A Look at the New Germany
HOTTELET, RICHARD
A veteran correspondent takes A LOOK AT THE NEW GERMANY By Richard C. Hottelet Germany's troubled and erratic course in the past 50 years has affected most people's lives. That includes my...
...At the height of the Berlin Blockade, the Communists offered the cold and hungry people of West Berlin fuel and food if they would demonstrate against the presence of Western forces in the city...
...The housewife, whom both Kaiser Wilhelm and Adolf Hitler sought to confine to the home and kitchen, has been pushed out into the world...
...Between 1937 and 1941, when Nazi arrogance and power were at their peak, I sat through Goebbels's torchlight buffoonery in the jammed Olympic Stadium and watched the Wehr-macht lunge with deadly precision across Belgium and France to hammer down the gates of Dunkirk...
...Ten per cent of the population is over 65 years old, and the birth-rate has fallen to the second lowest in Europe...
...It is conspicuous in the arts...
...A New Breed of Teacher: School teachers, who, in the old days, took up where father left off, are now a noticeably different breed...
...The present Constitution, written with an eye on Weimar's mistakes, has provided the framework for what has come to be one of the most stable governments in Europe...
...There has not been a single serious political incident against the Western forces since they entered Germany...
...In 1938, back again as a foreign correspondent, I was half trampled at Tempelhof airfield by a frenzied crowd hailing Hitler's return from the Austrian Anschluss...
...Over them all reigned the sovereign or the dictator...
...The Parliament, which I saw convene in an atmosphere of uncertainty in September 1949, has in the last eight years given the legislative branch of the Government an influence without precedent...
...Most dispassionate observers are inclined to say that all bets would be off in case of a serious economic depression...
...The war made four million women the heads of families...
...The transformation that has taken place in woman's outer appearance since the war has been matched by the change in her social position...
...They no longer demand that their wives be a combination servant and brood mare...
...Market research and public-opinion polls reflect a new philosophy of deference to customers' wishes and to the opinions of the average man...
...Organized labor, which fell apart at Hitler's touch, is now on guard against any threat to civil liberty...
...What is decisive, however, is that this applies equally to the rest of Europe...
...And the free discussion which was fostered in class broke out in dead earnest over every phase of school operation when the parents assembled for parent-teacher meetings...
...For the first time, a married woman has been given the legal right to own—or dispose of—property...
...She no longer wears a comic hat with a rubber band under her chin, and her clothes don't look as if they had been tailored by a tentmaker...
...The stern father, who demanded total submission, was succeeded by the equally stern teacher, then by the sergeant-major and finally by the boss of the business...
...Can Germany now really be trusted...
...The Great Dictator, who, eight years earlier, had been supreme war lord and supreme law lord, now appeared ridiculous...
...She knows more about politics and business than she ever did before, and is more active in them with a greater degree of self-assurance...
...Harsh experience has taught them that their country is too small a part of the modern world to stand alone politically or militarily...
...Hitler Seen in New Light: The old Fuehrer has received short shrift...
...Then, a rustle of disbelief and, following quickly, isolated guffaws...
...Remnants of the past have by no means been eliminated from German education, but in the prevailing atmosphere, in the curriculum and in the fine new buildings going up, it has taken on a new, progressive look...
...The chauvinistic overtones which colored German behavior before the First World War, and which Hitler heightened to the point of insanity, have been discarded...
...Proceeding from all this is the eclipse of the old, tyrannical father image...
...They took part in Red Cross drives, in collecting food and clothing for refugees: contributed to disaster relief not only in Germany but in Holland, Greece and elsewhere...
...Independence and self-reliance are qualities which the war engendered in the average woman...
...Husbands would turn up at cocktail parties alone, and congregate at stag dinners and beer evenings...
...The mother's greater share in large and small decisions, not to mention her frequent part in earning the family income, have cut the father down to size...
...Bonn has constantly refused...
...Can the German people, who have in the past been stable only under rigid authority, now make a go of liberal democracy...
...She bore the brunt of the bombing raids which turned cities into infernos...
...The legal period of military training is only 12 months, and it is to be crammed with useful rather than ceremonial exercises...
...The founding fathers of the Bonn Republic have bestowed upon her a constitutional status of equality with men...
...Are they reliable allies or will they again flirt with Russia...
...In Berlin and the East she experienced the horrors of Soviet occupation...
