The Chancellor Crisis

Aging Konrad Adenauer squeaked through the West German Cabinet crisis last week.

Der Alte's coalition partners, the Free Democrats, had triggered the trouble by pulling their five ministers out of the government and demanding that Adenauer fire Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss, the man blamed by the F.D.P. and others for the arrest of Publisher Rudolf Augstein and four top executives of the newsmagazine Der Spiegel. But as it turned out, the barrel-chested Bavarian had no intention of bowing out of the Cabinet gracefully.

Sneer at the Boss. Armed with the victory of his Christian Social Union in Bavaria's state elections, Strauss strutted back to Bonn from Munich and faced the Chancellor with an air of arrogant defiance. All the trouble, he told a party meeting, stemmed from a "lack of leadership'' in der Alte's coalition.

There was some truth to the accusation, but the Chancellor had to ignore the personal insult since his chief concern at the moment was to preserve the voting balance of his regime in the Bundestag. Strauss's own C.S.U. had 50 seats, and might withdraw its support if Bavaria's favorite son was fired. For two days, Adenauer delayed a decision while his agents buttonholed the C.S.U. Bundestag members to see how many were willing to follow Strauss out of the coalition. To der Alte's glee, word came back that, in fact, most would abandon the C.S.U. boss rather than endanger the government. Grudgingly Strauss announced his resignation.

But Adenauer's troubles were far from over. Though Strauss was out of the way, the political repercussions over Publisher Augstein's arrest now had blossomed into what newspapers were calling a "Chancellor crisis." To der Alte's chagrin, even his own C.D.U. colleagues had begun to raise the leadership issue. Everyone, it seemed, felt it was about time for Adenauer to step down. In a heated meeting, they asked him insistently to declare his intention to resign by next fall, so that the party might groom a successor in time for the 1965 general elections. Adenauer, who will be 87 next month, stalled off a definite statement.

He stubbornly refused, however, to endorse publicly as his successor Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard, the overwhelming choice of the party to be the next Chancellor despite Adenauer's scarcely veiled contempt for the chubby ex-professor. Glumly, der Alte listened while C.D.U. cheered a mention of Erhard's name for a full minute.

New Face. Then Adenauer turned to the task of rebuilding the Cabinet. Among the likely new faces: Free Democrat Chairman Erich Mende, 46, whose party started the uproar in the first place. Originally, the F.D.P. wanted the chairman to stay out of the government, so as to preserve his independence of criticism. But with the end of the Adenauer era in sight, the party now saw a tactical advantage in having Mende inside the Cabinet, probably as Interior Minister, where the F.D.P. voice could be raised with greater authority.

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