The State of German Social Democrats

...Chakles W. Thayer served in the U.S...

...The plan for the presidium was approved by the convention, and at the new executive committee's first meeting after the convention, the nine presidium members were chosen...

...Demanding an active program of educational and spiritual rejuvenation, Knoeringen warned that the party must modernize not simply its structure hut its aims...

...This may be so, but what the voter will want to know before going to the polls next time is: Will this new dynamic program be directed by the class-conscious fire-eater Wehner or by more soft-spoken moderates like Schmid or Knoeringen...

...Embassy in Moscow during World War II and later was head of the Voice of America...

...Some blamed it on young radicals from Berlin...

...and as much freedom in the economy as possible...

...such as talks with the East German Communists, to lure the Kremlin into an agreement to reunification...

...Subsequently, the three Western Allies turned on the fourth (sic...

...Less open but even more convincing was the snide sniping in the lobbies against the party chairman...

...2 in a victorious one," a disgruntled delegate murmured...

...The apparatchiki are smashed," chortled the reformers even before the voting began...

...All the reformers promise that the presidium will develop a new, dynamic political program...

...One wondered exactly how much had been accomplished thereby...

...The wicked politicians, one of them an absurd caricature of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, thereupon snuffed out Hiroshima and Nagasaki and tripled the radioactivity of German milk...

...1 in a defeated party than No...

...Convening in Stuttgart's Lieder-halle, probably the ugliest building that has yet arisen from the German rubble, their opening number was a dramatic absurdity—a questionable political slogan set to music...

...With his eye apparently glued to the applausometer rather than to realities, he once again trotted out the magic solutions to the cold war which for more than a decade have been put forward by the West and rejected by the East...

...As usual, he managed to shock neutral observers and gain some leftist applause by confessing that he was still old-fashioned enough to believe in the class struggle...

...Herbert is trying to justify his youthful past by the present and his present attitude by the past," an old friend commented...

...This, as the Neue Zuericher Zeitung correspondent later pointed out, was exactly where Adenauer wanted them...

...In almost prevaricatory silence, he passed over Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan's latest rejection of all the solutions still being proposed by the Social Democrats...

...One of the plans in which the reformers place high hopes in is the formation of an "inner cabinet" or presidium of nine members of the executive committee which will direct the party's political course, freed from the dead hand of the paid functionaries...

...Now, with another resounding election defeat behind them, the delegates were more responsive...

...Ollenhauer's resolution, which with statesmanlike reasoning censured both the French and the Algerian rebels, was eventually altered by the Social Democratic rebels to eliminate the Algerian rebels...

...In place of Marx's socialization of the means of production he recommended something he called "community property," but despite two hours of talk he never got around to defining precisely what community property meant...

...Both Erler and Wehner, counted among the reformers, were the loudest proponents of a policy that could only drive the party further to the left...

...He warned that modern technology was reducing mankind to slaves of the living standard and added: "Communism is also striving for material satiation—and can achieve it...

...No less disappointing was Fritz Erler, whose brilliance and expertise is undisputed...

...Be is the author of several books, including Hands Across the Caviar and The Unquiet Germans...

...As before, Ollenhauer played the role of conciliator between the factions and tried his best to keep his old lieutenants at their posts...

...Briefly, it described how some well-meaning scientists had mistakenly invented the atom bomb and immediately regretted it...

...Perhaps more serious, it seemed to confirm the oft-made criticism that, with the Social Democrats, anything goes so long as it's against Adenauer...

...It was never revealed who was responsible for the fiasco apart from the author...

...For a few brief moments, the convention touched its feet down on realities as Waldemar von Knoerin-gen, the Bavarian district chairman, almost brutally pointed out that to be for an eight-hour day was not enough of a platform for a modern political party...

...Commissioned for the convention and called the Goettingen Cantata, it was written by Guenter Weisenborn, who is described by some as at least as much at home in East Germany as in the West, and by more generous critics as a simple fool...

...Having got off to this lame start, the convention droned along for a week with scarcely a new idea and even less recognition of the realities which had exiled the party to opposition for nearly a decade...

...Most of us would rather be No...

...Never again can we run Ollenhauer as candidate for Chancellor" was an oft-heard comment...

...others on Fritz Heine, the party propaganda chief, who later was defeated for re-election to the party executive committee...

...In the front row of the hall, British Labor party leader Hugh Gaitskell and other foreign visitors sat and shuddered...

...He proposed sweeping conciliatory gestures...

...Only the filling of organizational slots seemed to arouse any excitement...

...Wehner and Knoeringen were both chosen as deputies to Ollenhauer and several progressive "revisionists," like Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, were elected to the executive committee...

...A second look at the Stuttgart convention The State of Germany's Social Democrats By Charles W Thayer Bonn The German Social Democrats' latest attempt, at their 1958' national convention, to face the realities which have brought them three election defeats has produced mixed results...

...The theme of the drama was the protest of the 18 Goettingen University scientists against atomic armaments...

...Of them, five belong to the reform faction: Schmid, Wehner, Knoeringen, Erler and Deist...

...However, a number of the minor speechmakers subsequently declared themselves inspired by the Cantata and no important speaker ventured to repudiate it...

...But Ollenhauer's influence had not been left unscathed by the 1957 elections, as had already been demonstrated by the revolt over the Algerian resolution...

...As I listened, I had the impression that I was sitting again in the Moscow Park of Culture and Rest watching an agitprop team...

...The Cantata episode inevitably played into the hands of those who propagate the myth that the Social Democrats are close kin to the Communists, and anti-SPD newspapers throughout Germany had a field day with it...

...The delegates in the final vote not only threw out several of the old guard, including Fritz Heine, but cast a small but significant number of votes against Ollenhauer himself...

...While the speeches and comments of delegates rolled forth on the convention floor, another more practical activity was taking place behind the scenes in secret sessions of the executive committee where the changing of the guard at the party headquarters in Bonn was under discussion...

...So, I should add, did several of the Social Democrats with whom I later talked...

...If the former, it is likely to remain within the bonds which for decades have held it to more or less 35 per cent of the total vote...

...If, he argued, the party's only aim is the material and social improvement of the worker, then it is doomed to disappear as material needs are satisfied...

...Indeed, the atmosphere throughout the convention, both in the hall and the beer garden, was one of self-satisfied contentment, as though the delegates had at long last reconciled themselves to being members of a party of professional also-rans...

...Though the public generally believes Wehner to be a leftist radical, others who know him well consider him a brilliant but embittered realist...

...Two years ago at the Munich convention, the party reformers, headed by Carlo Schmid, Knoeringen, Wehner and Erler, had attempted without success to oust the conservative left-wingers in the party apparatus...

...Herbert Wehner, the onetime boy wonder of the German Communist Politburo, in a noisy demonstration with plenty of thunder but little lightning went even further in lumping East and West in the same pot of blame for Germany's division...

...Party chairman Erich Ollenhauer's opening address was distinguished from his usual pedestrian efforts by the minor fracas it provoked among the delegates over a matter of such little concern to the Germans as the Algerian problem...

...and were now, with unmixed stupidity and ignorance, threatening the world with extinction while the little men of the world, including those in the Soviet Union, were demanding talks, negotiations and peace...

...Heinrich Deist, the party's star economist, in a long-winded address proposed to bury the last, long dead remnant of Marxian economic theory in the party's program by substituting for nationalization of property the slogan: "No more state interference than is necessary...

...If the latter, the party would seem to have a chance of success at some future election with the help of disgruntled middle-class voters...

...Although there were several conflicting interpretations of its meaning, the convention cheerfully adopted the proposal...