Erhard: Germany's Unwilling Politician
SCHORR, DANIEL
A PROFILE Erhard: Germany's Unwilling Politician By Daniel Schorr Bonn The scene on the dais as the ballots were counted in the uncontested election for the new party chairman was...
...Der Alte said, "The disaster is now complete...
...The state must not be directed by the conflict of pressure groups with each other...
...Always he displays respect for dissenting opinions...
...There is no "First Lady" role for his wife of more than 40 years and childhood sweetheart, the former Luise Cotter, whom he calls "Lu" and who calls him "Lulu...
...In a factory cafeteria, he sits with the directors and avoids conversation with the workers...
...But, by power, I mean, above all, the exertion of influence by stimulation and suggestion...
...Adenauer, realizing that West Germany's first election in 1949 would be fought mainly on economic issues, invited Erhard to explain his "Social Market Economy" program to the CDU executive committee...
...But Frau Erhard remains in the private part of the house, and there also is the old easy chair that Erhard could not bear to part with...
...Adenauer at first agreed in the belief that he could expand the presidential powers, on the Gaullist model, and designate a Chancellor other than Erhard...
...Adenauer's bitter, last-ditch opposition...
...Liaison officers feud with ministries, needed documents go astray and key members of Parliament complain that they cannot penetrate the confusion...
...Now he concedes that he should have perceived earlier the importance of pre-empting this strategic position...
...This protection, and the North Atlantic defense structure that goes with it, is still indispensable, the Chancellor feels, rejecting the Gaullist thesis that the danger in Europe is ended...
...Pluralism must not degenerate into total irresponsibility...
...Though shunning sports, he has hardly known a day of illness...
...On his desk is a cigar box, the gift of President Kennedy...
...My advisers tell me the same thing...
...He will do his best to avoid that for, in his mind, he is still, somewhat as President Eisenhower saw himself, the leader of all the people...
...Rarely, he feels, has there existed such a sense of friendship and understanding between two statesmen...
...Breakfast is accompanied by the reading of five newspapers...
...There is still a possibility, though, that a new basis for the French presence in Germany can be found, with some looser but real form of coordination with the other Allied countries...
...Only then was Erhard persuaded to overcome his revulsion to party politics and stake out his claim to the chairmanship...
...If the Germans accept this Utopian who wants to pass a social miracle, it is mainly because of his still-potent credentials as the man who really did pass an economic miracle...
...This is not true, however, of speeches...
...The Chancellor, no more a disciplinarian than an administrator, takes all this equably...
...Meanwhile, the "People's Chancellor" says, when asked if he takes pleasure in governing, "I am glad to carry out my office despite all the cares and adversities connected with it...
...It was also the start of his career in government...
...Sardonically, the 90-year-old Dr...
...Like General Eisenhower, Ludwig Erhard came to politics through a side door after winning eminence in another field...
...He waited, secure in the knowledge that the CDU could not win an election without him...
...General Lucius Clay, the American military governor, summoned him to voice concern...
...He must be roused by his wife at 7:30 in the morning with some difficulty...
...With prosperity and relative stability, they seem ready to substitute the warm mother image of an Erhard, lenient, sentimental and attentive to the needs of the West German household, for whose well-stocked pantry they credit him...
...His career demonstrates that nice guys sometimes finish first if they have history working for them...
...His original ambition, as the fifth son of a drygoods dealer in the little Bavarian town of Fuerth, went no further than entering the family trade...
...The pity, to Erhard, is that identification with the party may detract from his cherished image of "People's Chancellor," standing above narrow partisan interests...
...For a nation, twothirds of whom were children or unborn when Hitler came to power, Chancellor Erhard offers an example of moderation-his favorite word...
...he still smokes 15 a day, and confesses that he brandishes one even when not smoking for "otherwise I might not be recognized...
...There is no hope of early realization of a plan for an Allied force, but, under current conditions, it is important that the option for it at least be not foreclosed...
...More often than not he will depart from a drafted text, his extemporization immediately recognizable by his florid, elliptical style, leaning toward lofty abstraction...
...Vietnam: West Germany feels morally bound to support the United States in Vietnam, whether or not it approves of every development in the escalating war...
...Overriding complaints that Erhard was not even a member of the party, Adenauer embraced his policy and made it the main plank of the CDU election platform...
...In small gatherings he is rarely the one who opens a conversation...
...Daniel Schorr until recently headed the CBS news bureau covering Germany and Eastern Europe...
