World: WEST GERMANY: OUTCASTS AT THE HELM

BISMARCK barred them from political life, and Kaiser Wilhelm scourged them as an unpatriotic rabble. Konrad Adenauer, who presided over the rebirth of West Germany, dismissed them as unfit to govern, and for years millions of his countrymen agreed. Last week, in the wake of one of the closest elections in the 20-year history of the Federal Republic, the Social Democrats, long the outcasts of German politics, prepared to take power. Unless the coalition carefully pasted together with the Free Democrats suddenly comes unstuck, Willy Brandt will be sworn in as the Chancellor of West Germany on Oct. 21, thus becoming the first Socialist to lead a German government since 1930.

This was an election that could easily have earned Germany new notoriety in the international community. The right-wing National Democrats of Adolf (“Bubi”) von Thadden might have won 5% of the national vote and thereby earned the right to sit in the Bundestag (parliament); in that case, fears of renascent Nazism would have chilled much of the world. As it turned out, the National Democrats were able to draw only 4.3%. Far from becoming a black mark against West Germany’s name, the election turned into what could well prove a historic turning point.

It was Brandt’s own daring as much as the actual election results that brought the Socialists to the brink of power. Neither of the two major parties won an outright majority. The long dominant Christian Democrats, who had promised “no experiments,” remained the largest par ty, with 15.2 million votes or 46.1% of the total—a 1.5% decline from the last election in 1965. The Socialists, who pledged to “Build the Modern Germany,” won 14 million votes, increasing their 1965 percentage by 3.4% and capturing 42.7% of the electorate. Ironically, the party that ended up holding the balance of power was the one that had lost the most: the Free Democrats, an unlikely assortment of conservative and far-left liberals, had lost 19 of their 49 seats in the Bundestag, and their share of the total vote dropped from 9.5% in 1965 to a mere 5.8% —just above the 5% required for representation in the Bundestag. After three days of intense negotiations, the Free Democrats, who are led by Walter Scheel, threw their slight but decisive weight behind Brandt. At week’s end the onetime outcast of West German politics informed President Gustav Heinemann that he was prepared to form a government in coalition with the Free Democrats and rule the Federal Republic.

Consigned to the Past

It was an auspicious moment for a party that not too long ago seemed irretrievably locked into the role of the opposition, unable to break its blue-collar mold and incapable of attracting much more than one-third of the voters. Throughout the country there was a deep and exciting awareness that a watershed had been reached. After 20 years of uninterrupted rule, Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger’s Christian Democrats prepared to take their places on the opposition benches. Said the conservative Bayern Kurier: “The political generation of postwar times finally belongs to the past.”

Not unlike the Democrats and Republicans, Germany’s two major parties share many fundamental beliefs, including a firm commitment to NATO and a desire f or -British entry into the Common Market. But in style as well as substance, there are important differences. While the Christian Democrats are older and more cautious, the Social Democrats emphasize youth and a flair for innovation. While the Germany of Adenauer, Ludwig Erhard and Kiesinger was a reliable if overly dependent partner of the West, Brandt’s Socialists are certain to be more assertive and fluid, especially in foreign relations.

In an effort to ease the tensions that have contorted Central Europe since the end of World War II, they are committed to launch bold new initiatives toward the Soviet Union and its East European allies. At home, the Socialists promised to bring an innovative approach to problems of university reform, youthful unrest and individual rights. Among their first acts is likely to be an upward revaluation of the muscular German mark, probably fixing its price around the 26.50 level to which it has floated since it was cut loose from its old 250 price the day after the election (see BUSINESS). Also expected swiftly is ratification of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty—a move that could persuade several smaller, weaker countries to sign the document.

A change of power was bound to be beneficial for West Germany. Twenty years in office is a long time for any party, especially in Germany, with its authoritarian heritage. Furthermore, West Germany has lacked an effective political opposition since the Socialists joined Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger’s Grand Coalition three years ago.

