Elevating the Pilot

There sat West Germany's roly-poly Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard being whipped with birch twigs when the phone rang.

Erhard had taken himself to a Finnish sauna at a Black Forest resort last week to sweat off some of his 240 Ibs. in the steam bath and to be worked over by his masseur. The phone call was from Chancellor Adenauer in Bonn. Wrapping a towel around his midriff, the professor padded to a dressing-room telephone.

Would Dr. Erhard, asked Adenauer, accept the decision of 19 Christian Democrat leaders assembled at that moment in his office, and become their candidate for President of the republic? Replied Erhard: "I just had a beating in the sauna, and I don't want to get another in the voting. Will the party stand solidly behind me?" Ja, rasped the old Chancellor, you can count on full support. Helplessly aware that he might be setting himself up for the beating of his life, Erhard accepted "in principle"--so long as he would have a word to say in naming his successor at the Economics Ministry.

Title Defense. Thus did Chancellor Adenauer again assert the extraordinary control he has maintained over German political life for the past decade. Erhard, 62, pink-jowled, cigar-smoking, fast-talking "engineer of the West German economic miracle," became Vice Chancellor only 16 months ago. He had given Adenauer his winning prosperity issue and his most effective stump-speaking support and was widely regarded as the Chancellor's likely successor. But the old man, still tolerating no rivals at 83, moved suddenly and swiftly to shove his most powerful minister up to the largely honorific office that President Theodor Heuss is to vacate next July at the end of two five-year terms.

Like most of the Chancellor's defenses of his title, this one was calculated to have other effects too. It gave the Christian Democrats, who can now count only a scant six-vote majority in the July electoral-college balloting, a presidential nominee able and popular enough to match the opposition Social Democrats' popular and widely known candidate, Bundestag Vice President Carlo Schmid. It also appeased Ruhr industrialists, who, because industrial production tumbled 8% in January--the sharpest drop in seven years--and because 14 million tons of unsold coal are piled up around Rhineland pits, long for protectionism and cartels, and cry for the removal of the man to whom they owe so much. They are now tired of Erhard, the apostle of free trade and competition. (At a recent Bad Godesberg business dinner, an old friend of the Chancellor's, Banker Robert Pferdmenges, insisted that Erhard must go.)

The Prayer-Book Question. Adenauer's elevation of the pilot of German economic recovery also provides an answer to what Germans call the "prayerbook question." When some Christian Democrat Party leaders first sounded Adenauer out on accepting the presidency himself, the old man shot back: "I intend to run again for Chancellor in 1961." The party, which is about 70% Roman Catholic, has so far divided the two highest posts between Catholic and Protestant. In nominating a Protestant--Erhard--for President in 1959, Adenauer has presumably committed the party to a Catholic for the chancellorship, whether or not the candidate is Adenauer himself (who would be 85 by election day).

Not everyone was pleased by this prospect. Two days later a revolt broke out among Bundestag Christian Democrats. Floor Leader Heinrich Krone, most faithful of Adenauer wheelhorses, protested Erhard's promotion "because we will be losing our best vote getter." Over the opposition of Deputies representing big business and industry, Krone put through a motion declaring that Adenauer's 19-man group had no right to nominate a candidate. But since the parliamentary group was united on no alternative to the Chancellor's choice, der Alte was apt to have his way. Said Erhard, facing photographers after a weekend visit to Adenauer's Rhondorf villa: "Thank God your pictures do not reveal my inside."

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