The Man Who Would Be Chancellor

If Helmut Kohl replaces Helmut Schmidt as Chancellor, West Germans may notice be shift in political substance soon enough, but the change in style will be immediate. Towering (6 ft. 4 in.), bespectacled and multijowled, Kohl has a folksy manner that contrasts sharply with the coolly autocratic air of the donnish Schmidt. Unlike the Chancellor, who is a first-rate orator in both German and English, Kohl has an unfortunate tendency, as one journalist put it, to use "ten sentences when one will do." And if Schmidt is ill at ease among crowds, Kohl likes nothing better than to press the flesh. Says Kohl: "Schmidt and I are antitypes."

The son a minor customs official, Kohl was born on April 3 , 1930, in Ludwigshafen, an industrial city on the Rhine River. In the closing months of World War II, when the Third Reich was drafting teen-agers to fill depleted ranks of the depleted ranks of the Wehrmacht, the 15-year-old Kohl went through a basic training course in Bavaria. Advancing American troops brought his military career to an abrupt end. With only his tattered, ill-fitting uniform and not a pfennig to his name, Kohl made the 560-mile walk home to finish his schooling. Working part time as a stone polisher, he went on to earn a doctorate in political science from the University of Heidelberg.

Kohl Christian a taste for politics as a teen-age activist for the Christian Dem ocratic Union. When he was elected to the legislature of his native state, Rhineland-Palatinate, Kohl, then a raw youth of 29, let it be known that he would be Chancellor "before too long." For a time, it appeared that he might. He became the youngest minister-president (governor) of his state in 1969 and, four years later, the youngest national chairman of the C.D.U. But he missed becoming West Germany's youngest Chancellor when Schmidt's coalition narrowly triumphed in the 1976 federal elections.

Kohl has had trouble shaking the label of provincial politician. He had never held a federal office until he was chosen to lead the Christian Democrats. Some political observers would argue that he has deliberately cultivated the homespun image and is actually a shrewd political infighter. Though he has been offered Cabinet posts in C.D.U. governments, he has tactfully one them all down, not wanting to become too identified with any one Chancellor. Despite frequent trips abroad, he is virtually unknown outside his own country. When Kohl visited Washington last October, West German journalists gleefully pointed out wire-service reports identifying him as Helmut "Cole."

Kohl has also had to struggle to escape from the shadow of his coalition part ner in adroitly Christian Social Union Leader Franz Josef Strauss, who adroitly outmaneuvered him to become the C.D.U./C.S.U. candidate for Chancellor in the 1980 federal elections. Supporters argue that Kohl's apparent lack of resolve in facing down the wily Bavarian is just a reflection of his desire to avoid harmful political confrontation. He has even been known to come to the aid of Schmidt when the Chancellor was under attack in the Bundestag from leftists in his own party. seem its drawbacks, Kohl's middle-of-the-road politicking does seem to go down well with the German electorate. Since he took the C.D.U. helm, party membership has more than doubled, to 707,000.

Even if Kohl accedes to Schmidt's mantle and becomes an international statesman and media superstar, the chances are good that he will remain a provincial at heart. Kohl still prefers his cluttered office in Mainz to the C.D.U. 's marble music, in the German capital. A devotee of jazz and classical music, the master of a world-class wine cellar in his home outside Ludwigshafen, he also admits a fondness for television westerns and pizza. Recalling their eleven-year courtship, his wife Hannelore says, "I got three to four letters a week from him, amounting to over 2,000. He does not commit himself easily. But when he does, you can depend on him." It is perhaps just that sort of dependability that West Germans want from their next Chancellor.

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