The Swelling Storm

Konrad Adenauer has always treated his Cabinet ministers as juniors, allowed to walk only in the stern paternal grip of der Alte himself. He has not hesitated to humiliate them in public when he thought it necessary to teach a lesson. But they all sit back and take it; in the ten-year history of the Federal Republic, only one has resigned. Last week West Germans watched fascinated to see if Ludwig Erhard, Vice Chancellor and Economics Minister, would be No. 2.

To a New York Times correspondent, Adenauer said for publication what he had been telling political cronies for weeks: although Erhard is a "very talented man," he has not enough political experience to be Chancellor now. Moreover, Adenauer denied that Erhard--generally accepted as his successor--even has a majority of the Christian Democratic Party behind him for the top job.

Now or Never. When news of the Times interview reached Erhard, he was still smarting at the defeat he suffered at the hands of Adenauer the week before. "This is an impertinence!" he rasped. "The old man has done it again." Demanding a showdown, he went before a hurriedly arranged party caucus the same morning to state his case. Adenauer was conspicuously absent--asked by party aides to stay away--as Erhard rose to fume: "There seems to be a method behind [the Chancellor's] attitude . . . My reputation is to be systematically destroyed." For once, no one stood to defend the Chancellor, and one Erhard follower cried: "Ludwig, if you don't fight now, you will disqualify yourself for good."

Adenauer's press office tried to quell the furor by implying that the Times story misquoted the Chancellor, but instead, the transcript confirmed that Adenauer had thought Erhard lacked enough "experience" and "one has to be cautious." Cried Erhard: "It's bad democratic practice if the impression circulates abroad that here's a man in his 84th year and after him there will be nothing." Added Eugen Gerstenmaier, president of the Bundestag: Adenauer is "going too far." What looked to be a storm dying out, said Gerstenmaier, is now a storm "swelling to a head."

High Tempers. The Christian Democrats hesitated to split away from the old man; in so doing, they would risk destroying the party itself. But tempers were high, even among many Adenauer supporters, as Gerstenmaier set July i as the date, and West Berlin as the place, for elections for the presidency (this too was in defiance of Adenauer, who thought that a Bundestag session convened in Berlin instead of Bonn would be considered provocation by the Russians).

Until last week the Christian Democrats did not even have a presidential candidate. After Adenauer rejected the post, an array of others refused to run. Finally, Adenauer got reluctant assent to run from his obscure Minister of Agriculture, the 64-year-old Heinrich Luebke, a Roman Catholic like Adenauer. Liuebke has a clean prewar record--he was jailed by Hitler--and is generally popular, although, as the Neue Rhein Zeitung put it: "Until now, his name has been mentioned mainly in relation to the price of butter and the hog surplus."

Technically, the Christian Democrats and their coalition partners have the votes to put Luebke in, but he faces a genuine threat in the brilliant and scholarly presidential candidate of the Social Democrats, Carlo Schmid. Adenauer's party whips were hard at work rounding up pledges for Luebke, fearing that Christian Democrats who resent Adenauer's recent moves, but have not dared oppose him openly, might take advantage of a secret ballot to vote for Socialist Schmid.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.