Germany's 'Young' Power Broker

...Thus Barzel has known no other career but politics...

...Barzel has demonstrated his aptitude for party management and administration, but there has yet to be a "Barzel policy" on any issue of significance...

...When Brentano eventually died, the post went to Barzel as a matter of course...

...Shortly after last September's elections, Barzel, now quietly building a national organization, undertook intensive lobbying in his own behalf and began openly to demonstrate his irritation and impatience at Erhard's supposedly bumbling conduct of affairs of state...

...Making good use of the post for personal public relations and imagebuilding, he produced a spate of vague and ill-formulated concepts and had himself photographed on innumerable occasions at the Berlin Wall, chin out, man of destiny...

...The movement, which had a strong hint of McCarthyism, was quickly liquidated under a barrage of court actions and libel suits, but it earned him the nickname of "Germany's Richard Nixon...

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

...A Heidelberg psychiatrist, who caused a sensation by "analyzing" Barzel's character by remote control for a television program, recently wrote: "Two things are astounding about Barzel-first that at 41 he should be constantly referred to as a "young man.' This shows what a senile society we live in...

...He also approved of Barzel's unequivocal anti-Communism...

...The old authoritarian liked the way the man 50 years his junior claimed that "There is no substitute for strong leadership," and that "the nation secretly wants a party which radiates authority...

...The divergences between the two faiths," he predicted quite wrongly, "are far too great...

...By the time Erhard was publicly announcing that "in the interest of political effectiveness the Chancellor believes that the party chairmanship should be taken over by the head of government," Barzel had skipped swiftly off to Vienna for a vacation, accompanied, significantly enough, by his public relations adviser...

...Only in such an atmosphere would Rainer Barzel, a thick-set, balding, fast-aging man of 41 be regarded as a young hopeful...

...Erhard has never made any secret of his distaste for this aspect of governmental work...

...Now they are all 50, give or take a year, and eclipsed by the first leader in postwar German politics who is truly of a new generation...

...John Kennedy, still young on becoming President at 43, strove to appear even younger, surrounding himself with young people, participating in their activities...

...MOVING TOWARD THE TOP Germany's 'Young' Power Broker By Kenneth Ames There has always been something middle-aged and overstaid about postwar German political life, perhaps reflecting a search for respectability or a reaction against recent national upheaval, but fundamentally because the German has always liked his politicians to be men of substance, long in years, short of breath-men of Format...

...But it is the Chancellorship which he has clearly set as his ultimate target, and no one is certain that Rainer Barzel is prepared to wait nearly four years until the September 1969 elections before he makes a strong "take-over bid.' Erhard, having recently disposed of "young" Willy Brandt of the opposition Social Democrats, may soon face an even more formidable "young" threat from among his own Christian Democrats...

...By the time Erhard's slow, overnight train rumbled in to Bonn the following day, Schroeder was on the platform to meet him and announce he had talked Barzel into backing off...

...While the convention discussed policy for the coming four years, Barzel was already planning his own personal campaign to run for the country's top executive post in the 1969 chancellorship elections...

...There was a strong affinity between Adenauer and Barzel...

...The most powerful of the CDU factions, it has always taken for granted that it should provide Chancellors, party chairmen and whatever other leaders are required...

...Barzel's aptitude for making quick decisions, his opportunism, and his effectiveness as a speaker (he is one of the few German parliamentarians who does not give the impression he is reading his speech from a prepared script), all help his struggle for Room At The Top...

...But Barzel, the man on whom so much attention was concentrated at last week's annual convention of West Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has taken to smoking large cigars to improve his image as a mature and solid politician...

...A few years ago it was Franz Josef Strauss, the Socialists' Willy Brandt and the Free Democrats' Erich Mende who were talked of as the "Young Siegfrieds" of Germany...

...But few people had any illusions about where his sympathies lay...

...Barzel has demonstrated enormous ability as an administrator and manipulator of the sort that is invaluable for day-to-day running of a party machine...

...But Dufhues declined the office, explaining that political affairs were causing him to neglect both his successful law practice and his happy family life...

...Another commentator observed that Adenauer has brought humor to his public life, Erhard exudes confidence, Strauss has immense temperament and verve, sometimes a bit too much, while Barzel's outstanding characteristic is cold, sober calculation...

...His handling of the proceedings showed once more his unswerving belief in his own ability and future...

...Barzel's policy, in fact, has been flexibility, superficiality, and expediency...

...At 37, in 1962, he became the youngest Federal German minister-heading the Ministry for All German Questions...

...There is a story which describes how Barzel found himself, as a young Luftwaffe officer, on the North Sea island of Sylt at the time of Germany's final collapse...

...Elected deputy party chairman to Ludwig Erhard, his youthfulness first becomes apparent when one sees him alongside 90-year-old Konrad Adenauer or the 69-year-old Chancellor...