There were also risks. Willy Brandt’s partnership with the Free Democrats might prove precarious from a practical standpoint because the Free Democrats are a schizophrenic party. It was formed in 1948, composed largely of business and professional men who found the C.D.U. too “black” or Catholic and the S.P.D. too “red” or socialistic. At first the F.D.P. was dominated by a right wing of nay-sayers—businessmen who thought there was too much welfare spending, Protestants wary of the C.D.U.’s heavy Catholic influence, nationalists who felt Bonn was too pro-American. Scheel belonged to the Free Democrats’ younger left wing, and when he took over 21 months ago, he set about transforming party policy from right of the C.D.U. to left of the S.P.D. on a number of important issues. Since there are still conservatives in his party that resent the leftward move, the party could conceivably break apart under the strain of government and leave Brandt stranded without a majority in the Bundestag.

There is some question whether Brandt will make a good Chancellor. Reserved and thin-skinned, Brandt may find the perpetual pummeling that high office brings unbearable. Furthermore, his own past—his illegitimate birth, his “defection” from Nazi Germany and acceptance of Norwegian citizenship—turns many Germans from him. Those very credentials, however, enable him to speak far more candidly about Germany’s past than Kiesinger, who had been a Nazi official. As mayor of West Berlin and later as Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister in the Grand Coalition, Brandt performed admirably. In Berlin, he coolly faced down the Soviets during the 1959 crisis, when Nikita Khrushchev threatened the city’s links to the West. As Bonn’s foreign policy expert since 1966, he began an Ostpolitik diplomacy, seeking new amity with the East that his government is certain to emphasize with new vigor.

Little Coalition

Seldom has such a momentous political change been caused by such a small shift in the vote. As the first returns trickled in, computers forecast that the Christian Democrats would make a strong showing. The outcome seemed so certain that in the early evening President Nixon sent a congratulatory message via the Washington-Bonn “hotline” teletype to Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger.

Later, as the trend changed by mere fractions of points, the C.D.U.’s lead dwindled until it was left with 242 seats, seven short of a majority in the 496-seat Bundestag. Together, the Socialists with 224 seats and the Free Democrats with 30 held a margin of twelve seats over the C.D.U. Earlier, Brandt had declared that he would need a majority of 13 to 30 seats to put together a coalition with the Free Democrats. The moment he caught a whiff of power, however, he lowered his sights. Surrounded by a dozen close colleagues in Bonn’s drab Socialist headquarters, which are aptly called “the Barracks,” Brandt announced just before midnight: “I’ll do it, even if we have only a majority of two.” With that, he telephoned the Free Democrats’ Walter Scheel to ask if he were interested in trying to form a coalition.

Brandt offered Scheel the foreign ministry, plus two middle-level posts (interior and agriculture) in the 15-member Cabinet. Belatedly, the C.D.U. weighed in with an even more generous offer, including both the foreign and finance ministries. Said one Free Democrat: “The C.D.U. is willing to give us everything but the chancellorship.” Too late. In a party caucus, the Socialists unanimously voted for the “Little Coalition” with the Free Democrats. With three members abstaining, the Free Democrats also endorsed the union. According to the present schedule, President Heinemann will nominate Brandt as Chancellor on Oct. 19, the Bundestag will vote on the proposal two days later, and if he wins the election, Brandt will be formally installed the same day.

Manfully, the Christian Democrats insisted that it might not be so bad, after all, to play the role of the opposition against a shaky coalition. As the largest party, the Christian Democrats will have a tight grip on the many key committees; they also will be able to delay and block legislation in the Bundesrat (upper house), where they still command a 21-to-20 majority.

Worth the Risk

After an initial period of indecision, Kiesinger decided that he would direct the opposition in the Bundestag himself. But the C.D.U. leaders were also confronted with some fundamental decisions about the party’s direction. There will be a chorus of voices, probably led by Bavarian Party Chief Franz-Josef Strauss, favoring a move toward the right to attract those who may desert the defeated National Democrats. There are certain to be strong tugs in the other direction as well to keep the party in the middle of Germany’s political spectrum. The Christian Democrats will not only have to resolve those conflicting pressures but also to produce new faces and more attractive ideas. A promise to preserve the status quo is no longer an appealing platform.