...Accordingly, West Germany gives humanitarian and financial support, which will be increased in coming months...
...What the Chancellor has in mind is so vague that it can only be suggested by some of his sentences: "There must be no more power struggles, no more group egoism...
...His family life, as a result, is kept rigidly excluded from the public...
...For, as he acknowledges, it is hardly conceivable that a part of America's nuclear strength, embodied in an Allied nuclear force and subject to American veto, could go into action while its main strategic deterrent remained uncommitted...
...The Cabinet, which under Adenauer had seemed like a circus of trained seals, became more like a seminar...
...Now, at last, he is free from the disapproving shadow of the living monument who scorns him as too naive, lackadaisical and inept in the uses of power to govern his 59 million people of a divided nation in a grimly divided world...
...But his serenity, though it may blur real issues, nestles the citizenry in a cocoon of security...
...Unification: Erhard has no illusion that the partition of Germany can be ended soon...
...Erhard replied, "Don't worry, General Clay...
...That they have been so far ready to do so is the hallmark of the Erhard era of moderation...
...But he is convinced that German unification is a historical inevitability, like selfdetermination everywhere...
...Serenely confident in the dynamics of a free market, he waited while prices first soared, then steadied, and the pent-up German hunger for goods provided the incentive for a production boom...
...The most apolitical German leader of the century, who said in 1948, "I have no political ambitions, and least of all, any of a party character," only bethought himself to become a card-carrying CDU member in 1963, after 14 years in Parliament and Cabinet...
...Finding himself marooned among curious workers while waiting for his car, his awkward conversational gambit is, "How is the atmosphere here...
...He would prefer direct election, American style, to the present system of being elected by Parliament...
...A form of retaliation available to Europe is needed to insure the American commitment...
...This was the start of the "economic miracle" that has made Erhard's name synonymous with German prosperity...
...German Nuclear Role: West Germany continues to urge an Allied nuclear force with German participation as necessary to provide a more convincing deterrent to Soviet aggression...
...What should have been a natural succession turned, however, into a bitter struggle as Chancellor Adenauer resisted retirement...
...During election campaigns, which he professes to enjoy, his contact is with the mass rather than with individuals...
...Part of his thinking is the idea of a pleibiscitary link between the head of government and the people, freeing him of dependence on party politics...
...Adenauer, after retiring from government, used the position for incessant volleys across the new Chancellor's bow and for a misfired effort to force him out of office by enlarging the governing coalition...
...A similarly unruffled approach to foreign policy issues tends to mute public discontent about West Germany's unhappy international position...
...The Chancellor is famous throughout the land for his inspirational speeches-"soul massage" they are called-in which he constantly reiterates appeals for "moderation" and "harmony" and inveighs against the "functionaries" and "pressure groups" who inhabit his private hell...
...Before most appointments, a memorandum is put on his desk to brief him on the personality, the problem and the proposal to make, if any...
...The official part is functionally furnished in black leather and decorated with abstract paintings...
...They speak frankly to each other, and they cooperate in concrete areas where cooperation is possible...
...He relies heavily on his staff, and usually accepts the advice he has received...
...It is based not only on common national interest, but a strong feeling of personal rapport...
...In fact, the sheen has started to rub off that miracle...
...At 9 o'clock he walks the few hundred steps to the Chancery, limping from the effects of his World War I wounds...
...Recent regional elections have shown gains for a new extremist party, the National Democrats, seeking to exploit German grievances...
...Their new official home, an unexpectedly modern one-story flattopped building of steel and glass on the Chancery grounds overlooking the Rhine, is partitioned between the representational section and the private wing...
...This is the creed of a politician above politics, still sure that reasonable people can settle their problems through discussion...
...In the "Bungalow," as he calls it, Erhard sips scotch and soda, a taste acquired from the Americans, watches television, plays cards with his wife, and sometimes his only daughter, Elisabeth, the wife of a Mercedes automobile executive...
...However, I shall not play with power, jiggle with it or manipulate it...
...A visitor invited to the Chancellor's office found him absent and, after some frantic telephoning by secretaries, it turned out that Erhard was awaiting him at home...
...Now, I no longer renounce the use of power...
...Chancellor Erhard's views on current foreign policy issues can be summarized as follows: The Crisis in the West: Over the past two-and-a-half years, Erhard has taken it upon himself to dispel President De Gaulle's illusion, encouraged by Adenauer, that a Franco-German hegemony could be erected to dominate West Europe...
...An entirely new strategic situation would be created if Moscow were to permit the reunification of Germany...