...Just old enough during World War II to be a very young flight observer with a coastal patrol air squadron, Barzel was little affected by the 12-year Nazi era and returned at the end of the Warstill wearing his officer's leather topcoat-to register as a university student...

...Then early this year crisis threatened the party, as Adenauer blandly announced he felt 90 was a good age to retire from his last position of responsibility-head of the party...

...After completing law studies in the Rhineland, he became a protegee of Catholic Prime Minister Karl Arnold, was the youngest-ever Land minister at 30, and two years later won a seat in the Federal Assembly at Bonn...

...Many of his closest associates, while freely praising his talents, doubt whether he has the breadth and depth of knowledge and character to make a successful national leader as Germany enters a period of problematic transition in European politics...

...As consolation prize, the energetic refugee from East Prussia was made deputy party floor leader under ailing Heinrich Von Brentano...

...And a popular illustrated magazine which relies heavily on sex and scandal for its circulation sarcastically commented: "He leads a harmonious family life he is too cooly calculating to become involved in any other way...

...His behavior is controlled by his brains, not his emotions.' Last week's party convention indicated that Barzel has already made up his mind he can rise higher...

...In his absence, the strident voice of Rainer Barzel was heard proclaiming he would be prepared to accept the party chairmanship "if I am needed...

...His tactics did not particularly endear him to the majority of Berliners...

...When he occasionally grasped Erhard by the elbow, the elder man seemed to react with mixed feelings, as if afraid his pocket was being picked at the same time...

...But probably most important is his love of the intrigue of party political life...

...Erhard, who succeeded Adenauer as party chairman after a challenge from Barzel, will do well to look to his laurels...

...True, although he dresses in sharp suits, the buttons are usually a little strained by his ample paunch...

...Barzel has the full backing of the strongly Catholic North RhineWestphalia faction of the Christian Democrats...

...The second is that Barzel gives the impression of being a man who has found his niche in life and has no intention of altering his habits...

...In October 1963 when Adenauer was finally forced to resign from the Chancellor's office and was succeeded by Erhard, Barzel was eased out of the Cabinet to make room for "Third Force" Free Democrat leader Erich Mende, who had sworn he would never serve in a cabinet headed by Der Alte...

...Receiving the news by telephone in Paris, Erhard dispatched Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroeder by air to Bonn to mediate...

...In the protracted guerrilla warfare between Adenauer and Erhard, fought mostly within the party or by newspaper interviews, Barzel remained very carefully on the fence...

...Since launching his meteoric career as a politician, Barzel has shown a comparable aptitude for shifting his ground opportunely under various political flags of convenience...

...It was assumed that Josef Hermann Dufhues, 58, a Dusseldorf lawyer who had been highly successful as party manager, would step into the job...

...Unless the former economics professor overcomes his distaste for political maneuvering, Barzel, with his enormous energy, will almost certainly be in effective control of the party...

...It must have been about this time that Ludwig Erhard, not the world's greatest political tactician, first recognized, or was warned of, the threat to his power posed by Barzel...

...Some years later, egged on by the then Defense Minister, Franz Joseph Strauss, he organized a "Save Our Freedom" movement and published a list of 450 public figures whom he considered to have "Leftist" sympathies...

...At 23 he produced a book on political parties which described as a "Utopian dream" the idea that Protestants and Catholics could ever be united in the CDU...

...In fact, he came within a hair's breadth of pulling it off...

...A few days later Barzel was accepting with ill grace a compromise which would make him Erhard's deputy...

...Its members disapprove strongly of Erhard, not only a Bavarian but a Protestant, not only Chancellor but in control of the party...

...By early this year it became clear that Barzel had his ambitions firmly trained on succeeding Adenauer as party chairman...

...Within months ill health hit at Brentano and Barzel found himself acting floor leader, a powerful position giving him control over day-to-day affairs in Parliament...

...For months he rushed from Adenauer to Erhard and back again, making long trips to Der Alte's North Italian holiday house and to Erhard's Tegernsee home in South Germany, assiduously giving the impression of holding the party together...

...He strikes one as being a portly middle-aged child of the Wirtschaftswunder in modern Germany...

...Barzel, as a former East Prussian and a Catholic (itself a strange mixture) also can count on the full support of the more radical refugee-expelee wing of the party...

...To avoid capture and imprisonment (which would have been only brief) by the British forces, he and his friends ripped off their Luftwaffe insignia and disguised themselves as members of the military police, making them non-combatants and therefore not liable to confinement in a pow cage...

...A long, heavy silence followed...

...When Karl Arnold died, Barzel switched his allegiance to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and quickly became one of Der Alte's favorites...

...Erhard took off for talks with De Gaulle in Paris without saying anything...