New Frontiers on the Rhine

...He himself is the embodiment of rational, uncomplicated thinking, a man who refuses to fall back on the cajolery and manipulating of the true professional politician...

...But public opinion, by quickly making clear that it would no longer tolerate such methods, killed the strike and lockout threats...

...Thus the labor scene reflects a collective sense of political and social responsibility that may well be the most important feature of contemporary Germany...

...Under Erhard, too, Germany is likely to have its initial experience with government by committee...

...When one views in retrospect the Chancellor's 14-year reign of peaceful and independent development, it is obvious that there is more than a little truth to this assertion...

...There is no denying his autocratic and overbearing attempts to force his will on the parliamentary majority, particularly in the early days when he easily daunted the 500 rather bewildered members of the Bundestag...

...The Socialists' rise in popularity in the last year or two can be partially traced to CDU mistakes and miscalculations...

...Now, to a major segment of the German population, Brandt represents the nation's search for youthful talent and fresh ideas, its desire to shake off the narrow-minded nationalism of its forefathers...

...A press campaign warned that these could produce a national disaster, while emphasizing the widely held view that both parties (the Constitution forbids Government arbitration) must give primary consideration to the effect of their actions on the entire community...

...The style of life which suited their fathers and grandfathers does not suit them...

...Even the most partisan Social Democrat will admit privately that Adenauer created the climate for debate and democratic discussion of national affairs...

...At any rate, it has gone far enough for the German people to rise instinctively against Der Spiegel Affair and, as one body, cry out: "No, we don't want to go through that again...

...It calls for the elimination of casual labor in an industry previously dependent upon this unstable form of manpower, and aims at greater productivity to provide greater financial rewards for all concerned...

...Nor are these simply two isolated incidents...

...Far from it: He and his party have achieved all that could have been expected of them...

...They want a Europe that is wide open and forward-looking...

...In him rests the hopes of millions who yearn to become at long last—rather than Rhinelanders, Bavarians or Berliners—true Europeans...

...Other influences, too, have been changing the character of German life...

...They are seeking out new frontiers of their own...

...For several years now, German labor-management relations have thrived in an atmosphere of cooperation, as opposed to the old antagonism, making regular wage increases and shortened work weeks almost a matter of course...

...Where are the new frontiersmen to lead them...

...Willy Brandt is the closest approximation to a "Kennedy man" that Germany has produced...

...This places the Social Democratic party (SPD) in an excellent position to step in and win a victory almost by default...

...In fact, in its own way Der Spiegel Affair offers significant evidence of how far the German public conscience has developed...

...There also is no denying that he suffered lapses of judgment, such as failing to rout out all former high-ranking Nazis from the police and judiciary— though, rightly or wrongly, he considered the need for continuity in German politics more important than revenge...

...Meanwhile, the Christian Democrats will now have to settle down and fight for their future as a viable governing force...

...They are not at all interested in exclusive bilateral agreements that would restrict Germany's role within the general Western alliance...

...in larger part, however, it is due to a complete facelifting of the SPD'S policy and program...

...It suddenly became impossible to appeal to the small house owner and shareholder on the basis of old dustcovered dogma only slightly adapted from Karl Marx...

...Erich Mende, the Chairman of Germany's Free Democratic party, has described the Chancellor's accomplishments as "stage one in returning Germany to the road of true democracy...

...The reason lies instead in the deep desire of a politically re-educated public to effect fundamental changes in the national scene, to get on with stage two on the road to true democracy...

...The seal was set on this essentially modern arrangement when West German President Heinrich Luebke officially welcomed the union's contribution to a new foundation for education and culture...

...Die Zeit, Germany's most distinguished literary and political weekly, recently pointed out: "The three great postwar Europeans—de Gaspari, Schumann and Adenauer—who founded the Catholic democracy of Europe have become historical monuments...

...Yet he set the scene for a return to government by collective decision...

...Sometime in the fall," it has been decided, he will abdicate the chancellorship and his leadership of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in favor of Ludwig Erhard, the 66year-old Minister of Economics...

...GERMANY: 'STAGE TWO' New Frontiers on the Rhine By Kenneth Ames Bonn To many people both inside and out of Germany, Konrad Adenauer's absence from political life is going to seem like losing a sturdy wall against which one has grown accustomed to banging one's head...

...To appreciate the full implications of this development, one has to recall that economic and political stability have not been known here since 1914...

...Victory for the latter group, it will be recalled, came when the Godesberg Program of 1959 retreated from the SPD'S hardened position against German membership in NATO and nuclear armament, and dropped the demand that all industry be nationalized...

...Ironically, Erhard was in great measure responsible for the Socialists coming around to this conclusion...

...Aside from Willy Brandt, there is a genuine dearth of able young men in German politics, principally because there has been no way for a bright young man in industry, finance, journalism or law to stand for election without first serving an exhausting apprenticeship at local party headquarters...

...In the evening of his reign as Chancellor, the man who assumed his national role in public life as an energetic youngster of 73 has come in for a great deal of criticism...

...This quality alone has endeared him to a large part of the suspicious electorate, which has been soured by the fixing and infighting of the "pros...

...It has been virtually impossible for a man to make his mark in political life here before reaching his 50s, though there are signs that this too is changing...

...This change of character also showed itself early this year in the reaction to the Franco-German Treaty and the almost simultaneous breakdown of Common Market negotiations in Brussels...

...And within the past several months it has been responsible for CDU setbacks in a number of important provincial elections, some of them in the party's traditional strongholds...

...Young Germans are traveling and being educated abroad more than ever before...

...Once again, the public demonstrated that it understood (and disliked) the dangers inherent in an exclusive Little Europe dominated by a FrancoGerman Union...