...I have seen him standing amid the hubbub of a large reception, remote and alone with his thoughts, contemplating his cigar...
...Erhard acknowledges that during this period he took more abuse "than should be expected of any man," and that he was under "a much greater strain than I dared to show...
...As an objective economist rather than a political conspirator, he wrote a plan for economic reorganization on the plausible but treasonable premise of Hitler's defeat...
...Says one observer, "Nobody likes Erhard except the people...
...It was by a series of accidents that power, which Erhard once described as "dangerous, brutal and, in the final analysis, stupid," gravitated to him...
...When it became apparent that this would be unconstitutional, he abruptly changed his mind and decided to remain Chancellor, challenging his party to try to remove him by a no-confidence vote in Parliament...
...Dinner at home conforms to Erhard's simple tastes and is surprisingly sparse for a man whose rotund shape has earned him the soubriquet of "Der Dicke," or "the Fat One.' The long cigar is everpresent...
...Slightly deaf, he sometimes has to ask a visitor to repeat what he has said...
...There must be a harmonious and organic whole...
...There, side by side, signing autographs and studiously ignoring each other, sat Konrad Adenauer, the founder of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has ruled the West German Republic for all its 17 years, and Ludwig Erhard, his unwelcome heir...
...On one other occasion he threatened to use his prerogative...
...He feels more that China is an increasing menace to the world, from which Germans can take no comfort...
...It would mean the end of America's role as a world power...
...Yet, Erhard believes that the Soviets would be less inclined towards risks if they knew that Germany could influence the decision on the employment of nuclear weapons...
...He decided in favor...
...There is no use in reciting daily incantations in the hope that some miracle will suddenly heal Germany's division...
...But no one knows how long that era will last...
...In 1959, the CDU, aware that the octogenarian's authoritarian methods were stifling democratic development and threatening its election prospects, pressed him to make way for Erhard by stepping up to the largely honorific position of President of the Republic...
...The Ruhr coal mines face disaster...
...This was enough to class him as a "clean" German and, with his economic training, he was enlisted by the American occupation authorities in the effort to get a paralyzed Germany on its feet...
...That was in March 1965, when the Cabinet was almost evenly split on the issue of recognizing the State of Israel...
...Last September the new Chancellor went on to win popular endorsement at the polls...
...Erhard's unflagging equanimity in the face of mounting problems may infuriate the professional politicians, who coined for him the derisive nickname of "Rubber Lion...
...He finds it no coincidence, however, that the search for new social forms has arisen in the two most highly industrialized countries of the Western World...
...Visiting a hospital, he speaks to a crowd in the lobby, but enters no ward...
...When it came time for Adenauer to yield this post, Rainer Barzel, ambitious young parliamentary leader of the CDU, grasped for it in what was generally regarded as preparation to topple the Chancellor...
...Erhard, my advisers tell me that you have made a terrible mistake...
...A baby thrust into his arms on the street remains unkissed...
...America's strategic nuclear power is not a sufficient answer to intermediate-range missiles, based in the west of the Soviet Union, which could not reach the United States, but could destroy West Germany...
...Crusading has given way to persuading...
...Adenauer did not...
...Under the 71-year-old Dr...
...But, as in 1948, Erhard proclaims that things will work out all right and has rejected an experts' report recommending a moderate degree of national planning...
...There must be a more mature form of living together...
...In that situation, it might be possible for Germany to renounce access to nuclear weapons...
...In questions involving a single department, he generally leaves the decision to the minister, trusting his colleagues' judgment as Dr...
...None is addressed with the familiar Du...
...It is a subdued, or even grumpy Dr...
...There would be serious consequences for Germany if American troops, fighting for freedom and self-determination, could not successfully demonstrate the ability of the United States to live up to its commitments...
...His favorite recent keynote has been his vision of a "Complete Society," which represents a generalization of his successful free-market economic theories into a social-political concept of a nation developing harmoniously without conflict...
...In the face of disagreement with his own views, he devotes great effort to persuading others...
...The pink-cheeked, cigar-smoking one-time professor has told his people, in his rolling baritone, that the postwar period of reconstruction is over, that their problem is no longer survival but revival...
...Ludger Westrick, his closest adviser and long-time loyal retainer, who shares Erhard's views and his lack of administrative talent, the Chancery has become the despair of those who deal with it...
...A Cabinet participant described it this way, "Chancellor Erhard listens with great patience...
...Behind the Chancellor's eventempered cordiality lies reserve, even a certain shyness...
