Winner Gustav Heinemann

EVEN as the Soviets and East Germans sought to stop the West Germans from holding the presidential election in West Berlin, the West Germans selected the man whom the Communists wanted perhaps least to see as the Federal Republic's new chief of state. The reason: the President-elect's record on German reunification and antimilitarism is so impeccable that East German propagandists are likely to find themselves at a rare total loss for nasty words.

Gustav Heinemann, 69, has regularly taken such a liberal stand on many issues that West German conservatives find him distinctly alarming. A founding member of the Christian Democratic Party who became Interior Minister in Konrad Adenauer's first Cabinet, Heinemann quit the post in 1950 over der Alte's plan to rearm West Germany. Though no pacifist, Heinemann, who is a prominent Evangelical layman, felt that rearmament would nullify the salutary lesson of two lost wars. As he put it, West Germany was like a recently cured alcoholic to whom one offered a bottle of booze and said: "Drink up." Heinemann also suspected that Catholic Adenauer was more interested in anti-Communist crusades than in reuniting predominantly Protestant East Germany with West Germany.

Heinemann formed his own small party to fight against German rearmament, but West German crowds hooted him down, because of the suspicion that his movement was being subverted by Communists. In 1958, just as the West German Socialists were in the process of dropping their Marxist dogma in order to become a more broadly based party, Heinemann joined up. Winning a seat from Essen in the Bundestag, he concentrated on social issues.

When the Socialists entered into the Grand Coalition with the Christian Democrats in 1966, Heinemann became Minister of Justice. In less than 21 years in office, he accomplished more than all his predecessors combined. As part of a massive revision of Germany's archaic 19th century legal code, he has already deleted the prohibition of adultery and homosexuality between consenting adults and broadened the right of journalists to print hitherto classified government information without fear of treason proceedings. In addition, Heinemann counseled the Communists how to go about re-establishing a party in West Germany without running afoul of legal problems.

He also defended student dissenters during last spring's riots, underscoring the fact that, in a land where individual rights have all too often been abused, he puts unusual stress on human liberty. As German President, he will have little real power. Nonetheless, he can exert a substantial influence on the tone of West German life. That influence is likely to be unorthodox and refreshing. Though most West Germans worship the auto as a status symbol, Heinemann neither drives nor owns a car. Nor does he have the customary built-in German reflex about respect for authority. When a reporter inquired if he loved the state, Heinemann replied in a rare flash of annoyance, "I love no states. I love my wife. That's all." That just may be enough.

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