...After weeks of procrastinating, feigning and haggling, the 87-year-old Chancellor, with thunderous ill-grace, succumbed to the view of the majority of his party and agreed to his own retirement...

...The immediate reasons for Adenauer's rather unsubtly enforced resignation are not difficult to plot...

...Foreign reaction to the midnight swoop on the editorial offices of the news magazine, it will be recalled, was sharp and vociferous...

...And Professor Erhard was one of the first to grasp that today's Germans—especially the younger generation—are eager for a different kind of Europe than the Chancellor had in mind for them...

...This is certainly true of the CDU, which has yet to demonstrate that it can go beyond its already fulfilled purpose of providing Germany with a stable foundation on which to rebuild the nation...

...Not surprisingly, it became apparent to the party executive (with the exception of Adenauer himself) that the CDU had never had it so bad, that there was a very real danger of its continuing to lose ground in provincial elections, and that it might even be voted out of power in 1965...

...Thus, if the SPD comes to power in 1965, it will hardly surprise anyone...

...The metalworkers and their employers soon were forced to bow to the public's demands for a reasonable compromise...

...At the same time, no final accounting of his leadership would be accurate if it did not show that Konrad Adenauer contributed more than any single man to re-educating the German political animal, and that this process could never have been imposed from outside but had to have its roots inside Germany itself...

...German politics will not seem—and indeed will not be—the same...

...The first involved Georg Leber's building trades union, which in January concluded an agreement that amounts to a new form of progressive partnership with management...

...The Old Man on the Rhine may still have a few more tricks up his sleeve to play as a desperate rearguard action, but his long period of effective control has, without question, run out...

...Some 30 or 40 years ago, it would have been inconceivable for a German with origins as obscure as Brandt's (who not only changed his name but took Norwegian citizenship during World War II) to become Chancellor of Germany...

...Last year, the nation lost a mere 450,000 working days through strikes compared, for instance, with 5.4 million for Britain...

...Energetic, handsome, married to a beautiful woman, at 48 he is the embodiment of young Germany's anti-nationalist feelings...

...Erich Mende, former CDU deputy Gerd Bucerius and a score of other responsible German intellectuals have aptly observed that only a strong monolithic government, a kind of benevolent dictatorship, could have survived in the atmosphere of postwar Germany...

...To begin with, of course, there was the murky and muddled Der Spiegel Affair...

...How far this education has progressed is hard to say...

...This is not easily answered...

...This marked the point where the party that had provided the seeds of the Russian Revolution suddenly came to the conclusion that in its own territory class war was totally and irrevocably dead...

...Those who disagreed with him tended to fall mysteriously by the wayside...

...Kenneth Ames, now with Newsweek's Central Europe Bureau, has reported on Germany for a decade...

...These changes have been the culmination of a long, ideological struggle within the SPD between the doctrinaires and men like the late Ernst Reuter of Berlin, Hans Brauer of Hamburg, Wilhelm Kaisen of Bremen, and, most prominently, Willy Brandt...

...To say this, though, is not to indict Konrad Adenauer and the CDU...

...But there is a decided trend toward a more liberalized form of government led by younger, less hidebound men...

...This was climaxed by the messy squabble surrounding the dismissal of Defense Minister FranzJosef Strauss, who had engineered the raid on Der Spiegel's offices in Bonn and Hamburg...

...He ruled his Cabinet with an iron hand...

...Barring accidents or last minute intrigues, from this October to September 1965 Ludwig Erhard will head a "new look" Government...

...For Germans in their 50s, and for many younger people, the idea of collective political responsibility has until now been smothered by military dictatorship, economic collapse, personal fear and Nazism...

...in other words, controlled by the two old autocrats of Europe—Adenauer and General de Gaulle...

...For the first time in longer than anyone can remember, international ideas are becoming common currency on the Rhine...

...Shortly afterward, a second labor dispute saw Otto Brenner's metalworkers union attempt a return to antiquated class war tactics...

...As a result, what the younger Germans find in their own country leaves them with a nagging sense of dissatisfaction...

...Clearly, something had to be done to restore the party's image, some gesture of revivification had to be given the public—and that gesture turned out to be the promise of the Chancellor's early retirement...

...Perhaps the most impressive sign of the change that has taken place in German society is to be found in a newly emergent pattern of labor—or, more precisely, social—responsibility...

...The Catholic parties of Europe are everywhere on the defensive...

...With the Adenauer Era ended, Germany is a nation in search of new political formulae...

...What many observers failed to record, though, was the louder and more violent protest from all levels of German society—suddenly reminded that the midnight knock on the door was still not wholly a fear of the past...

...This was pointed up by two recent tradeunion settlements...

...Ten years ago, an Adenauer or a Strauss or some misguided police chief with a not too carefully examined record could have gotten away with this sort of action...

...With the rise of younger, more energetic men to the party's leadership, old doctrine and dogma have been jettisoned: Today the German Socialist party is close to the position occupied, in its happier days, by Britain's Liberal party...

...For his successful economic policies turned the German proletariat into an enormous, relatively affluent bourgeoisie that owns not only its own refrigerators, television sets, washing machines and Volkswagens, but also shares in the companies manufacturing them...

...Yet, when all is said and done, even the circumstances of Konrad Adenauer's resignation are a tribute to the change he has wrought in the character of German politics...

...It would, of course, be a vast oversimplification to say that Germany is "going Left...

...Before he finally leaves office, Der Alte will be the object of still further criticism...

...In 1949, after four years of Allied military government, very few Germans were either capable or willing to indulge in the luxury of independent political action...

...In the years between, however, there has been a gradual but steady process of education going on...

...And Konrad Adenauer, the woodenfaced Oberburgermeister of Cologne, the devout Catholic with an unshakable belief in his own rectitude, has not only survived but also provided the stability that was so essential to the nation's growth...