Man in a Hurry

As West Germany's Minister of Defense, beefy, hard-driving Franz Josef Strauss has been a vigorous foe of Prussianism. Whenever the officers of West Germany's new, "democratic" army showed any signs of reverting to the autocratic traditions of the Junkers, Bavarian-born Minister Strauss cracked down hard--and thereby won the applause of most of his countrymen. But last week Franz Josef Strauss was learning firsthand the full depth of West Germans' postwar distaste for jack-in-office arrogance.

The trouble began when Strauss, on his way to an appointment with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, decided to use a short cut--a small, one-way alley officially reserved for der Alte himself but informally open to any of his ministers. When Bonn Traffic Officer Siegfried Hahlbohm, 24, failed to give Strauss's car an immediate signal into the alley, the impatient minister ordered his driver, Leonhard Kaiser, to go ahead anyway. Kaiser did so, thereby forcing the conductor of an oncoming trolley car on the main thoroughfare to slam on his emergency brake. As Strauss's grey BMW sedan screeched off toward the chancellery, Good Cop Hahlbohm dutifully noted down its license number.

His meeting with Adenauer ended, Strauss shot out of the chancellery again, pulled up beside Hahlbohm's pedestal. "Give me your name," growled Franz Josef. "I shall see to it that you disappear from this corner." True to his threat, Strauss promptly fired off a pair of angry letters--one to the chief of Bonn's traffic police, another to the interior ministry of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In the meantime, the police coolly ran a check on Driver Kaiser, turned up the fact that he had a record of five arrests on charges ranging from speeding to driving without a license. And from the West German policemen's union came an irate demand that Strauss be charged with an attempt to exert improper influence.

At week's end Policeman Hahlbohm was still at his accustomed post, gracefully accepting the bouquets, bottles of brandy and cheers proffered him by passing motorists. As for Franz Josef Strauss, he was still exercising the informal privilege of using the chancellery alley--but only, noted Bonn police headquarters, "after the proper signal from the policeman on duty."

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