West Germany's Politics of Plenty

...This would not make Strauss chancellor, however: The FDP would insist the CDU name a more moderate coalition leader...

...Prime Minister of his native Bavaria and chairman of its major party, the CSU, Strauss has been on the West German political stage for over three decades...

...Never...

...He declares that he is better able to guarantee West Germany's security because he is more in tune with United States foreign policy than a Helmut Schmidt who is patently unhappy with Jimmy Carter and American "unpredictability," and a "prisoner" of his party's Left wing...

...In that event, the tiny (7.9 per cent in 1976) Free Democratic Party, headed by Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher...

...Anxious to protect what they have, most would rather rally around the banner of "security" than pursue a policy of German unity...

...Along Munich's fashionable Maximilian-strasse, copper-tanned young women in designer clothes linger fondly in front of a display of $50 Yves Saint Laurent scarves...

...If the Greens win less than 4 per cent, their votes will be divided proportionately among the other parties and the SPD-FDP will probably retain its slender parliamentary majority...

...Like Nixon, too, he has picked up more than his share of political enemies...

...Strauss has shrewdly assessed the contradictory attitudes shared by most of his countrymen: They may agree that he was right all along to say the Russians can't be trusted, but they do not want a new Berlin incident, trade embargoes, or a halt to intra-German construction projects...

...the Greens could just up the electoral scales in favor of Strauss and the CDU-CSU...

...After the collapse in 1945, instead of agonizing over a divided destiny, West Germans eagerly embraced economic recovery and growth as a continuation of politics by other means...

...Since then, Strauss, who maneuvered himself into the Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU) candidacy last July after years of dominating the sister parties from backstage, has surprised many voters and dismayed his loyal Bavarians by muting his rhetoric...

...When finished, it will sprawl ponderously along the Rhine, accomodating 3,000 offices, 70 "tea cafeterias," a fully-equipped clinic, a heated swimming pool and—scattered along its labyrinthian, Kafkaesque corridors-the 518 hard-working members of the Bundestag (Lower House) plus the 45 members of the Bundesrat (Upper House), together with their respective staffs...

...he didn't have the slightest interest in going back for a visit...

...By any external yardstick, West Germany has far surpassed the hopes voiced by its war-battered and traumatized people back in 1945...

...The campaign was supposed to be a classic German duel: Helmut Schmidt—a Northerner, Protestant, middle-class, coolly competent, respected if not loved, moderately liberal, promoter of detente-versus Franz Josef Strauss—Bavarian, Catholic, son of a Munich butcher, doctorate in economics, volatile, controversial, archly-conservative, critic of Ostpolitik...

...These days when an opposition Christian Democratic member of the Bundestag argues the folly of sinking millions of marks into parliamentary headquarters in a "temporary" capital, his remarks don't make headlines...

...His durability, his preoccupation with world affairs and his emotional complexity suggest a German Richard Nixon...

...West Germany today finds itself lacking a single coherent vision for transcending its artificial geographical confines and accompanying political angst...

...The Social Democratic Party (SPD) acknowledged this by closing ranks behind Schmidt (despite dissension on the new nato missiles and nuclear energy) at last December's party congress, and by naming the Chancellor in its platform as the 10th and ultimate reason for reelecting the SPD and its Free Democratic Party (FDP) coalition partner...

...Prosperity has given them badly-needed self pride, political stability and international respect, as well as a continuing John V.H...

...If the Greens do the unexpected and enter the Bundestag by drawing over 5 per cent, a stalemate could arise...

...Recently Schmidt has commented that he sees few policy differences between himself and his rival...

...In the days of the Grand Coalition in the late '60s, Schmidt, as Defense Minister, and Strauss, as Finance Minister, worked well together...

...Under Brandt's Social Democratic government, the Germans were led to believe that closer ties with the East-bloc countries, particularly East Germany, would dispel all tensions and lead to a harmonious and peaceful coexistence...

...An independent Green bloc could then prevent either coalition from having a working majority...

...raison d'etre...

...The once-burning issue has lost its emotional appeal, as people have come to fear the enormous upheaval a fusion of the two ideologically alien German states would entail...

...Ubiquitous travel posters tempt those suffering from Wanderlust to fly away to exotic paradises like Bangkok and Buenos Aires...

...His obvious strategy is to enhance the Greens' legitimacy and thereby increase their inroads into the SPD...

...If the walls of flat Annenmarie were to come tumbling down, though, the Greens would have the deeper satisfation of having helped steet West Germany away from materialism toward a kind ol postindustrial humanism...

...Paul Noack, professor of political science at the University of Munich, observes that West Germany's national aspirations have been governed by two conflicting hypotheses-both of which have now proven false...

...On Saturdays, shoppers jam into department stores, pore through mountains of shirts, gloves, sweaters, underwear, purses, electric haircurlers, and then squeeze up to the clanging cash registers like a mob of drug addicts in desperate need of a quick fix...

...More than an analysis of how the industrial nations are "plundering" the earth, Gruhl's book is an attack on the prevailing "growth" ethic endorsed by all of West Germany's major parties...