For Brandt, the swift move to snatch the chancellorship from the C.D.U. is obviously the gamble of his career. In the unlikely event that the Free Democrats do not hold to their bargain, his action in hastily forming a government will appear overeager and precipitous. Once in power, he will still face severe problems of operating with a narrow majority. There is also the possibility that the Christian Democrats may try to induce defections among the Free Democrats who belong to the conservative wing of the party. Brandt is betting that the Socialists will do so well in office that even if the Free Democrats should defect after a year or so, he could call new elections and win a substantial margin of seats. In any event, to Brandt it is worth the gamble if it means the Socialists can once again hold the power that has so often eluded them.

German socialism is rooted in the French Revolution, the dialectics of Hegel and the philosophy of Karl I Marx, who as a German exile in London took a special interest in the activities of his brethren in the homeland. The party itself was not formally founded, however, until 1869, when the German Workers Party was born in Eisenach.

Power did not come easily to the Socialists. Though they are Germany’s oldest political party, until now they have been in power for only two brief periods during the 100 years of their JULIUS existence. As advocates of internationalism, democracy, a distinct separation between church and state and improved social conditions, the Socialists naturally aroused deep suspicions in the monarchical, clerical, nationalistic Germany of the 19th century. “For me, every Social Democrat is an enemy of the Realm and of the Fatherland,” declared Kaiser Wilhelm II. “That party, which dares to attack the foundations of the state, which revolts against religion and does not even stop at the person of the Almighty Ruler, must be crushed.”

Instead, the Socialists helped crush the Kaiser by leading the revolution that broke out in the closing days of World War I. When the Weimar Republic was established in 1919, the first government was led by the Socialists, who ruled for two years. It was a dubious honor. Socialist Foreign Minister Hermann Muller was obliged to sign the harsh Versailles Treaty, putting the onus of Germany’s defeat on the party that many nationalists already blamed for stabbing the country in the back by calling for the overthrow of the mon archy while the war was still going on. In 1928, another Socialist-led government took power. But Germany, beset by inflation and plagued by increasing political violence, proved ungovernable. After the Socialists resigned over cuts in unemployment insurance in 1930, the Weimar Republic fell increasingly under the power of the Socialists’ enemies—the brown-shirted Nazis of Adolf Hitler.

Street Fighter

The rivalry between the Nazis and Socialists spilled over into bloody street battles that erupted all over Germany. In the Baltic seaport of Liibeck, the Nazis met a tough opponent in a husky, square-jawed youth named Herbert Karl Frahm, a member of the Socialist youth club. The son of an unmarried shopgirl whose lover had deserted her before the child’s birth, Herbert Karl and his mother lived as boarders in the home of a chauffeur whose own wife had little patience with the child. Perhaps to compensate for his unhappy circumstances, the boy excelled at school, winning a scholarship to the Lübeck gymnasium, and developed an abiding interest in politics. Because of his lower-class origins, his inclination was instinctively socialist. “Social responsibility and a sense of justice are probably rooted more deeply when they are based on personal experience,” he once said. He soon attracted the attention of one of Germany’s most influential Socialists, Julius Leber, who represented Liibeck in the Reichstag. Leber encouraged the gifted youngster to write articles for the local party newspaper, which he did under the pen name Willy Brandt. As Brandt later wrote: “I had grown up without a father; there was an emptiness in my life. Leber filled it.”

In 1933, only a few days after Hitler had seized power, Julius Leber was beaten by Nazi storm troopers and put under arrest. His young protege helped organize a protest rally. Then, in danger of arrest by the newly formed Gestapo (secret police), the 19-year-old youngster hopped aboard a fishing boat in Liibeck and made his way to Norway. When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940, Brandt put on a Norwegian soldier’s uniform in an attempt to evade detection by the Gestapo, who would have arrested him for his resistance connections. The ruse worked, and after a four-week internment as a prisoner of war, Brandt was released as harmless. He quickly made his way by auto and foot across Norway to neutral Sweden, where he later was joined by his Norwegian wife, Karlota. While in Stockholm, Brandt learned that Julius Leber had been executed as one of the conspirators in the plot to kill Hitler and end the war.

The Other Germans

After Germany’s defeat, Brandt, who by then had become a Norwegian citizen, returned to his shattered former homeland to cover the war-crime trials at Nürnberg for Scandinavian papers. While reporting on the trials, Brandt wrote a thoughtful book entitled Criminals and Other Germans, in which he pointed out that while the guilty Nazis should be punished, there also were decent Germans who could be counted on to build a democratic nation.

