The Third Man

WEST GERMANY The third Man In West Germany, this is an election year, and the telltale signs could already be detected up and down the Rhine. That rugged defender of NATO, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, battling fiercely for a third term at 81, called for a ban on the H-bomb without even mentioning safeguards, and labeled the Soviet plan to pull troops out of Central Europe a helpful step to reduce international tensions. Out to prove his "flexibility" in the cause of German reunification, the Chancellor invited the Russians to hold trade talks with West Germany, but also was hoping to get an invitation to visit the U.S. In increasingly showing independence of the U.S., and even querulousness towards it, Adenauer was, whatever else he might be doing, getting in better shape to fight a vigorous election battle.

His opponents are out to show themselves more eager to reunify Germany than he is. Adenauer's Socialist rivals (whose leader Erich Ollenhauer is going to Washington too) have switched their talk from Marx to marks to catch West Germany's huge prosperity vote, and are seeking to show themselves not so dependent on the Atlantic alliance as Adenauer is. Opinion polls indicate that they are giving Adenauer's Christian Democrats a close race--so close, in fact, that a third party seems quite likely to tip the scales in forming Germany's new government next September. The third party: the right-wing Free Democrats.

New Leader. Last week by unanimous vote Free Democrat bosses picked a new leader: sly, stubborn Stuttgart Lawyer Reinhold Maier, 67. Taking over from tactless Thomas Dehler, whose head-down charges in futile quest of East-West unity ("we must take , the Russians at their word") have scared off many followers, Maier is an old-style anticlerical German "liberal," paunchy, frugal and folksy. He is a Swabian who likes nothing ,better than to walk the Wuerttemberg slopes in clodhopper shoes, Lederhosen and hairy loden-cloth jacket, stopping now and again to exchange light-heavyweight jokes with farmers.

As a member of the 1933 Reichstag he voted to grant sweeping powers to Hitler, but later got his Jewish wife out to England (in 1939), and himself managed to outfox Gestapo questioners. Named Minister President of Baden-Wuerttemberg by the U.S. in 1945, Maier gave occupation authorities more trouble than any other top German official. When the U.S. military governor called him on the carpet for letting off convicted Nazis (he pardoned 2.564 in seven years), he growled that Swabians had been democrats long before Americans, referring to a local magna charta wrung from a Wuerttemberg noble in 1514.

Changed Man. Surrendering office after the Christian Democratic landslide of 1953, Maier cultivated an icy enmity toward Adenauer, fought a bitter losing battle in the Bundestag at Bonn against NATO, rearmament and Adenauer's Saar policy. Two years ago he paid his first visit to the U.S. He returned to Stuttgart with the excited air of a Columbus. "The Americans really are democrats," he bubbled. He was through sniping at Adenauer. "Der Alte will do all right," he said. "But what will come after? We must call to our U.S. friends: 'Stop seeing in Konrad Adenauer the only reliable democrat in Germany.' " Last week he sang his new song to the Free Democrats at Stuttgart: "A difference of opinion, be it ever so pronounced, must end. NATO is the steel rail that binds Germany to the military might of the U.S." But he also urged Germany to raise only a volunteer army, and called on the party to keep working for talks with the Russians.

Such is the man who may hold the balance of power after next autumn's elections. Will his Free Democrats deal with the Socialists or the Christian Democrats? Presumably the Christian Democrats would have to retire Adenauer before Maier would sign with them. The Socialists would have to subdue their economic radicalism to get his support. Which way he will lean he will not say. Said Reinhold Maier last week: "One says of the hunter that he doesn't always tell the truth after the hunt. Of the politician one says that he doesn't always tell the truth before an election."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.