Talking in the Mirror

"Ich verachte die Deutschen" ("I despise the Germans"), reads the caption beneath the photo of London Daily Mirror Columnist William Neil Connor on the cover of last week's Der Spiegel (circ. 350,000), West Germany's brisk, brash newsmagazine. Inside, in a ten-column question-and-answer interview headlined

STICK THE GERMANS IN THE REFRIGERATOR! Columnist Connor--"Cassandra" to the Mirror's 4,658,793 readers--expanded his theme:

Q. Does that mean you despise all Germans?

A. No, I despise the nation from which you sprang. [My contempt] also manifests itself in a distaste for all things which are German, and things which occur in the country.

Q. Would that extend to German music?

A. No, not German music. It does not extend to the technical skill with which you produce things like Mercedes-Benz cars.

Such bile leaks freely from the pen of Cassandra, whose reigning creative climate is the icy winter of discontent. In 20 splenetic years on the Mirror he has hissed a steady, indiscriminate choler, spraying such targets as physicians ("smooth, lying inefficiency") and dogs ("Man's Best Friend is a fake and a fraud"). A seething Germanophobe, he took the occasion of West German President Theodor Heuss's recent cool reception in England (TIME, Nov. 3) to prick the Germans with his needle quill: "All I want of them is to wait for a generation to pass before they come sidling up to us saying it was all just a big mistake."

But why did Der Spiegel give its cover and ten inside pages to such an irascible foe? The answer is as plain as the chip on Der Spiegel's shoulder. Like last week's guest, Der Spiegel rejoices in the immoderate attack, has soared to success partly on the objective of calculated, fight-picking, journalistic cussedness. "Our formula," said Chief Editor Hans Detlev Becker, explaining Der Spiegel's Q-and-A interview policy, "is deliberately aggressive. We want to provoke a clash of opinions." Der Spiegel got what it wanted: angry letters from 200 readers.

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