WEST GERMANY: New Era

A confident and firm Konrad Adenauer rose last week in the newly elected Bundestag and looked around the big chamber with satisfaction. “The extremes of the left-wing [Communists] and the right-wing [Nazis] … are no longer represented in this Bundestag,” said he. “The German people can be proud of this . . . They have emphatically refuted the view held in certain quarters that Germany tended to extreme political beliefs . . .”

With flinty pride, the tough old (77) Chancellor ticked off the story of West Germany’s rise from economic anemia to bustling prosperity, from vassalage under the occupying powers to bulking prominence in the anteroom of the Western alliance. To Germans, he promised unceasing efforts to integrate West Germany with the West through the European Army treaty, and to reunite West Germany and East Germany. To those who think West Germany might be content only to absorb the Soviet East Zone without demanding the lands given to Poland and Russia at Potsdam, Adenauer said: “The government will never recognize the Oder-Neisse frontier.” But for Frenchmen who fear that Germans may some day call on Frenchmen to “die for Königsberg,” he carefully added: “This problem will never be settled by force, but only by peaceful means.”

After six weeks of political juggling, the Chancellor had selected a new, expanded (from 14 to 19 ministers) and slightly younger (average age: 55) Cabinet, which will help him rule West Germany for the next four years. Adenauer chose to remain his own Foreign Minister, decided for the time being to have no Minister of Defense. Other key ministers:

Vice Chancellor and Minister for Economic Cooperation: Franz Blücher, 57, member of the conservative Free Democratic Party, a poetry-reading Protestant who stays aloof from political squabbles.

Minister of Economics: Ludwig Erhard, 56, tough-minded, Bavarian Protestant whose free-enterprise economics have guided West German recovery, won for the Adenauer coalition the devotion of big business and industry.

Minister of Finance: Fritz Schäffer, 65, a Bavarian Catholic who plays Mutt to Erhard’s Jeff, often acts as a balance to Erhard’s firm opposition to all economic controls. Schaffer wants higher taxes, Erhard doesn’t.

Among the new features: a Minister for Family Affairs, created by Adenauer because he feels West Germany’s morals are in need of more attention. The job will be handled by Josef Wuermeling, a moody, temperamental Catholic lay leader.