...In lieu of a unified fatherland, the Wirtschaftswunder has delivered more Mercedes, more color TVs, and spawned a nation of compulsive consumers...

...On a train this spring I sat across from an energetic, white-haired man who had lived half of his life in Dresden, until he was bombed out in 1945...

...Under Adenauer's Christian Democratic government, the Germans were led to believe that a close alliance with the West would ultimately lead to some kind of reunification...

...Published the following year as A Planet Is Being Plundered, it has since sold over 200,000 hard-cover copies and become one of the most widely discussed books in postwar Germany Gruhl's alarming thesis is that man has now reached the limits of his exploitation of the earth...

...Within a year and a half this self-proclaimed political "alternative" has grown from a handful of scattered protest groups to a fragilely-united national party...

...In 1965, when I first visited the country, every other lamppost bore a map of pre-World War II Germany broken up into "West," "Middle," and "East" (the last being the part east of the Oder, now absorbed into Poland), with the vow: "Divided Into Three...

...Well-off, yet inwardly unhappy...

...At the same time, Afghanistan does not spell the end of German-German detente...

...Its enormous size and cost will quickly communicate this country's miraculous rise from the rubble piles...

...She probably never will...

...That is not to suggest that reunification is again becoming a primary concern...

...But the more political noise they make, the more the Greens may force the established panics to listen to their ecological logic...

...When Bonn pushed for nato's development of 108 longer-range Pershing II nuclear missies (to replace the outmoded Pershing Is), the overwhelming majority of West Germans supported the move...

...The West Germans who have two big cars sitting in the garage, and have just bought the house they've always dreamed of, are discovering that these acquisitions carry no guarantee of happiness...

...But 10 years of Ost-politik have not brought much direct contact between the two sides...

...Those signs have long since disappeared, and today few persons continue to refer disparagingly to East Germany as the "East Zone...

...Dippel, a new contributor to these pages, is a free-lance writer...

...Like Nixon, he speaks to his countrymen's fears...

...Adopting a statesmanlike restraint, he has pledged the Schmidt government bipartisan unity instead of sniping away at Ostpolitik...

...Those politicans who have succumbed to her charms make no bones about it, while their incensed colleagues in the Bundestag loudly denounce her as "outrageous" and "monstrous...

...Only the Left-wing Social Democrats still hold this view...

...The broad consensus between the two coalitions—on issues ranging from the continued development of nuclear energy to tax cuts, more equitable pensions, nato modernization, and the pre-servation of Ostpolitik—is frequently cited as proof of how West German democracy has matured...

...So far few Germans want to wrestle with an answer...

...In the years ahead, the Federal Republic will go on simultaneously pursuing East-West detente and actively supporting nato...

...Strauss, on the other hand, has to struggle against an old and partially false image as a man who can't control his emotions, a demagogue, an enemy of democracy...

...Its roots date back to 1974, when a 53-year-old former businessman from Lower Saxony, Herbert Gruhl, took some time off from his duties as a CDU member of the Bundestag and chairman of the parliamentary working group for environmental matters to write a book that had been weighing on his mind...

...It's the mentality of those people, you understand...

...But it will also signal West Germany's acceptance of its own political legitimacy —and thus, by implication, its abandonment of the goal of a reunited Germany...

...So far the notorious Annemarie hasn't uttered a word in her own defense...

...The Federal Republic can feel justly proud of its accomplishments...

...Not only is the country economically sound, but its democratic roots have weathered both a violent challenge from the Bader-Meinhof urban guerrillas and sporadic outcroppings of neo-Nazism (notably the short-lived electoral gains of the National Democratic Party more than 10 years ago...

...Actually, Strauss and Schmidt have much in common...

...As a symbol for the Federal Republic, which has just celebrated its 31st birthday, the structure is doubly apt...

...Politically, the Greens arc deeply divided between the founding environmentalists and a youthful, more radical taction whose critique of West German society goes beyond stopping nuclear power plants and other purely "green" priorities to economic policy (a 35-hour work week, redistribution of income, public monitoring of large corporations) and foreign policy (unilateral disarmament and withdrawal from nato...

...Yet detente will proceed with yellow warning lights: Ostpolitik has become Realpolitik...

...In short, it is a political book, and it gave rise to a movement embracing environmentalists and opponents of nuclear energy that came to be known collectively as the "Greens...

...Even if this does happen, the Greens may still succeed in shaking up West Germany's political establishment...

...Few Germans have forgotten the infamous Spiegel affair, in which the then Defense Minister had editors of the magazine arrested for publishing West German defense secrets...

...Indeed, the news bulletins out of Afghanistan are especially alarming in the Federal Republic, because they have revived old nightmares of a Blitzkrieg strike by the thousands of Russian troops, tanks and airplanes poised along the eastern border...

...For this femme fatale exists only as bold ink lines on an architect's blueprint: Annemarie (less than gallantly named after Annemarie Renger, a past president of the Bundestag) is the proposed new home for West Germany's Parliament—a huge complex of concrete and glass that may cost $400 million...

...might well bolt ranks and join forces with the CDU-CSU to form a "bourgeois" coalition to "save the country...

