When 343 French women taunted lawmakers last April with mass admissions that they had undergone illegal abortions, officials intentionally ignored it. In Germany it was a different story. Inspired by the audacity of their French sisters, 374 German women signed a "public confession"--printed in Stern --that they had had illegal abortions too. The public prosecutor was not amused. He began an investigation of Actress Romy Schneider and others who had confessed. That action should have no immediate effect on Romy; she lives part time in Paris, already has one son, stars in movies and on the stage. But if she returns to Germany and is convicted, she faces a maximum jail term of five years. Romy refused to comment on the charges: "I'm on vacation. Besides, I want a second child."

Rabble-Rouser Abbie Hoffman had to borrow $25,000 and publish it himself. Newspapers refuse to advertise it and most bookstores won't stock it--possibly because storekeepers fear people might take too literally the title of Hoffman's latest opus, Steal This Book. Frustrated at every turn, the Yippie leader last week set up shop on the sidewalk outside one of Manhattan's bookshops and began hawking the book, which offers practical instruction in gypping telephone companies, mixing Molotov cocktails and sowing pot seed. Sure enough, more people stole than bought. After disposing of 50 copies of the $1.95 volume, Hoffman reported his day's gross--$9 --and asked, "Do you think the book has a chance to make the Best-Stolen List?"

Adolf Hitler's mistress was a pudgy, middle-class blonde who gloomed more than she glittered. Yet her name will go down in history alongside such famous and glamorous kept women as Lola Montez, Madame de Pompadour, Nell Gwyn and the Du Barry. How did she manage to catch der Fuehrer's eye and remain with him until their joint suicide in the Berlin Reich chancellery? Photographs from Eva Braun's personal album, published in the London Sunday Times magazine last week, give few new clues to her mysterious charms. The collection shows Eva riding a motorcycle, mugging in Bavarian costume, petting dogs and stiffly modeling a slinky gown. In the same issue, the Times says that Eva, who was bored stiff by Hitler's political harangues, tried to make herself look more attractive by stuffing handkerchiefs in her bra. She called der Fuehrer "the old gentleman," and it was not until three years after they met that they finally bedded down on the same red velvet sofa that Hitler used to receive Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Dictator Benito Mussolini. Said Eva once: "It's a good job they don't know what really took place on that sofa."

Basketball Behemoth Wilt Chamberlain stands 7 ft. 1 in. tall, weighs 275 Ibs. Even so, he complains, "I've had to adapt to normal sizes all my life." Not any more. To contain his outsize physique, Chamberlain is building a $1,000,000 house in the Hollywood hills. Soon he will be able to enter a 14-ft. doorway, toast in front of a 45-ft. fireplace, plunge into a 14-ft.-deep pool and loll on an 8-ft. by 9-ft. bed in a 1,000-sq.-ft. boudoir under a 14-ft. ceiling.

Though most furniture will be for normal-size people, one Brobdingnagian fireside chair will be reserved exclusively for the host. Explains Wilt: "I don't want some friend to come over, sit down in a chair and just disappear."

"Elation, that's what I feel," said Helen Hayes, 70, as she made the last stage appearance of her career in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. Her enthusiasm was reflected in a letter written to her son, Actor James MacArthur, before her final scene at Washington's Catholic University theater. "Just think," she wrote, "I no longer need worry how I feel physically, whether my voice is right, whether my costume is secure, whether I'm going to trip or make a false move. I have worried about these things, feared these things for as long as I can remember, since I was a child of five. Now I'm free of them, or about to be." In fact, Helen's performing career is not quite finished; she plans to work in TV and movies, which "will serve as a decompression chamber. I'm not about to retire from living."

When Samson's hair was clipped he lost his strength. The same thing may well have happened to Allen Ginsberg.

Last week the once furry-faced arch-beatnik appeared before a flock of followers in Berkeley without a beard--and without his old vigor. Denying that he had ever said he would not shave until the Viet Nam War was over, Ginsberg insisted that "it has nothing to do with anything conceptual." Speaking sedately, as befits an elder statesman, even of the counterculture, Poet Ginsberg announced that he was making some recordings: William Blake in an album of mantra chants. "I don't suppose anyone will make any money on it," Ginsberg said resignedly. "It's of no great importance to anyone."

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