...He is aware also that consideration is being given to reducing American forces in Germany to meet Vietnam requirements...
...In earlier days Dr...
...It is about the only exercise he takes...
...There is the danger of a Soviet miscalculation that an attack on West Europe alone would not evoke an American nuclear response...
...I would sleep more soundly if I knew that the people could vote for me directly," he says...
...ERHARD'S willingness to await historical processes bespeaks an underlying faith that the Germans will be patient with division and inequality, and that in the interim they will devote themselves to the reform of their own society...
...Erhard made one exception to this rule for a close colleague, former Finance Minister Fritz Schaeffer, but abruptly switched to the formal Sie after a policy clash...
...As the Chancellor has explained it, "I have a craving for public activity, on the one hand, and a longing for privacy, on the other...
...From his mentor, the Jewish Professor Franz Oppenheimer at Frankfurt University, he absorbed the view of a free-enterprise economy tempered by social responsibility...
...They share, among other traits, a search for national and international consensus...
...Erhard does not hold with those Germans who think that the growing threat of Red China may one day frighten the Soviet Union into granting German unification...
...The chasm between De Gaulle's France and America, which the Chancellor promised on his inauguration to try to bridge, has only widened, and Germany teeters perilously between its allies...
...It was the people, not the party, that he trusted...
...As far as is known, he has no close friends...
...In October, 1963, the office of Chancellor finally came to him...
...He has rejected the Gaullist idea of the existence of an American "protectorate" in Europe, except in the sense of military protection against the Soviet Union, which West Germany more than gratefully accepts...
...But he did not fight back...
...Erhard says, "I hope to God that no new nationalism will arise among us...
...There would be rising fear that the disintegration of Allied strategy might tempt the Russians to embark on a more adventurous course in Europe...
...We must recognize that we belong to each other...
...Erhard avoids intimacy with colleagues and staff...
...But his revulsion to Nazi regimentation led to his being forced out of the Government-supported Nuremberg Institute for Market Research and to the establishment of his own research office...
...Good...
...He fears that any substantial cut would affect Allied strategy and deal a psychological blow to the Germans, especially in combination with the shock already suffered from France...
...Adenauer told the convention he had not found time to write a political testament to his successor...
...But they are no longer Adenauer's Germans...
...To this he will dedicate himself, less shy of power now than he was at the outset of his political career 18 years ago...
...Erhard seems a prophet who hates the sordidness of politics, of the bureaucracies and lobbies over which, wondrously, he presides...
...To the public," he told me, "the success or failure of the Government and the prestige of the ruling party are indistinguishable...
...Among associates of long standing, none calls himself the Chancellor's friend...
...From the CDU'S upset victory over the Social Democrats, Erhard emerged as Minister of Economic Affairs and a political figure second only to Chancellor Adenauer himself...
...During that time Adenauer did all he could to humiliate his heir and undermine his popularity...
...He later remarked, "As far as my political career is concerned, I am an American discovery...
...That was last January when objections were voiced to increasing German aid to South Vietnam-something the Chancellor had promised President Johnson to do...
...But, where Adenauer would rend the air with warnings that the situation was never so desperate, Erhard launches peace offensives and still sleeps soundly at night...
...In the post-Hitler chaos and the Cold War, unaccustomed to think for themselves, they were thankful enough for the stern father figure, warning, stricturing and running things singlehandedly...
...There is full awareness that, when the day comes to go to the negotiating table, German concessions will have to be made about future borders, security guarantees, the military position of a unified Germany and the consequences of unification for European integration...
...The Chancellor stays up well past midnight, sleeps soundly, proud of his ability to "switch off" the cares of the day...
...And it is the people, not the politicians, who matter to the Chancellor, even now with his late and reluctant emergence as chief of his party...
...Erhard's link is abstractly to the People, not to persons...
...What was completed was the transfer of power that started twoand-a-half years ago when Erhard took over the government against Dr...
...Erhard states this position while himself not fully convinced of its premise...
...If the President understands it now, he is among die very few...
...He adds that it is the duty of both Government and Parliamentary opposition to see to it that "support for our State and its institutions is not diminished or downgraded...
...Arriving just after Goerdeler's arrest, the document was returned as undeliverable, which may have saved Erhard from Goerdeler's fate...
...It is hardly conceivable that the party leadership should be able to formulate policies in conflict with the Chancellor's prerogative of determining the Government's direction...
...French withdrawal from the integrated NATO structure creates a first-class problem for Germany...