...As a result, some have begun to ask themselves: "What do I do with my life now...

...Even a bilateral trade relationship likely to top $5 billion in 1980 has not stimulated a desire for rapprochement...

...When East German Party Secretary Erich Honecker recently suggested that his planned summit with West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt be postponed to a "more favorable time," his remarks—and Schmidt's-conveyed regret...

...Still, as long as Germany remains divided, deep inside it cannot feel politically secure: Its territory remains the probable battlefield of any third world war...

...In the future it will be harder for West Germans to believe that their economic prosperity has brought them long-lasting security...

...To a society accustomed to a harmonious symbiosis between economic growth and the democratic order, the Greens present a disturbing question: What comes after prosperity...

...So the Afghanistan invasion may have marked the end of a postwar era after all...

...If they reach 4 pet cent...

...will siphon off votes from all the other parties, the SPD clearly will suffer the most defections...

...Although many West Germans delight in trading second-hand stories about "primitive" conditions "over there," they have little inclination to see for themselves...

...In Nuremberg I came across a heated debate around a "Stop Strauss" booth selling pamphlets that traced his past connections with such Right-wing leaders as Balthazar Vorster of South Africa and Augusto Pinochet of Chile, and warned that his election would mark the return of fascism...

...Nonetheless, for most Germans, the upcoming elections may boil down to a personal referendum on the character of Franz Josef Strauss—that is to say, a referendum on their own self-image...

...West Germans have by now learned to live happily with the contradictions between their economic and national aspirations...

...This new mood appears to explain why, if one did not scan the newspapers, one might not even notice that 1980 is an election year here...

...Thus "personality" looms as a big issue in the October parliamentary elections...

...Cracks are appearing beneath the glittering surface—dormant concerns about German identity and national purpose...

...The Social Democrats have attacked the Greens as hopelessly naive political spoilers...

...While most of Europe is suffering a dizzying inflationary spiral, West Germany has managed to ward off serious economic ailments and sustain a moderate yet steady rise in its standardofliving.(Currently unemploy-ment is hovering around 4 per cent and the rate of inflation, although rising, is about 6 per cent...

...Strauss is therefore presenting himself as a genuine peacemaker...

...in fart, both Germanies have taken great pains to stress their uninterrupted wish for better relations...

...The ethic of materialism has begun to lose its sanctity...

...But that was before Afghanistan...

...As the campaign heats up, these divisions may cause the party to split...

...Notwithstanding his long commitment to nuclear energy and industrial growth, Strauss has insisted that the Greens are not the "other side of the Rubicon" for him...

...For most, the Greens are a bizarre "chic fringe"—a collection of smiling innocents and eccentrics with flower buttons on their lapels and visions of green gardens dancing in their heads...

...But it is questionable how deeply it believes in the national benefits of either arrangement...

...In the polls Schmidt runs well ahead of his party...

...While it is true that rigid ideological positions have lost credibility, the dearth of fresh and challenging ideas has made the political landscape flat and monotonous...

...if he continues to ignore the ecological damage he is causing in his ceaseless appetite for economic expansion, he will soon propel the planet toward its destruction...

...But the impact of the Greens on the outcome of the October elections will depend on their percentage of the vote...

...And they have found a sympathetic listener in Strauss, whom the vast majority of Greens would be horrified to see leading the country...

...The Greens represent a genuine German counterculture—encompassing conservation-minded dairy farmers in Schleswig-Holstein and avant-garde artists like Joseph Beuys, pacifist theologians and followers of Rudolf Siein-er's anthroposophy, youths living in communes and young professionals dissatisfied with a "more-is-better" credo...

...No, I wouldn't like it at all," he said...

...Success, however, has created another malaise...

...With all these statistical hypotheses Hying around Bonn, the Greens have attracted a great deal of political attention...

...That hope was brutally crushed by the Berlin Wall...

...So far his unruffled handling of relations with both the Soviet Union and the United States seems to sit well with the electorate...

...For the rest of the nation, the grand dream of painlessly achieving a trouble-free future has been punctured...

...DIPPEL Bonn A lady of dubious repute is scandalizing Bonn these days...

...Strauss, as a devout Catholic, was no admirer of the Nazis...

...When the wily Konrad Adenauer (who happened to like growing his beloved roses across the river) urged West German political leaders to choose Bonn as the site for their new government in 1949, few thought of it as much more than a transitional home: Berlin was, and would always remain, Germany's true capital...

...Already the Social Democrats are worrying that the Greens' efforts might hand the reins of government over to Franz Joseph Strauss...

...And this the Green Party, very new to the scene, wants to change...

...This could result in the Greens pre-siding over then own demise...

...West German electoral law requires a party to capture at least 5 per cent of the electorate in order to gain seats in the Bundestag...

...No serious West German politician advocates scrapping what Willy Brandt launched a decade ago in his historic meeting with East German Prime Minister Willy Stoph...

...Both are intelligent old pols, wary and at times reluctant decision-makers, authoritarian leaders, and seasoned Bonn veterans who fully realize how limited West Germany's political options are while the Federal Republic remains an occupied and less-than-sovereign state...