In late 1946, Brandt arrived in Berlin as a Norwegian major assigned to liaison work with the Four Power Control Commission that was run by Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the U.S. As a member of the occupying force, Brandt enjoyed privileges and comforts of the victors, but he felt a growing obligation toward Germany.

A major influence on him was Ernst Reuter, a Socialist professor who had returned from exile in Turkey. Reuter was leading the struggle in Berlin against Russian attempts to force the Socialists to join the Communists in a single party. At the end of 1947, Brandt became a German citizen again, explaining to his Scandinavian friends: “It is better to be the only democrat in Germany than one of many in Norway or another country where everyone understands democracy.”

As the rivalry between the U.S. and Russia deepened, Berlin, 110 miles behind the Iron Curtain, became the principal tension point. As an aide to Reuter, who had been elected mayor, Brandt was in the front trench of the Cold War. In 1949, after the Allied airlift and the resistance of West Berliners had forced the Soviets to lift their 332-day blockade of the city, Brandt became West Berlin’s representative to .Bonn, where a new West German government was being formed. Though the Socialists felt they deserved to lead the new Germany, they won only 29.2% of the vote in the first national election. As a result, the newly formed Christian Democratic Union, led by Konrad Adenauer, came to power with the margin of a single vote in the Bundestag.

Adenauer’s Christian Democrats steered West Germany into a close alliance with the West and presided over the great economic boom—the Wirt-schaftswunder—that brought unparalleled prosperity to the country. The Socialists meanwhile remained locked in the “30% ghetto,” unable to broaden their support beyond workers and left-wing intellectuals. The Socialists’ leader, Dr. Kurt Schumacher, was strangely out of tune with the political realities of West Germany. He favored neutrality at a time when West Germans wanted the Western Allies to protect them from the Russians; he called for a tightly controlled economy at a time when Germany was just emerging from the tightly centralized direction of the Nazi period. At a time of great social flux, Schumacher retained the party’s unfortunate old image of proletarians who were not salonfähig—fit to be brought into the parlor.

Dumping Marx

Willy Brandt also felt locked into a more personal ghetto. Though the Socialists ruled West Berlin, the fact that he was not a native Berliner handicapped his rise within the party. As he turned 40, Brandt was an extremely frustrated man. Then, in the course of one night in 1956, Brandt became the hero of West Berlin. The occasion was a protest rally in West Berlin against the Soviet suppression of Hungary. A crowd of nearly 100,000 West Berliners was headed toward the Soviet sector of Berlin at Brandenburg Gate, crying “Russians, get out!” Brandt commandeered a sound truck and managed to divert most of the marchers to the memorial for the victims of Communist tyranny, far back from the sector borders. But even as Brandt addressed the crowd, word came that a small breakaway group had pushed through police lines near the gate and was advancing toward the East German guards. Rushing to the scene, Brandt averted a certain blood bath by persuading the column to turn back. His plucky courage impressed even the self-assured Berliners, to whom he suddenly became “unser Willy”—our Willy. The following year Brandt was elected governing mayor of West Berlin.

Brandt’s victory coincided with a changing mood within the Socialist Party in West Germany. Restless Socialists, less interested in rigid dogmas than a chance to get into the parlor, demanded a change. Under the guidance of Herbert Wehner, an irascible former Communist who is the party’s chief strategist, the Socialists at a crucial meeting at Bad Godesberg in 1959 dumped their Marxist ballast and sought to transform themselves from a party of the workers into one of the people. Instead of the old dogma about class warfare and the rule of the proletariat, the Socialists endorsed a mixed economy, the profit motive, parliamentary democracy and a close military alliance with the West. They even settled their old feud with the church. “Socialism,” proclaimed the Bad Godesberg platform, “is not a substitute for religion.”

Brandt became the standard-bearer for the revitalized party. In the 1961 elections, he waged a U.S.-style campaign, stomping the country and pumping hands, that raised the S.P.D. share of the vote to 36.2%. In 1965, the Socialists’ showing rose to 39.3%, but the C.D.U. remained in power under Ludwig Erhard as Chancellor. It -was Brandt’s second straight defeat, and once again his party had failed to break through the 40% barrier. Discouraged, Brandt went into a personal decline, marked by long periods of introspection. Observers revived his old nickname, “Weinbrand Willy,” because of his liking for brandy. During this period he collected a series of essays under the title Draussen (Outside). He had no idea how close he was to the inside.

