Watergate am Rhine

"I, Julius Steiner, hereby make the worst confession in my life. I am aware that in doing so I am disclosing the greatest scandal in the history of West Germany."

With these words, Steiner, a former Deputy in the West German Bundestag, admitted that in April 1972 he sold his vote to keep Chancellor Willy Brandt in power. Writing in last week's issue of the illustrated weekly Quick, Steiner (who is currently in hiding, probably outside Germany), confessed that he received 50,000 marks (about $20,000) from a member of Brandt's Social Democratic Party to abstain in a secret vote of confidence on the Brandt coalition government. By not voting against Brandt, Steiner betrayed his own party, the opposition Christian Democratic Union (C.D.U.), which expected to oust the Chancellor (TIME, May 8, 1972).

Thanks to Steiner's abstention, and that of another as yet unidentified C.D.U.

deputy, Brandt squeaked through with a razor-thin two-vote margin.

Steiner's confession was the latest, and most startling, in a series of revelations about a political scandal that West Germans have dubbed Watergate am Rhine. Although substantially different from the scandal enveloping the White House, the Steiner affair involves not just bribery but cover-up attempts and even espionage. It could cause considerable embarrassment--or worse--for Brandt and his coalition government.

Already Bonn's cocktail-party circuit talks of little else but the scandal.

For the past month, the West German press has been publishing stories hinting that bribery had saved the Brandt government. When Steiner's name first appeared, he admitted that he abstained from voting against Brandt, but did so, he insisted, for ideological reasons, not for money. But then, a la Watergate, bits and pieces of evidence surfaced. The national daily Die Welt reported that shortly after last year's crucial Bundestag vote, Steiner bought himself two Mercedes and a Mini-Cooper.

Finally Steiner confessed--but not before dropping another bombshell. He claimed that since fall 1972 he had been a double agent, ostensibly supplying East German intelligence with inside dope on the C.D.U., while also reporting to West Germany's own internal security force.

The momentum of the scandal builds as West Germany's press features it on Page One every day. As with Washington's Watergate, newspapers and magazines frantically scramble to dig up new clues with which to scoop each other. Brandt's dispirited C.D.U. opponents have enthusiastically embraced the Steiner affair as a means of discrediting the Chancellor. They have demanded that a Bundestag special investigatory committee, established last week, find out whether Brandt knew about the bribes and whether the internal security force deliberately failed to inform the C.D.U. that Steiner was giving information about the party to East Germany.

The Chancellor has welcomed the investigation, declaring his willingness to testify before the committee. Yet, even if it appears that he did not know about the bribes, the deepening mess will likely dim his image. More worrisome, the corruption and venality in Bonn that the investigation is revealing could, in the extreme, topple Brandt. His demise could rekindle the familiar fears about the stability of West Germany's relatively young democratic institutions that accompany the nation's major political crises.

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