West Germany in Limbo

...Whenever the ancient gentleman left his office, he could not help seeing how old and feeble he had become...

...The first fruit of that promise appeared within a matter of days...

...The most important aspect of the Spiegel crisis, in fact, was not that bureaucratic and administrative power could still be exercised almost unchecked in a nation with a catchall treason law and no writ of habeas corpus...

...Despite General de Gaulle's twilight fantasies, West Germany is the most powerful nation in Western Europe today...

...Schroeder and Brandt, Germany's two men of tomorrow, also share the Kennedy Administration's hope that the development of the Common Market and the evolutionary changes now occurring in the Soviet Union and its satellites will make for more relaxed relations and easier access across the line which now divides Europe into Eastern and Western blocs...

...Some people even dared to cry out that he and the military minister must leave their jobs...

...But he is tenaciously at work shaping a plan for a nuclear-free area in Central Europe, in implicit agreement with the idea that Germany must depend on conventional forces for its first response...

...Eventually, the old prime minister lost his patience...

...After attempting to destroy the magazine by arresting its editors, Adenauer was overwhelmed by the public outcry at his autocratic methods, which even his own allies dared to compare to Hitler's...

...It is still not a nation united by common morality and common purpose, but an agglomeration of regions which happen to speak the same language, though they have widely differing ideals...

...But anyone accepting this as the collective will of the Government would be wrong...

...He ordered his guards to arrest the young man who had put up the mirror as well the young men who helped polish it every week...

...It seemed that a clear policy line had emerged...

...Yet Germany now faces a profound crisis, one that far transcends the stubborn struggle between Adenauer, the enfeebled old lion, and the vigorous young males who aspire to lead the pride in his place...

...At the moment, it appears almost certain that Adenauer will retire in 1963, either gracefully or under stringent public pressure from his own disgruntled party...

...The truth is that there is no single German policy, and that the Government has no single will...

...Each time either minister looked into the mirror he fancied he heard it mockingly whisper: "I am the mirror on the wall, and I can see that you're no good at all...

...Robert S. Elegant is Newsweek's Central European Bureau chief...

...The prime minister was growing very old, but felt that he should continue to be prime minister until he died because he had always been prime minister...

...Then one day a daring young man fixed a tremendous mirror on the wall opposite the prime minister's office...

...While Adenauer has been confusing both the world and himself with contradictory statements, Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroeder, the man most likely to succeed the Chancellor in the long run, has been shaping his own policies, and with American approval...

...But the shocked public outcry, which finally forced Adenauer to reshape his Cabinet and to promise his own resignation, equally demonstrated that the seeds of democracy are germinating...

...With or without a crisis, German politics have of late been so complex that even professional observers have found it difficult to keep an accurate count of the constant permutations of authority and policy...

...Strauss had argued for the nuclear approach...

...Having jettisoned Strauss, the moving spirit behind the Spiegel arrests, in order to save his own political life, Adenauer told a gala farewell party that only with the greatest reluctance had he acceded to his Defense Minister's "personal wish" to leave the Government, and he promised to heed Strauss' advice most carefully in the future...

...It is still a benevolent autocracy, though an increasingly less efficient one...

...Second, the new relationship with Europe, most dramatically shown in the conciliation of age-old antagonisms with France...

...His dismissal and the Government statements accompanying it had deliberately given the world the impression that Germany would now opt for the strengthening of conventional forces...

...No sooner had he plastered over the crisis he himself provoked—paying a heavy price in personal humiliation for the settlement—than he resumed the erratic behavior, alternately arrogant and capricious, which had produced it in the first place...

...At 87, the Chancellor remains capable of dealing with his own Christian Democratic party by employing his unequalled skill at conniving, but he has lost touch with the people...

...That night he slept happily, feeling that he was forever rid of the impertinent mirror...

...When Erhard takes over, Germany should once more begin to operate as if run by a genuine government, and no longer resemble a giant Catherine wheel shooting off contradictions instead of sparks...

...The Adenauer era spurred this boom with three great achievements...

...With the economic miracle receding, Germany must either find its purpose in the new Europe or once again become a storm center of bitter, frustrated ultra-nationalism...

...Then he strode up to the mirror and smashed it with his fist...

...Not that Germany today is a democracy...

...In the background of the Spiegel crisis and Strauss' dismissal was the controversy over whether it was better to build up Germany's conventional forces or to rely on a nuclear response to any thrust from the East...

...That skill was revealed most recently when Der Alte, through an intermediary, pledged to his own party's legislators that he would retire by October 1963, then almost immediately began to renege...

...CATHERINE WHEEL OF CONTRADICTIONS' West Germany in Limbo By Robert S. Elegant Bonn Once upon a time there was a very powerful prime minister of a country in the center of Europe which was noted for its quaint local customs, its fine white wines and its steel mills...

...Schroeder has been content to skirt the delicate question of whether Germany will increase its conventional forces in accordance with Washington's desires...

...But when he awoke in the morning, the prime minister found that his hand was sore from smashing the mirror, while outside he heard the common people lamenting his deed...

...His fellow ministers, try as they might, could never get him to say whom he would like as a successor, though he obviously had a particularly warm feeling for the burly, rude and often rowdy minister in charge of the country's men-atarms...

...While awaiting the formal end of the Adenauer era, however, an assessment of the point to which it has brought Germany —and Europe—during the past 14 years seems worthwhile...

...Since voting patterns remain largely determined by the traditional, semi-medieval pressures of religion, region and class, a populace which contrives few surprises for its politicians can hardly control a government's actions through electoral machinery...

...The mirror's reflection of the military minister was even more outrageous, making him appear an ambitious and irresponsible fool...

...This of course is no fairy tale, but an account of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's struggle with the news magazine Der Spiegel (the Mirror...

...Adenauer, who still inspires awe among the well-trained Germans, is largely responsible for the contradictions and confusion...

...More significant, the "Spiegel Affair" not only forced the resignation of Defense Minister Franz-Josef Strauss, but served as a catalyst for major changes in West Germany's political equilibrium...

...The people of the country were growing tired of the prime minister and the military minister, but they were most reluctant to say anything in public...

...For the country conspicuously lacks a national consensus...

...Worst of all, when he looked out on the square, he saw that the mirror, miraculously, was still whole and bigger and brighter than ever...

...It was the revelation, as surprising to the nation's politicians as to foreign observers, that the German people could be aroused by the violation of human rights—and that their outraged voices could force the Government to act...

...Vice Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, who presumably will form a transition government until the general election of 1965, will undoubtedly occupy himself with Germany's growing economic problems, content to leave external matters to Schroeder...

...And, today, the Spiegel is fatter and saucier than ever: Its circulation is up 20 per cent, its advertising has increased proportionately, and its gibes against Adenauer are at their sharpest...

...In fact, it is now in a state of confusion precisely because it has accomplished so much more than it had expected so much faster than anyone had believed possible...

...Like Willy Brandt, the Social Democratic leader, Schroeder seeks to make Germany a bridge between Western and Eastern Europe—another of his essays which runs directly against Adenauer's stonyfaced obduracy...

...First, the Wirtschaftswunder, the miracle of bounding economic growth (which may have been overstressed and which, in any event, is settling down to a more leisurely pace...

...Only a day after the farewell parade for Strauss, however, a new statement stressed the Government's preference for the nuclear response, asserting that the nations of Europe must "not become menat-arms for the American nuclear knight...

...The manner in which Strauss and Adenauer attacked the Spiegel demonstrated that Germany is not yet a democracy...

...And third, Adenauer, almost in spite of himself, has presided over the first tentative growth of a democratic spirit in West Germany...