Living Dangerously in Berlin

BERLINERS, YOU ARE LIVING IN DANGER! So screamed pamphlets and newspaper ads published in West Berlin by the Christian Democratic Union in anticipation of last weekend's municipal elections. They referred to local worries about street violence. But the authors of the campaign did not realize how much danger there was until three days before the election. Lawyer Peter Lorenz, 52, the party's candidate for mayor, was boldly ambushed and kidnaped as he traveled by limousine from his suburban Zehlendorf home to C.D.U. headquarters in central Berlin.

The first political kidnaping in West German history was carried out with almost military precision. Lorenz's black Mercedes was cut off by a truck and rammed in the rear by a red Fiat. When Lorenz's chauffeur got out to discuss the accident with the Fiat's woman driver, he was knocked to the street by a bearded man from still another car. The men then jumped into the Mercedes and drove the protesting Lorenz away.

Berlin police were quickly able to identify the blonde Fiat driver as Angela Luther, 34, a suspected supporter of West Germany's notorious Baader-Meinhof gang of radical terrorists. Scarcely 24 hours after the kidnaping, however, the West German news agency DPA received a better explanation--a letter from the kidnapers and a photograph of the captured Lorenz--of what had happened. The kidnapers identified themselves as the "June Second Movement," referring to the day in 1967 when police shot and killed a member of a crowd of students protesting a visit to West Germany by the Shah of Iran.

The June Second Movement demanded freedom for six jailed radicals involved in Baader-Meinhof-style criminal operations--curiously not including gang leaders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. They also wanted authorities to annul all verdicts handed down against demonstrators who had violently protested the death by prison hunger strike of a gang member named Holger Meins. One result of the violence was the murder of West Berlin Supreme Court President Giinter von Drenk-mann. It is suspected that he was killed in retaliation for Meins' death (TIME, Dec. 9). Unless the six prisoners were released, provided with $52,200 in cash and flown out of West Berlin on a special jet, Lorenz, according to the note, would be executed.

Lackluster Image. The kidnapers said that Lorenz was a "representative of the reactionaries and the big bosses." In fact, Lorenz is a mild-mannered and scholarly politician who has often been criticized by his fellow C.D.U. members for being too much of a moderate. Despite his lackluster low-profile image, he stood a chance of winning Sunday's election--which the municipal government decided to let take place despite the kidnaping. Lorenz now may well benefit from a sympathy vote, as well as from a backlash against the governing Social Democrats led by Mayor Klaus Schuetz. The mayor was particularly embarrassed by the affair, since Lorenz's police guards--part of a plan to protect leading politicians of all parties--had gone off duty just two hours before the kidnaping.

Occupying Powers. Government authorities set up crisis centers in Bonn and West Berlin, and police launched a search for Lorenz and his kidnapers, also broadcasting an appeal over nationwide television for "convincing evidence" that Lorenz is still alive. On Saturday an anonymous caller told C.D.U. headquarters that Lorenz would be released after all demands had been met, but there was no way of knowing if the caller was really one of the kidnapers. Lorenz also sent two letters to his wife saying that he was well and hoped to be with her soon.

Meanwhile, authorities began groping for a way to respond. For one thing, whether they agreed to the demands or not, the timing of the transaction was bound to affect the election outcome. For another, the use of a 707 jet to fly the freed terrorists to safety would bring U.S., French and British representatives in West Berlin into the picture, since the occupying powers still control the air traffic into and out of the western sector of the city. At week's end the West Berlin government took a first step toward a solution by releasing two prisoners who had been arrested during the riots that followed Meins' death.

Halfway around the world, another political kidnaping came to a tragic end. In Cordoba, Argentina last week, Montoneros leftist-Peronist terrorists abducted the honorary U.S. Consul, John P. Egan, 62, from his home. The terrorists demanded that four jailed comrades be released "alive and healthy" by 7 p.m. on Friday--or Egan, a retired Kaiser Industries executive, would be "executed." Both the U.S. embassy and Argentine Foreign Minister Alberto Vignes refused to negotiate with the kidnapers. Late Friday night, on a lonely dirt road outside Cordoba, Egan's body was found riddled with bullets and wrapped in a Montoneros flag.

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