In late 1966, in a protest against tax hikes, the Free Democrats suddenly resigned as partners in Erhard’s coalition Cabinet. For five weeks, West Germany drifted without an effective government, while Socialist Strategist Wehner pondered a dilemma: Should the S.P.D., out of power for 36 years, seek a coalition with the unpredictable Free Democrats and risk making a mess of things? Or should it bide its time and join a C.D.U.-led Grand Coalition to show voters that they were capable of governing the country? Wehner chose the second course, and the experiment turned out to be a success.

In the Grand Coalition, the nine Socialist Ministers (out of 19) were the stars of the government. Socialist Economics Minister Karl Schiller guided West Germany out of its economic slump; Transportation Minister Georg Leber (no relation to Julius) began unclogging Western Germany’s Autobahnen by forcing freight off the roads and back onto the deficit-ridden rails. Foreign Minister Brandt conducted an imaginative eastward-looking policy. Meanwhile the Free Democrats were moving away from conservative policies and closer to those of the Socialists. Last March, Socialist and Free Democrat members of the Bundestag joined forces to elect Gustav Heinemann as the first Socialist head of state in the 20-year history of the Federal Republic. It was a harbinger of things to come.

The Free Democrats’ Scheel began to consider the possibility of a more lasting alliance with the Socialists. Engaging and affable (“I’m a court jester, just a king’s fool”), Scheel is nonetheless Considered to be a skillful politician, who, as Foreign Minister, will bring a light and sensitive touch to German diplomacy.

Metaphysical Lederhosen

Last week’s pattern of voting buttressed the Socialists’ optimism. In a country whose population is steadily growing younger, increasingly affluent and more urbanized, they outdrew the Christian Democrats handily among first-time voters, well-paid workers and city dwellers. They made inroads into the Catholic vote and the female vote, two blocs usually overwhelmingly loyal to the C.D.U. In the Bonn area, the Socialists scored an 8.6% increase, a testimonial that the government employees like to work for them.

Much of the credit for the electoral gains belongs to the team around Brandt (see box, page 32). In pre-election polls, Brandt trailed both Kiesinger and his own Economics Minister Karl Schiller, who emerged as West Germany’s popular politician. But Socialist publicists wisely played up the theme, “we have the right men.”

A striking feature of Brandt’s team is its relative youth in a land where “Opa”—grandpa—was long presumed to know best. Ever since the trauma of the Nazi atrocities and World War II, Germans have shouldered a heavy burden of guilt—their “cartel of anxiety,” as they refer to it. But today, two-thirds of the men and half of the women among West Germany’s 61 million people are under 40 and had little or nothing to do with the war. If many of them are “Hitler’s children,” born during his rule, the Führer would surely disown them. They are painfully aware of their country’s Nazi past; two years ago, a public opinion poll showed that 60% of those between the ages of 16 and 29 would rather live in another country.

A similar poll conducted today might show that many more would be willing to stay at home and work at changing the country. To be sure, there are free love communes in West Berlin, pot-smokers and hippies in most large cities, but the mood of the young is, by and large, activist. Significantly, Nobel prizewinning Novelist Hermann Hesse no longer exerts a strong pull on young West Germans. To them, Hesse’s romantic mystique of the outsider and his preoccupation with passive Oriental philosophies has about it what British Critic D. J. Enright calls “the smell of metaphysical Lederhosen.” Hesse’s appeal is largely to those racked by uncertainty and disillusion, which explains his vogue on U.S. campuses and, in the early postwar period, among Germany’s youth.

Opinion surveys show that the majority of students are willing to accept the existence of East Germany as a separate state and to write off the territory beyond the Oder-Neisse line. German students have a deep revulsion to any thing that reminds them of Hitler—and that sometimes includes their own parents. At the same time, students who only a few years ago looked to the U.S. as a model are now somewhat disenchanted, largely because of the Viet Nam war and U.S. racial disturbances. German students are also strongly antimilitaristic, a fact that will probably prompt the Socialists to cut the tour of duty for draftees from 18 months to 15; at present, 200,000 German youths between 19 and 24 are conscripted each year.

