World: Jester in Striped Pants

THOUGH they may disagree with his policies, foreign diplomats will find it difficult to dislike West Germany’s new Foreign Minister. Affable and engaging, Walter Scheel, who is also the leader of the Free Democratic Party, has the relaxed manner and quick wit of a Rhinelander. An adept mime, he delights in performing creditable imitations of other West German politicians. He loves to tell jokes, often making himself the butt. At a recent ball in West Berlin, for example, he showed up wearing a hand-lettered sign on his lapel that read in English: “Kiss me, I’m a Liberal.”

For all his clowning, Scheel (pronounced shale) is tough and talented. “I am not a special friend of pretension,” he said at his swearing-in ceremony last week. Like Brandt, he is truly a self-made man. The son of a wheelwright from the knives-and-scissors town of Solingen, he did not continue his education beyond high school.

After wartime service as a Luftwaffe fighter pilot (four allied planes bagged and two Iron Crosses), he worked as a superintendent in a small steel mill. He was elected in 1953 to the Bundestag and served for five years (1961-66) as West Germany’s Minister for Economic Cooperation, a post that gave him a solid grounding in international affairs. Two years ago, Scheel won control from the conservative faction of the Free Democrats and engineered a radical shift in party policy—from right of the Christian Democrats to left of the Socialists on a number of issues. In foreign affairs, Scheel and Brandt agree on all fundamental points, including the need to retain West Germany’s strong commitment to the West while seeking better relations with the East. Though political infighting provides one of the few diversions in the otherwisesmall-town atmosphere of Bonn, Scheel has scrupulously refused to be a participant. As a result, he has almost no serious political enemies. “I do not take part in back-stabbing,” he says. “Those who wield the knives usually endup sticking themselves.”

A 50-year-old widower with a grown son, Scheel in July married an attractive Munich physician who will be a welcome addition to Bonn’s diplomatic whirl. For the easygoing Scheel, however, his new eminence imposes a few regrettable strictures. Not the least of them is that he can no longer wear loud sports jackets or whiz about Bonn in his zippy BMW 2500 sedan (“the businessman’s sports car”). Even a foe of pretension must allow himself to be chauffeured in a stately black Mercedes if he also happens to be West Germany’s Foreign Minister.