...The bulk of the audience remained silent, but exchanged shamefaced glances...
...In subsequent years, I was there to follow Germany's rise again from total ruin to economic and political power...
...Some 12 million refugees from the East have brought their blood, cultural background and skills to alter the pattern of society...
...Practical safeguards have been written into the Constitution and into defense legislation...
...Prussianism Passe: Military service is again something for the young German to reckon with, and in the light of past performance it is justifiable to ask: "Will the new armed forces play the same dark role they have in the past...
...What About Russia?: Through much of modern history the affinity that bound Prussia and Russia, and later Germany's penchant for dealing with the East, have disturbed the West...
...There was no doubt about it...
...There are, for instance, more women in the Bundestag than in any other Western European parliament...
...This pattern strongly affected German behavior...
...The turnout at elections is phenomenal by American standards—86 per cent last time...
...A large-scale response would have pulled the rug out from under our feet, but the people ignored Soviet blandishments as well as their threats...
...Perhaps the most important basic change has been the decline of German nationalism...
...In the Bonn Republic, civil authority is supreme as it never was in the Weimar, and has helped create a climate in which tolerant thought may flourish...
...Youngsters, while not as free in their manner as American children, are no longer tongue-tied in the presence of their elders...
...Those who find such a basic transformation hard to believe overlook the fact that Germany has been through a cataclysm which has left it physically, biologically and politically altered...
...Salesmen cluster around factory gates in the Ruhr, signing up workers for radios, motorcycles and new clothes...
...The big Nazi anniversaries are forgotten...
...They move from door to door persuading housewives that a new iron, vacuum cleaner or electric refrigerator is essential to modern li\ing...
...The citizens of West Germany take their rights and duties seriously...
...There is a surplus of three million women...
...Today there is no harking back to the "good old days" of whatever vintage...
...Some 6.5 million people are pensioners partly or wholly unfit to work...
...While the men were in the Army or in prison camps, it was the woman who kept the family together or fended for herself...
...But far more important is the fact that militarism, as the world knew it in the Prussian mold, is in bad repute...
...That was in 1923...
...The composition of the body politic in the latter has been greatly changed...
...This could appear an act of legal whimsy, and it has tied divorce, alimony and child-support cases into knots...
...An aroused citizenry has seen to it that military service will be a national duty, not a way of life...
...A Man's World Changes: As is not unnatural, the greatest difference in the German woman's life has been made by men...
...On a trip to Germany as a child, I played put-and-take for 100,000-mark notes—worth far less than matchsticks...
...Bookshelves, theater programs and movie marquees are dominated by French, American and British titles (usually in that order...
...American and other Western influence can be traced all through German life today...
...The war burned out the roots of totalitarianism...
...What do they mean...
...The spearhead of the U.S...
...Increasing production at stable prices is spurred largely by the workingman's demand that he and his family share more fully in the general prosperity...
...Those who return are © 1957 by Richard C. Hottelet treated as Germans and meet with no visible discrimination...
...New Ideas for Old: The Germans are today more receptive to foreign ideas than at any time in the past century...
...Only time will provide the answer, but the beginning is auspicious...
...Industry leans heavily on American experience...
...They have observed in the Eastern Zone a horrible example of partnership with the Russians and are not tempted to try it themselves...
...The race hatred which was one of the most shocking features of the Nazi period is today hardly perceptible...
...Perhaps no American practice since the Marshall Plan has affected German life as profoundly as the installment plan...
...The Soviets have repeatedly offered German alliance and unity on Russian terms and are likely to do so again...
...German men seem to have accepted these changes...
...It was conclusive...
...The Changed Scene: One of the significant facts is that, along with the country's amazing economic recovery, the German people have evidently set themselves new standards of behavior...
...Third Armored Division carried me back to Germany in 1944...
...The children were encouraged in their class committees and student council to decide for themselves questions involving safety, homework, classrooms and locker-room conditions...
...She was spared nothing, and when her man came back from the war she was no longer his servant and cook, but his partner...
...Some sociologists explain many of the less attractive aspects of German life in the past 150 years in terms of domination from early youth...
...The young German, much like the young American, wants a good-looking, resourceful wife who can also be a helper and companion...
...A recent survey showed that the university professor ranked first in popular respect, followed by the bishop, the business executive, the Cabinet minister and the prince, with the Army general a poor sixth...
