen...
...Are the clear policy and stability of the Bonn Republic so dependent on the will of this doughty old man that they will be wrecked when he leaves the scene...
...Perhaps unconsciously, he has set the standard for political behavior...
...In extenuation, it must be said that the Germans are as sensitive to inflation as we are to unemployment...
...Nothing has been more important, or more characteristic of the situation in Germany, than the essential stability of the German voter...
...It is altogether possible that what has been noted as Adenauer's decline is really, in the main, the rise of democratic institutions...
...It is extremely important, at this time of transition in international relations, to know exactly what the Western world has in the German Federal Republic in terms of assets and liabilities...
...But knowledge is not served by sudden frights and dark imaginings any more than by rosy illusions--opposite poles between which Western thinking on the German problem tends to fluctuate...
...Things have not gone as he planned...
...Adenauer's probity--or, perhaps, his political instinct--had not only gained him the Saar to help in the coming election campaign but had preserved French confidence in his word...
...Prestige and influence fluctuate...
...The labor unions came to grips with the problem of Communist infiltration, cleaning out subversives after the Communists took over the factory council of the largest steel mill in the Ruhr...
...One result has been a dispute with the Western Allies over support costs which was as acrimonious as it was unnecessary (making due allowance for the tight and potentially inflationary economic situation...
...Attempts to rally mass support in the name of reunification and against rearmament and the Western Alliance have been dismal failures...
...The Refugee party also split and moved onto the fence, where it now stands- teetering between support and opposition...
...The average German is in no mood for experiment or violence...
...It wrote elaborate but workable provisions into fundamental laws to safeguard the rights of the individual in military service and the subordination of the military to the civilian authority...
...Had he worried about popularity last fall, he might now have neither...
...So successful has it been that the Social Democrats are emulating it in many ways, and even the fierce Young Turks of the FDP hardly know where to attack...
...Adenauer has helped bring Germany to terms with reality, hammering home the lesson that in the modern world it is no longer an independent power factor...
...The Chancellor has become involved in bitter little spats with some of his ministers over the economic situation or their ill-considered speeches...
...Instead of trimming his sails to that particular breeze, Adenauer took his beating and steered his own course...
...He and his country have come a long way since then...
...Melvin Lasky, in The New Leader of August 8, 1955, has graphically described how scholars all over Germany left their ivory towers to plunge into a political battle...
...Last year, the Rector and the University of Gottingen, the faculty and the student body, dramatically broke the Schluter case...
...The Ministers of Economics, Finance and Agriculture found themselves violently at cross purposes over tariffs and taxes...
...Coalition leaders did not make a good impression by swearing that they would secure an 18-month draft before the summer recess right up to the moment they dropped the necessary clause from the bill...
...This it is fully entitled to do...
...It has, for the first time in German history, shown that political democracy can be stable and prosperous, and that it is possible to enjoy both sovereign power and foreign respect...
...On June 4, in Luxembourg, he had his reward...
...Those inclined to leap from these and similar facts to drastic conclusions should, however, take certain points into consideration...
...And the unions joined the nation in keeping an eye on inflationary dangers...
...They solved nothing, but they did show that they have younger men and much vitality...
...The period of the Adenauer administration, for which the Chancellor is entitled to take the credit as he would be saddled with the blame if it were otherwise, has given the Germans new confidence...
...They are gambling for new support on the desire for reunification, but they have not yet decided how far they can go in attacking the Government...
...Reunification, rearmament, renazificalion--national issues, fears and phony catchwords of varying voltage have failed to enlist or stampede it...
...The party congress in Munich in July will have to reconcile grave differences over rearmament and ideological questions...
...If everyone believes it to be going down, it does in fact go down...
...His cabinet and coalition, while largely docile, have not been the rubberstamp their opponents have made them out to be...
...On balance, taking the good, the indifferent and the bad, German political performance has been encouraging...
...Some politicians, while perfectly willing to enjoy the benefits of the North Atlantic Alliance, do not see why Germany must pay its share of the price...
...Currently, speculation centers on Chancellor Konrad Adenauer...
...Political standing can be like a bear market...
...His curve of popularity, charted by a continuous public-opinion survey, has dropped from over 60, on his return from Moscow last year, to about 40 in April...
...Konrad Adenauer's going will not mean the end of the party, nor will the election of his successor present insuperable difficulty...
...The Parliament, the press, the political parties, the trade unions and, above all, the individual citizen have shown proof of genuine political growth...
...Policy in its best sense is confident knowledge of a destination, leaving routes and tactics to be worked out pragmatically...
...The Christian Democrats, at their convention in April, overrode the Chancellor's objections and registered their concern about the continuity of their program...
...His landslide victory in the 1953 national election was followed in all the state elections by corrections which kept the triumph within very reasonable bounds...
...In this case, although all the indices pointed to continued stability, the prospect of rearmament being added to an economy already at full stretch moved the Bank Deutscher Lander to raise the discount rate...
...France agreed to the broad principles of a settlement returning the Saar to Germany at the end of this year...
...Adenauer at this moment presents the picture of a politician having a hard time...
...The Bundestag elected Adenauer Chancellor in 1949 by a single vote, his own...
...Last October, the people of the Saar ignored the Chancellor's repeated personal intervention and rejected the Saar statute which he had concluded with France...
...The entire course of defense legislation has been dictated not by him but by the Bundestag, including the Socialist Opposition, and by the needs of practical politics...
...Chancellor Adenauer, incensed because loose talk of inflation was making people nervous, leaped into the argument...
...Even at times when intellectuals and party leaders whipped themselves into a lather over one half-baked crisis or another, the public has remained calm...
...A small case in point is the Saar problem...
...The revolving-door burlesque over inflation was not exactly a sign of political maturity...
...Parliament asserted a new authority and showed notable teamwork between coalition and Opposition parties in setting its own schedule and imposing its own controls on so fundamental an act of national policy...
Vol. 39 • July 1956 • No. 27
