Polemics and Poisonous Blossoms

And the "dirtiest ever"campaign has not even started

"A bitter, dirty fight," commented Political Analyst Rudolf Wildenmann. "Unprecedented political mud-slinging," charged Christian Democratic Chairman Helmut Kohl. Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung warned that "election polemics are producing poisonous blossoms."

Although campaigning for the Oct. 5 national elections does not officially begin until next week, a vicious war of character assassination, borderline libel, slanderous posters, films and campaign buttons has been raging for weeks in West Germany. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, leader of the ruling coalition of Social Democrats and Free Democrats, has been smeared as a megalomaniac, a "war Chancellor" and a "tool of Moscow." His conservative challenger, Bavaria's Minister-President Franz Josef Strauss, has been dubbed a fascist, "a danger to us all" and "a prisoner of uncontrollable emotion."

Strauss, who heads the combined opposition of Christian Democrats and Christian Socialists, calls the campaign West Germany's "dirtiest ever." He has also taken the brunt of abuse, since his round face, bull neck and stocky shape delight cartoonists, and his flowery, right-wing rhetoric provides opponents with plenty of verbal ammunition. Strauss has long been a bete noire for many West Germans; his decision to seek the nation's most important political office has galvanized his enemies into a frenzy of mudslinging.

Schmidt's supporters--almost certainly without his approval--have put up wall posters depicting a smiling

Strauss, slicing a salami labeled Freedom Another poster shows Strauss as a butcher (he is a butcher's son), sharpening knife under the caption, "Castrate all libertines." West German courts have outlawed a caricature of the burly Bavarian with a machine gun, and the caption line, "Strauss, the Hitler of today." Strauss is reportedly ready to bring defamation charges against a rock group for a song that contains the ugly refrain: "Franz Josef the pig, Franz Josef the old pig, Franz Josef the lusting swine." When a local prosecutor charged that the song was insulting to Strauss, the band is said to have retorted that Franz Josef was the name of its mascot--a cardboard cutout of a pig--and that "any similarity to a living swine is purely coincidental."

Strauss's partisans are also capable of hard-ball politicking. In Bavaria, a few self-appointed goon squads, some sporting billy clubs, roam the streets, occasionally roughing up people caught defacing their champion's posters with Hitler mustaches and other graffiti. After Film Director Werner Schroeter reportedly suggested that someone should feed Strauss a bomb disguised as a sausage, the city of Augsburg withdrew his commission to stage an opera there. In Regensburg and Munich, some factory workers have been fired for wearing anti-Strauss buttons. An 18-year-old schoolgirl in Regensburg was expelled for refusing to take off her "Stop Strauss" button. Meanwhile, pens emblazoned with Strauss's party emblem were handed out in another Bavarian school--without protest.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.