Old habits do not vanish overnight, however, and discipline is still next to godliness in the eyes of many Germans. According to one well-known barb, Germans obey the law because it’s against the law not to do so. Yet there are signs that even in Germany, discipline is giving way to what Sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, who also happens to be the Free Democrats’ leading thinker, calls “the individual search for happiness by people freed of the fetters of tradition and thrown into the affluent society.” Writes Dahrendorf in Society and Democracy in Germany:

“Discipline, orderliness, subservience, cleanliness, industriousness, precision, and all the other virtues ascribed by many to the Germans as an echo of past splendor have already given way to a much less rigid set of values, among which economic success, a high income, the holiday trip, and the new car play a much larger part than the virtues of the past. Younger people especially display little of the much praised and much scorned respect for authority, and less of the disciplined virtues that for their fathers were allegedly sacred. A world of highly individual values has emerged, which puts the experienced happiness of the individual in first place and increasingly lets the so-called whole slip from sight.”

The Newest Wave

At the same time, more and more Germans seem willing to take an active role in shaping their surroundings. Emulating the questioning, self-critical approach of youth, Germans are beginning to examine their institutions and seek to run them. Parents, once the silent partners of the German Parent-Teacher Associations, demand a voice in how the schools are run. Churchgoers want a say in the allocation of the vast West German church tax resources and even in the selection of priests and higher church officials. Journalists seek the right to participate in the shaping of editorial policy. Germany finally seems to be developing what Novelist Günter Grass calls “voter initiative,” a long step toward developing a true participatory democracy.

Recently the Germans have also begun to take a much more objective view of themselves. In the 1950s, according to opinion surveys, only 32% of them felt that their country alone was responsible for the war; now fully 62% believe that the blame was Germany’s, a view more in line with the opinion of the rest of the world. In the 1950s, a majority of Germans felt that their image abroad was bad because foreigners were envious of Germany; now they concede that it might be because Germans have some negative characteristics and still have an abominable past to live down.

Even more striking perhaps than the restless mood of youth and the gradual erosion of traditional authority is that enduring wonder, the German economy, which continues to pour forth much of the world’s most sought after goods. There are more jobs than workers to fill them. Unemployment in West Germany is a scant one-half of 1% in a labor force of 26.3 million, and 1,400,000 foreign workers, mostly from the Mediterranean countries, have been imported.

As befits Teutonic efficiency, West Germans enjoy the world’s most perfect color TV, and some of the most incisive documentaries shown anywhere. In the past few years, however, the German literary scene has become less lively. Günter Grass’s latest book, Örtlich Betäubt (roughly translated as Locally Anesthetized) is only a faint echo of Tin Drum; Uwe Johnson and Helmut Kirst have not published for several years. It may be that the wartime themes, the grist for German novels for the past 25 years, are beginning to pale. The best-received plays come from Vienna’s experimental theaters. But the Stuttgart Ballet may be the world’s most exciting dance group, and the German classical theater and opera remain first-rate.

In each successive phase in Germany’s postwar development, the country has been seized by a different craze. First the hungry Germans gorged themselves in the Fresswelle (eating wave), then took to wheels in the Vespawelle (motor-scooter wave) that was followed by the Autowelle (auto buying). Next came the Wohnungswelle (home buying) and Reisewelle (traveling). Now Germans are inundated by the Sexwelle.

Naked girls adorn just about every magazine cover. Under the guise of adult sex education, film makers are cranking out movies with such titles as Your Wife, the Unknown Creature, in which live models demonstrate an astonishing variety of positions for intercourse, while a narrator (naturally a Herr Doktor) supplies clinical comments. Beate Uhse’s sex boutiques in eleven cities offer all manner of sexual paraphernalia. Complains one Austrian, who deplores the Germanic lack of spontaneity: “There is a certain plodding quality in the German approach to sex. Boom. Boom. Boom. Now we have discovered sex and we will conquer it.” Some Germans claim to see in the Sexwelle a new desire for Germany to place individual happiness ahead of duty to state or community.

