SOLID SOCIALIST

Arriving this week in the U.S. for a fortnight's visit: Erich Ollenhauer, chief of West Germany's Socialists and the man who will form his country's next government if his party wins next September's elections.

Background: Born in Magdeburg (now in the East zone) March 27, 1901, son of an old-line Socialist bricklayer.

Career: Joined the Socialist youth movement as a 15-year-old printer's apprentice, rose in Germany's highly stratified Socialist bureaucracy to be an editor and organizer, reached the national executive committee the year Hitler took over. Hitler, like Bismarck before him, suppressed the party. After twelve years' exile in Czechoslovakia, France and wartime Britain, Ollenhauer was one of three surviving leaders who met to rebuild the party in 1946. He swung behind the fiery nationalist Kurt Schumacher against Otto Grotewohl's plan to merge with the Communists (Grotewohl wound up as Premier of Communist East Germany), succeeded to the top job on Schumacher's death in 1952. Schumacher, whose health was crushed in the concentration camps, was a man of hatreds and excitement; Ollenhauer is amiable and pedestrian.

Family: Married in 1922 to clerical worker. One son is a clerk for the European Coal and Steel Community in Luxembourg, the other a telephone-company technician in Munich.

Outlook: In squabbles in what is one of the world's oldest working-class movements. Socialist Ollenhauer usually comes down on the conservative side. After losing the last election fighting rearmament and Western alliances, Ollenhauer has become convinced that in its prosperous, complacent mood, West Germany is not interested in dogmatic Marxism. Karl Marx's face has been turned to the wall. "Free competition is a decisive means of Social Democratic economic policy," Ollenhauer proclaims. He soft-pedals the old class war, plays up Socialist efficiency in running state and local governments. He offers as his 1957 slogan: "Security for All."

Personality: Paunchy, moonfaced, tousle-haired, Ollenhauer presides placidly over his party's bureaucracy, delivers cautiously hedged speeches, and keeps easy control of his temper. "I have never seen Erich pray, tremble or curse," says a fellow Socialist. Evenings he sips wine with cronies and plays skat, a German pub card game. His chauffeur-driven Mercedes fetches him to work at an unproletarian midmorning hour. A solid and comfortable householder type, if no intellectual giant, Ollenhauer pitches his appeal as a safe sort of Socialist both to Germany's middle-class voters and to workers who now have a lot more to lose than their chains.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.