The Buoyant Mood

It was only political-science fiction, but The German Confederation, written by Rudiger Altmann, a publicist who has been a consultant to Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, rapidly became a national topic of conversation when it was televised last month. And why not? Its scenario is nothing if not heady.

The story begins in late 1966. Erhard forms a "grand coalition" with the opposition Social Democrats to promote a daring new policy for the reunification of Germany. Lyndon Johnson approves, takes the occasion of a visit to Berlin in 1967 to offer a U.S. guarantee of Poland's Oder-Neisse border to win over the Poles. Wladyslaw Gomulka, nervous at first, finally accepts an invitation to go to Washington. In February 1968, Erhard proposes to East Germany's Walter Ulbricht that joint plans be drafted for the formation of a German confederation, no longer insisting on free all-German elections or the tearing down of the Communist Wall as preconditions to the talks. Ulbricht is taken aback, but accepts when Erhard promises to renounce nuclear armament and maintain East Germany's socialist economy. Ulbricht wins congratulations from Pope Paul VI but is overthrown by a hard-lining Communist clique when public opinion in East Germany runs rampantly in advance of the formal negotiations and forces him to order the Wall torn down. After a countercoup, negotiations resume, and by 1975 a four-power conference, convened by France, approves the new German confederation.

Seeking a Collapse. Obviously, no TV viewer expected The German Confederation to foreshadow actual events in Germany during the next nine years. But Rudiger Altmann's fantasy--and the excitement it caused--were symptomatic of the buoyant mood on both sides of the Wall, and a new attitude toward reunification. Thanks to the relaxation of cold-war tensions, Germans today are nursing a growing though still amorphous hope that a start toward a peaceful solution to the problem of a divided Germany may now be found. Few have the illusion that the frozen ice of Central Europe can be broken any time soon. Explains Altmann: "Reunification has no great diplomatic chance. It will become possible only if we succeed in creating a new fact: the psychological collapse of the status quo in Europe."

The new attitude is reflected in the curious scheme for a meeting of speakers from East Germany's Communist Party and West Germany's opposition Social Democrats to debate reunification (TIME, April 15). In both East and West Germany it has become the top topic of private and public debate, even though Ulbricht probably raised the idea in the first place because he thought neither Social Democrats nor Christian Democrats would take it seriously. When the Social Democrats accepted, naming May as an appropriate time, Ulbricht imposed what would in earlier years have been insuperable conditions. He demanded public debates in both East and West Germany, with diplomatic immunity for all speakers--a clear challenge to traditional Bonn policy, which has declined to recognize Ulbricht's regime, holds him personally responsible for the shooting down of refugees at the Berlin Wall, and subject to arrest and trial for murder if he ever visits West Germany.

A June Visit. Erhard's government, though skeptical of Ulbricht's motives, cannot afford to oppose the new mood. Last week, in league with the Social Democrats, it was drafting legislation granting special immunity to visiting East Germans who might come on the speakers' exchange. The East German response was to call for a postponement of the talks until July, but that may not mean the end of the affair. Observers believe that the Kremlin favors discussions and no doubt will tell the East Germans more or less what it wants them to say. But the Kremlin itself may not be ready to provide any guidance until it gets a chance to discuss German reunification with Charles de Gaulle when France's President visits Moscow in June.

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