Priorities and Policies

In this atmosphere, Brandt will seek to prove—even more conclusively than it was proved in the Grand Coalition —that his Socialists are eminently regierungsfähig, or able to govern.

And what of Brandt’s own ability? He hardly fits the old stereotype of the superefficient German. Though he usually struggles into his office by 9:00 a.m., he hates to get up and must be handled gingerly until he has had coffee and the first of the 40 or so Attache cigarillos he smokes each day. “The man is useless until noon,” says one of his aides. A night creature, Brandt grows more animated as the hour grows later.

During the campaign, his early-afternoon speeches were wooden and broken; by 4 p.m., they were more coherent but still lacked vibrance; by 8, he was witty and forceful, folding the audience in his spell while tossing off withering asides to hostile hecklers. After that, while throwing back glasses of Benedictine and brandy, he often talked with local politicians and swapped political jokes with newsmen until 3 a.m. One of Brandt’s favorites: After the Soviet-Czechoslovak summit confrontation at Cierna last summer, Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev turns to Premier Aleksei Kosygin and asks: “Did you see that beautiful watch Svoboda was wearing?” “No,” replies Kosygin. “Let me see it.”

Brandt has been attacked by conservatives for the permissive attitude he and his second wife Rut show toward their two hippie sons. Peter, 21, was arrested last year for participation in a riot, sentenced to a $50 fine and a four-week suspended jail term. Lars, 18, whose blond hair almost reaches his shoulders, said last week that even though he considers himself a member of A.P.O. (the far-left Anti-Parliamentary Opposition), he favored his father’s coalition. But he expressed serious reservations about having to move from the Brandt home in Venusberg to Bonn’s Palais Schaumburg, the residence of German Chancellors.

Vater Brandt has no such reservations. Once in the Palais, he can be expected to deal immediately with mark revaluation and the signing of the nuclear non-proliferation pact (which Kiesinger resisted on the ground that it could leave Germany at a disadvantage in peaceful nuclear research). Brandt’s main task will be to look eastward. He and Scheel are agreed on an approach to East Germany, which the Christian Democrats preferred to pretend did not exist. In hopes of easing the economic lot of the people in the East, Brandt aims to stop short of full diplomatic recognition but to seek closer travel and communications links and trade opportunities with the East Germans.

Brandt also harbors grander schemes for Europe that would break down the barriers between the East and West blocs. While some critics feel he is overly optimistic, he wants to accept the Soviet proposal for a European security conference, provided the U.S. would be invited to attend. He would be prepared to renounce Germany’s claim to its lost territories that comprise some 40,000 square miles in Poland, in order to wind up the business left over from World War II.

Soviet Considerations

The question is, would the other side cooperate? The Soviets were rooting for a Brandt victory as the lesser of two evils in the election, and Izvestia called him “more realistic on certain foreign policy questions.” Perhaps they might sign a mutually attractive trade deal or grant Lufthansa landing rights in Russia. But so far, it seems unlikely that the collective leadership of Brezhnev and Kosygin would agree to any far-reaching accommodation with West Germany. One reason the Soviets moved against Czechoslovakia was that Brandt had opened negotiations in Prague that might have led to diplomatic relations and German investments in Czechoslovak industry. Soviet diplomats subsequently warned Brandt’s aides that they do not want the Germans poking around in Eastern Europe. Still, Brandt is not likely to give up easily. For years the Soviets have unfairly castigated West Germany as a haven of unrepentant Nazis. It is a charge Brandt and the West Germany that helped bring him to power are both singularly well qualified to refute.

Brandt’s administration means, in fact, a new era in which the power in West Germany has largely passed to the untainted Germans—those who were too young to be accomplices in Hitler’s crimes. When Brandt cries, “Twenty years is enough!”, it is not so much a plea for absolution as a reminder that a new generation is arriving and should not be condemned in advance.

The Germany of this new generation will be somewhat different and perhaps a bit difficult for its old allies. Yet it may well be a Germany that is far more attractive than any of the earlier generations were able to make. In one of Helmut Kirst’s novels about World War II, a German soldier in Russia expresses the hope that maybe some day there may even be a Germany that is fun to live in. With luck, Brandt’s Germany could be that place.