The Outspoken Grafin

The countess is 53 and unmarried. She has eyes of piercing blue, a disconcertingly level gaze, and a low metallic voice that is mistress of three tongues. She shakes hands firmly, rather like a man, and is thrifty with her smiles. She is a connoisseur of fine wines and an excellent horsewoman. She has also been compared, with complimentary intent, to Walter Lippmann; and the comparison is at least vocationally just. For Dr. Marion Grafin Donhoff has one of West Germany's most respected bylines.

No Ease. West Germans from Chancellor Adenauer on down have been listening attentively if warily to Grafin Donhoff for 17 years. They know by now that as foreign editor of Die Zeit, a small, opinionated weekly published in Hamburg, she will seldom say any thing to give them ease. After the war ended, for example, most Germans felt that the less said about their Nazi past the better. But Die Zeit and die Grafin boldly demanded that all German war criminals be punished for their crimes. After the Chancellor appointed one Theodor Oberlander to his Cabinet, Die Zeit raised the issue of Oberlander's wartime involvement with the persecution of South Poland's Jews. Although Oberlander denied it, the paper kept up the attack with such relentlessness that the Chancellor ultimately let his minister go.

The years since then have not diminished the spirit of Kompromisslosigkeit --no compromise--that guides both Die Zeit and its foreign editor. To Bonn and most West Germans, East Germany is anathema. But the Grafin has persistently advocated closer contacts with the other side of the Wall. "The Iron Curtain does not protect us from Eastern infiltration," read a recent editorial, "but cuts the Eastern countries off from the infiltration of freedom." The Grafin has visited East Germany twice; once, when a group of East German writers were refused permission by West German police to pay a return visit to Hamburg, Die Zeit stubbornly brought the delegation over anyway.

Kindred Spirit. There has never been any compromise in Grafin Donhoff's life. When World War II engulfed the family castle, Friedrichstein, in East Prussia, its chatelaine joined the German underground, made regular weekly clandestine trips to Berlin, and played a role in many an assassination plot against Hitler. At war's end, after the partition of Germany, the Grafin traveled to Hamburg on horseback, a 500-mile journey that took her two months.

On arrival, she picked an immediate quarrel with the British occupation officials, firing off a strong protest against the suspicion with which they viewed all Germans. Her letter came to the attention of a lawyer named Gerd Bucerius--himself a mettlesome man, who had spent most of the war years in Nazi Germany at the unpopular task of defending Jews in court. Bucerius, who was then getting ready to launch Die Zeit, recognized a kindred spirit and hired the Grafin at once.

The alliance has been good for both --and for West Germany. Thanks in large part to its strong-willed Grafin, Die Zeit wields an influence out of all proportion to its size--a bare 200,000 subscribers--and in more than one sphere. The paper was one of the first to recognize postwar Germany's literary resurgence, among the first to encourage such gifted young novelists as Giinter Grass and Heinrich Boll.

Its political influence is a direct measure of the Grafin's influence--and that seems to grow steadily. To Marion Donhoff, the two cardinal sins of life, either in individuals or in governments, are disengagement and immobility. As long as she is around, West Germans cannot expect to commit either of those sins unchastised.

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