Der Alte

It was the last week of the German election campaign. "Don't worry," said Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, "I am not going to let myself be De Gasperized."

To prove it, the 77-year-old Chancellor, whom Germans call simply Der Alte ("The Old One") pressed his one-man campaign into every nook & cranny of West Germany. He invaded the Socialist strongholds of Hamburg and Kiel, drawing bigger crowds than his opponents. Over and over again, he drove home one lofty theme: "See to it, my friends, that a united Europe comes to pass, that Europe remains Christian, and that through this, in peace and freedom, Germany will be reunited."

At week's end German pollsters took a reading of the public pulse. Support for Der Alte's policies had increased, they reported, from a low of 31% in winter last year to a high of 53%. This week the betting was that, come Sept. 6, Germans will give Adenauer's Christian Democrats a clear though narrow edge over their nearest opponents, the Social Democrats. If the experts are right, his right-wing coalition is a good bet to win control of the Bundestag for another four years.

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