...His is a broader evolutionary concept, without recommendations for specific legislation...
...I would have hoped for closer and more harmonious cooperation, but one cannot change people," says Erhard with typically mild understatement...
...He says, "I despised power then because of the way the Nazis had misused it...
...The demand for a German nuclear role in the West alliance is still unfulfilled, and German unification has receded ever further beyond the horizon...
...Erhard acknowledges that "the Complete Society" bears little comparison with the President's "Great Society," which is more concretely a program of action designed to deal with specific problems-problems, Erhard notes, which have been largely solved in Germany...
...Sessions became longer as the new Chancellor, instead of interrupting discussions with peremptory announcement of decisions, strove for consensus...
...But it would be fruitless to offer the concessions in advance of the negotiations...
...He had to learn the hard way that if he did not seize the party leadership, it would be used against him...
...To intimates...
...He tried, on his visit last December to Washington, to explain it to President Johnson, who was left sufficiently confused to send Ambassador George McGhee to see him later in Bonn in quest of further amplification...
...Now that the air has been cleared of illusions about how far their countries can go together, Erhard's personal relations with De Gaulle are reasonably cordial-a form of coexistence...
...Only once, Erhard told me, has he invoked his constitutional power to dictate policy...
...He pores over documents, absorbing them slowly, retaining written thoughts better than oral impressions...
...Blandly, the 69-year-old Erhard thanked him for all he had done...
...Although the Chancellor publicly advocated extension of the statute of limitations on Nazi crimes, the Cabinet, unprecedentedly, tossed the issue to Parliament without recommendation because the Chancellor hesitated to overrule his dissenting Minister of Justice, Ewald Bucher, who subsequently resigned anyway...
...The Chancellor enjoys showing a visitor how the hydraulically-operated walls sink into the floor with the flick of a switch to make a large reception room...
...If he has ever descended from the clouds for a moment of banter, no one around him remembers it...
...A pillow," he says, "has a magical effect on me...
...When Dr...
...A severe budgetary pinch has forced drastic economies...
...The first hour is given usually to conferences with the staff, conducted with a certain formality...
...In 1948, as chairman of the Economic Council for the Anglo-American zone of occupation, he took the daring-but, for him, economically natural-step of following up an Allied currency reform by singlehandedly abolishing the whole structure of Allied rationing and control orders...
...The Bonn government is not inclined to permit the 72,000 French troops to remain in this country under unhindered national control, which would be tantamount to a return to occupation status...
...A copy went to Karl-Friedrich Goerdeler, one of the leaders of the 1944 anti-Hitler plot, subsequently executed...
...Somewhere in this is a modern vision of the biblical lion lying down with the lamb...
...A PROFILE Erhard: Germany's Unwilling Politician By Daniel Schorr Bonn The scene on the dais as the ballots were counted in the uncontested election for the new party chairman was painful to the convention delegates...
...Incapacitated by shrapnel wounds in the Battle of Ypres in 1917, he pondered in his hospital bed on Germany's inflation and misery and decided to study economics...
...Erhard's election was announced, photographers scrambled to catch the grudging handshake...
...His stewardship has brought less crying of havoc and more invocation to harmony...
...On the walls around him are photographs of German and foreign dignitaries, including one inscribed by Adenauer to "my loyal collaborator...
...The circulation of Right-wing newspapers is on the rise...
...The wage-price spiral, defying Erhard's calls for moderation, has been spinning upward, reducing Germany's competitive advantage in export markets...
...Erhard is aware of pressures in the United States for German military aid, but this is ruled out...
...It took another four years before the change of command could be effected...
...But, permissiveness does not mean familiarity...
...The Chancellor's relations with President Johnson are of an entirely different order...
...In the Hitler period, Erhard, uninterested in politics, was no active anti-Nazi...
...Erhard who arrives at the office, for he is a slow starter...
...He does not, however, believe that President De Gaulle plans a flirtation with the Kremlin, but rather that he is seeking freedom for maneuver in his "France first" obsession...
...If Cabinet discipline has slackened, the Chancellor's executive office has plunged into disorder...
...West Germany does ask of its allies, however, that the issue be raised whenever the opportunity arises...
...In the welter of talk, decisionmaking has slowed down, and the Government's position is sometimes hazy...
...The disappearance of swiftmoving police escorts for the Chancellor's car and the appearance of ashtrays on the Cabinet table at Schaumburg Palace for the first time in 14 years signalled the opening of a more relaxed administration...
Vol. 49 • June 1966 • No. 12