...Lipstick, rouge, nail polish and perfume, once regarded as daring, have come into their own...
...This realization has brought Germany into the Western Alliance...
...Today West Germany is again a great industrial nation...
...Our daughter spent three years in a German high school, and discipline was never harsh...
...Accepting a New Rule: West Germany today is far from perfect...
...Nowadays, authority is too widely shared to be the monopoly of any individual or institution...
...A new tolerance, or perhaps a revival of the humanity of Goethe's and Beethoven's time, is also visible in the dealings between individuals...
...The Bonn Republic, unlike the Weimar Republic of the 1920s, intends to make sure that the Army does not become a state within the state...
...the prevailing mood was: "How on earth could we have fallen for this...
...The old days, when flags, uniforms and warlike glory were essential to self-respect, seem to have been buried...
...There is no need for the West to accept this judgment on blind faith...
...There is no brooding over the past, no festering hate like that which followed the Treaty of Versailles...
...Even before Hindenburg handed the Government over to Hitler, democracy had vanished without a whimper...
...I went to a local theater in Bonn to gauge reaction at the first public showing...
...A public-opinion survey found, not long ago, that the father was now considered the overlord in less than 20 per cent of all families—and that the mother had the last word in almost as many...
...Public relations was imported wholesale, although it was so novel a concept that Germany had to borrow the name as well as the technique...
...For example, Liszt's Les Preludes will probably not be heard in her concert halls for a generation because Goebbels used it to herald his victory announcements...
...My wife and I noticed, in the entertaining wo did in Bonn and Berlin, that the older married couples did not often go out together...
...The name Adolf has been registered on few birth certificates in the past twelve years...
...Old Masters Fade Away: The stress of Germany's recent experience is also reflected in the spirit of the people...
...I stood on the sidelines as Mussolini and Molotov drove down Unter den Linden, and looked out from the seamy inside of a Gestapo prison as Hitler invaded the Soviet Union...
...Germany is no longer a special case...
...The press and radio—both fully independent of the state—jealously watch over individual freedom and are thorns in the side of arrogant bureaucracy...
...Most West Germans now see that such an alliance was possible only in an historical period when both nations were relatively equal partners...
...Small reactions are indicative...
...Married couples in their 40s and below, on the other hand, went out together much more and, on the whole, seemed to have found a basis of equality...
...A comparison of the Weimar and the Bonn Republics—the only democratic regimes Germany has ever had—shows how far the German people have come...
...Weimar was a political pandemonium beset by powerful forces which owed their allegiance to the former regime and regarded democrats as traitors...
...Political leaders and the average man seem to have abandoned the notion that Germany can again become a great power on its own...
...Another poll showed that the mother is the ideal of more children than the father...
...Will the Army, the new Bundeswehr, soon to be the strongest Western force in Europe, come to dominate the state or drag the West into political adventures...
...Turnabout for Women: Today's German woman is a different person from prewar times...
...In passing the necessary legislation, the Government not only had to shoulder the financial burden but also to ignore threats that such aid to Israel would ruin all chances of German trade with Arab nations...
...That includes my own...
...A Discriminating Change: The average German may not express enough contrition about the past to suit critics abroad, but Germany is making restitution payments of $830 million to Jewish victims of Nazism —mostly in the form of industrial goods which have helped Israel keep its head above water...
...The changes which we have all seen take place raise questions of historic consequence...
...At first, shocked, tense silence...
...It fell to my lot to observe the Gestapo herding Jews to Poland and to follow gangs of SS thugs smashing and burning shops and synagogues...
...For a while, however, after Allied restrictions were raised, there was some doubt about the appeal Hitler might still hold for the average citizen...
...One unexpected development is the return of Jews to Germany—about 100 each week—from Israel and the United States...
...Hitler appeared in it briefly, but in full form, at some big rally...
...Calories are being counted...
...The most drastic change is the loss of one-third of its 1937 territory to Poland and Russia, while the remaining two-thirds is divided into the Eastern Soviet-occupied zone and the Western Bonn Republic...
...And it has stimulated the ideal of European unity as the legitimate outlet for the prodigious energy that lies behind German aspirations...
...World War II cost Germany almost 5.5 million dead and 1.5 million crippled...
...They have borrowed much from the United States...
...Finally, officials approved a full-length documentary covering events since the First World War...
Vol. 40 • July 1957 • No. 28
