Trying Over

In four months the shiny, glass-walled, neon-lighted German parliament building (Bundeshaus) at Bonn on the Rhine had been doubled in size. The landscaping was finished only 24 hours before Western Germany's new government convened last week. On the final night, 1,500 workers mopped the floors, polished the windows, hung the draperies, arranged the potted plants. At dawn a tired old charwoman sank into a green leather chair and groaned: "All I can say is, something good had better come out of all this." The new democratic government was Germany's chance to work her passage back.

Yesterday & the Day Before. In the wet, early morning, thousands thronged Bonn's churches for special services. Bishop Otto Dibelius of Berlin and Brandenburg, a steadfast antitotalitarian, told an overflow congregation in the Martin Luther Church: "We must break our ties with the day before yesterday, for it contained the seed that became the curse of yesterday. Let us create a new day in which God's will prevails." By "the day before yesterday" he meant the Weimar republic.

Yet Germany's past kept cropping up during the day. One stolid old politician wanted a verse of Deutschland ueber Alles included in the ceremonies. And there was the riverboat contretemps. Bonn, desperately short of housing, commissioned the Cologne-Duesseldorf Steamship Co. to tie up a big river liner near the city. The line told Bonn that the S.S. Kaiser Wilhelm would be there. Himmel! croaked the Bonn officials, the name might cause criticism. Replied the ship line: "S.S. Bismarck coming." That was worse. Bonn wired: "Send Kaiser Wilhelm, but hide name with sign reading 'Hotel Ship.' "

Before & After Goering. There was little room in the parliament chamber for the Germans who had come to Bonn for the event. Outside the great glass windows, temporary, football-type bleachers had been erected (see cut). There, under tarpaulin in the drizzle, the Germans sat looking in at their parliament.

The parliament's upper house, the Bundesrat, met first. In a simple 28-minute session the deputies, who are chosen by the state legislatures, elected as chamber president Christian Democrat Karl Arnold, Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia. When the lower house, the Bundestag, with 402 deputies elected by the people, convened in the afternoon, the drama of free-speech government began. Little Paul Loebe, who had been president of the Reichstag until Goering took over in 1932, was temporary president because, nearing 74, he was the oldest delegate in the house.

In a moving speech he warned the delegates against totalitarian power grabs. He recalled the March 1933 meeting of the Reichstag, which voted the infamous enabling act handing Hitler his dictatorial powers. At this, an interrupting cry came from the extreme left, behind the kettledrums. It was Max Reimann, Communist Parteifuehrer of Western Germany and one of the 15 representatives of his party in the Bundestag: "How many delegates here voted for it?"

There was a silence. Little Loebe turned his grey head to stare scornfully at Reimann. "Of 94 of my fellow Social Democrats in the Reichstag who voted against the act," Lobe said, "34 paid with their lives for their resistance." He called for the assembly to rise for a moment of silent tribute.

At once an extreme rightist cried out: "There were victims of the war in all classes." Loebe was unruffled; he asked for a second moment of silence for those in all countries who had died in the war. "The German people will not profit by such outbursts as these," he said quietly.

The Socialists' Rejected Suitor. After Loebe had finished, the delegates elected1 big, genial Christian Democrat Erich Koehler as Bundestag president. The orchestra played the last movement of Beethoven's Fifth. It was to have been a fitting finale, "but its last chords were still sounding when up jumped Communist Floor Leader Heinz Renner, shouting for recognition, demanding action on the chief demagogic issue in Germany today: the Allied dismantling of industries. Actually, dismantling is virtually completed, but the Communists know that resistance to dismantling is popular--and a slap at the Western powers. The Communist motion stole a march on the Socialists, who had already prepared mimeographed copies of a similar resolution. Furious, the Socialists then introduced their motion. Renner snapped: "I am glad to see that the Socialists agree with us." The tiny Communist faction planned to continue this maneuver of embarrassing the Socialists by emphasizing points of agreement between them.

Party politics were out on the stage now. They had already peeped from behind the wings in the election of Arnold as president of the upper house. The dominant Christian Democrats, under the leadership of Konrad Adenauer, had planned to elect one of their Bavarian right-wingers, Hans Ehard. However, Arnold, a leader of the trade-union wing of the Christian Democrats, proposed himself as president. He knew and the other Christian Democrats knew that he could be elected by a deal between his wing of the party and the Socialists. Adenauer yielded to Arnold's threat, and the Christian Democrat caucus, to save face, plumped for Arnold. This revolt was a warning of parliamentary troubles ahead for Adenauer.

Younger & Prouder. This week the 402 members of the Bundestag and 402 special delegates chosen by the states met in a special Federal Convention to elect a figurehead president. Professor Theodor Heuss, a Free Democrat (conservative), won on the second ballot over Socialist Leader Kurt Schumacher. The next step would be for Heuss to appoint Adenauer the first Chancellor of the new Germany.

Western observers believed that despite the falterings and the bickerings of the first few days, it had been a good start. They noted two trends: 1) the old white-haired political veterans of the early days of Weimar were not nearly so numerous as in other recent German conclaves; the mean age of Bundestag delegates was only a little more than 50; and 2) the delegates no longer had the fear of being called "splitters of Germany" and "collaborationists"; they were proud of their roles.

The best augury for the Bonn government came from the Politburo of Berlin's Socialist Unity (Communist) Party, which on the first day of the Bonn meeting had shrieked: "The blackest day in German history!"

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