West Germany Blitzkrieg by the Ultra-Right

By Jill Smolowe

Beneath the picture of the smiling mayoral candidate, the three words set in large print boasted a confident message: BERLIN WANTS HIM. Smugly sure of a re-election triumph, Mayor Eberhard Diepgen and his Christian Democratic Union were ready to settle back down with their loyal coalition partner, the liberal Free Democrats, and get on with the business of governing West Berlin. So when the early returns began flashing on the electronic monitors in West Berlin's city hall, ruling party politicians could only groan and shake their heads in disbelief. Berlin, it appeared, did not want Diepgen after all.

But a greater shock was to come. The Republican Party, a tiny far-right grouping founded in 1983 and headed by a former SS officer, emerged with a surprising 7.5% of the vote. The showing not only secured the Republicans their first eleven seats in the 138-member city legislature but guaranteed the party two seats in the Bundestag, to be occupied after the national elections in 1990. As for the cocky Christian Democrats, they trailed their own 1985 performance by almost 9 percentage points, winding up with just 55 seats, the same number captured by their perennial rival, the Social Democratic Party. The Free Democrats fared so poorly that they failed to garner even a single seat, thus ending any hope of resurrecting the current coalition.

The unexpected muscle of the extreme right set off alarm bells throughout West Germany, where the Nazi legacy continues to torment the national psyche. Within hours of learning the ultra-rightists were to be seated in the legislature, 10,000 West Germans descended on the city hall, chanting "Nazis out!" and "Ban the fascists!" Over the next few days, the protests continued.

The near hysterical predictions of a resurgent right, however, did not quite fit the facts. Just as the far right made an unexpectedly strong showing, so did the left. The Alternative List party improved on its 1985 result by more than a percentage point, taking 11.8% of the vote and 17 seats. The returns seemed to reflect less a sudden shift in the electorate's ideological complexion than a general dissatisfaction with the larger parties. Chronic housing shortages, spiraling rents, tightened health and pension programs and a continuing influx of ethnic Germans and asylum-seeking refugees all conspired to deal the Christian Democrats what Diepgen called a "devastating reversal."

Franz Schonhuber, 66, the burly national chairman of the Republican Party, capitalized on that disillusionment. During the campaign, he called for the repatriation, in stages, of foreign workers, an obvious reference to the 120,000 Turks in West Berlin. He also urged tough measures to stem the flow of asylum-seekers, proclaiming that a "multiracial society is a red flag to our party. We don't want it." On election night, Schonhuber exulted, "Today the Germans have shown again the need for a democratically purified patriotism."

) In Bonn, Chancellor Helmut Kohl did not take the setback lightly. His Christian Democrats have lost ground in six of the last eight regional elections. "It is a clear warning signal to all of us," he said. Kohl pledged to reassess policies dealing with refugees who seek asylum for economic, rather than political reasons, but warned that expulsion of foreign workers would jeopardize West Germany's standing abroad.

Diepgen, meanwhile, announced plans to create 8,000 jobs and to build 30,000 new apartments by 1993, then set about seeking a new coalition partner. Diepgen floated the idea of a "Grand Coalition" that would wed the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. But the Social Democrats are romancing the Alternative List party to see what kind of deal might be struck with the left. For the moment, city dwellers had to live with the one outcome that no one had anticipated: an ungovernable West Berlin.

With reporting by Clive Freeman/West Berlin