WEST GERMANY: Faded Dignity

Konrad Adenauer’s troubles might have ended had he been content to let them die down. Instead, he went out of the way to continue his feuding in a succession of interviews in the foreign press. To a Scripps-Howard reporter, he patronized U.S. Secretary of State Christian Herter’s performance at Geneva (“Dulles would have patched up [the Allied rifts] quicker”), opined that Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Macmillan must be persuaded that “when one belongs to an alliance, he must give up some views of his own.” But he reserved the roughest treatment of all for his much-abused Vice Chancellor, Ludwig Erhard. To CBS, Adenauer confided that he planned to stay in office as Chancellor through the 1961 elections and expected to have a voice in selecting his successor, a clear hint that he might keep Erhard out of the job even then. To Paris-Match, Adenauer boasted that, in contrast to Erhard, he was a “100% politician” with a worldwide acquaintance among the world’s leaders, including Khrushchev.

Even his private advisers urged him to lay off. His Foreign Minister, Heinrich von Brentano, flatly contradicted his remarks on Geneva. Maddest of all, Ludwig Erhard demanded a public apology, but all he got from the Chancellor was a grudging brushoff. “Honorable Herr Erhard.” wrote Adenauer in a personal letter, “I am of the opinion that we must not offer a spectacle of dispute to the public. Therefore, I do not intend to reply to your arguments.” Bowing to pleas of party conciliators, he added: “You know I attach the greatest importance to further harmonious collaboration with you.” But that was all, and it was not enough for Ludwig Erhard.

“Dear Herr Erhard.” Erhard had the sympathy of a growing number of Christian Democratic Party politicos, who were muttering openly against der Alte’s highhanded rule. The national deputy chairman of the party, Kai-Uwe von Hassel. Minister-President of Schleswig Holstein, demanded that Adenauer call a special meeting of the party’s highest committee, indicating that he would throw his support behind Erhard in a showdown.

But Adenauer knew that few Christian Democrats would risk a party split merely to salvage Ludwig Erhard’s pride, and that all were linked in timidity by the desire to win in 1961. Finally, Erhard was persuaded to accept a compromise from Adenauer that included neither apologies nor promises. A new Adenauer letter, addressed to “Dear Herr Erhard,” was read to the full Christian Democratic parliamentary caucus: “The intention to offend you or degrade your reputation was absolutely remote to me . . . You can be sure of my full confidence in you as a politician and as a man … I gratefully recognize the great merits of your political activities in general, and particularly in your special [economic] fields.”

Although Adenauer once again had cowed party and Parliament and seemed almost as strongly entrenched as ever, public-opinion polls showed that only 36% of the West German public approved of his recent erratic conduct over the chancellorship. Most editorialists put it down to age. Said Hamburg’s Die Welt: “Even the most brilliant propaganda can no longer depict Adenauer as the wise old statesman who subordinates his person to the great task, who combines cleverness with dignity.”