West Germany: The Grand Coalition

After five weeks of political crisis, the leaders of West Germany’s two major parties decided last week to form a grand coalition for the first time in the republic’s 17-year history. Into the klieg lights of waiting TV cameras in Bonn’s Bundeshaus stepped the Christian Democrats’ candidate for Chancellor, silver-haired Kurt Georg Kiesinger, 62. “We had an eight-hour discussion of all essential questions, which led to a convergence of views,” said Kiesinger. Beside him, nodding approval and sealing the agreement with a handshake, stood Willy Brandt, 52, West Berlin’s mayor and the leader of the Social Democrats. Barring a last-minute hitch, the two parties this week will begin the task of forming a new government to replace the fading minority Cabinet of Ludwig Erhard.

The Christian Democratic Union was certain to approve the agreement, and the Social Democrats were to meet early this week to make their decision. A good many of the Social Democrats opposed the coalition, but heavy pressure from the leadership was expected to win party approval. Under the agreement, Kurt Kiesinger would become West Germany’s third postwar Chancellor, Willy Brandt would be Vice Chancellor and probably Foreign Minister, and the 20 Cabinet posts would be split between the parties. Together the two parties would control a commanding 447 members of the Bundestag. The only opposition would come from the 49 members of Erich Mende’s Free Democrats, who sparked the crisis in October by quitting Erhard’s government in protest against tax increases needed to balance next year’s budget.

Weary Role. Though a grand coalition had been much discussed, few Germans felt that it would ever come off. Why would the free-enterprising Christian Democrats want to have Marxists, however mild, as partners? Why would the Social Democrats want to become half a government when they could perhaps win it all at the next elections? Self-interest, of course, prevailed.

Having never won a national election in postwar Germany, the Social Democrats were becoming weary of their opposition role, and longed for a taste of power. The Christian Democrats, for their part, could not stomach another coalition with the Free Democrats who had brought down their government, and were glad of the chance to leave Erich Mende out in the cold.

Moreover, the two major parties are no longer all that far apart; both, for example, espouse similar welfare-state programs, and the Socialists are expected to go along with a tax increase on some consumer items (beer, cigarettes, gasoline) so long as personal income tax rates remain unchanged.

When it comes to foreign policy, the coalition government will almost certainly make some changes. Under Willy Brandt’s influence, the government can be expected to launch new initiatives toward the East, aimed at relaxing tensions with the Soviet Union and at trying to forge new economic and cultural links with East Germany. As a concession to the influential Gaullists among the Christian Democrats, a new government will also probably attempt to repair its bridges with France, a move that would imply considerably more independence of the U.S.

Protest Vote. The Christian Democrats and Social Democrats were spurred to find a quick solution to the governmental crisis by last week’s state election results in Bavaria, where the newly emerging far-rightist National Democrats polled a surprising 7.4% of the votes, winning 15 seats in the state’s 204-seat Landtag. Most experts felt that many of the votes had been cast in protest against what the far rightists called “the mess in Bonn.” The results served notice on the Christian Democrats and the Socialists that they must either organize a strong new government or run the risk of creating an increasing disenchantment of the voters with the present dominant parties.

Germany’s leaders were also becoming alarmed by the cries of neo-Nazism from abroad that greeted recent National Democratic victories and whirled around the head of Kurt Kiesinger, a onetime member of the Nazi Party. By seeing a Nazi rebirth in the victory of the National Democrats, foreign critics tended to overlook the fact that 92.6% of Bavaria’s voters backed the dominant democratic parties—and that the party’s vote was too small even to have won a single seat in Bavaria had it not been for Germany’s use of proportional representation. The National Democrats have made their gains, such as they are, not by appeals to Nazism but by calling for German reunification and for an independent and neutral foreign policy.

As for his brush with the Nazi Party, Kiesinger last week released the text of a 1948 ruling by a denazification board, which commended him for opposing “Nazi despotism through the possibilities open to him” and quoted the testimony of German Catholic and Protestant leaders that Kiesinger had helped try to overthrow Adolph Hitler after the failure of the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt.

More Independent. Many details remained to be worked out after approval of the coalition by both parties, not least the naming of Cabinet ministers. If the coalition functions smoothly, it will probably prove to be a boon for West Germany at this stage in its history. It will at least show the world that West Germany is united behind a strong rather than a weak government. And it may also enable the West Germans to present a single, serious face to both East and West as the country makes its way as a more independent force in a more united Europe.