Third Man

The bitterest potion Konrad Adenauer had to swallow last week was dispensed by a politician young enough--and tough enough--to be his grandson. As boss of West Germany's right-wing Free Democrats, Erich Mende, 44, has remade an ineffectual, faction-riven third party into a political force with overwhelming appeal to disenchanted members of Adenauer's Christian Democratic Party. Since their ideas for an "independent" West German foreign policy may well have influence in a coalition government, the Free Democrats may also prove thorny to the entire West.

Halfway House. The party's opposition to der Alte rests largely in its conviction that the time has come for West Germany to resist automatic alignment with the West, pursue a new nationalism in world affairs. Putting national goals ahead of its European interests, Erich Mende argues that his country should go along with the European Common Market only if its membership does not jeopardize eventual reunification of Germany--for which, if necessary, it would negotiate directly with East Germany. While it supports NATO as a stopgap, the party favors the Soviet plan for ultimate regional disarmament in Central Europe as a basis for German reunification.

At home, the Free Democrats staunchly oppose expansion of West Germany's welfare state, clamor for government withdrawal from such fields as shipping and housing. No ideologist, Mende himself is essentially a pragmatist, who sees his party as an attractive halfway house for voters who distrust Willy Brandt's socialism and despair of Adenauer's age.

To his critics, portly Erich Mende is a shallow opportunist whose chief political asset is inordinate ambition. One story on Bonn's cocktail-party circuit maintains that when attractive Margot Mende (his second wife) awakens her husband each morning, she intones: "Get up; it's time to continue with your career." He is also faulted for vanity, is highly sensitive about his weight (198 Ibs.), and hopefully submits to every known waist-trimming ritual, from yoghurt breakfasts to ice-cold baths. In the last phase of his campaign, Mende nonetheless proved himself an attractive, articulate campaigner whose greying hair and dark good looks on TV reminded women viewers of the Shah of Iran.

Power Technicians. Born in a part of Germany that was swallowed by Poland after the war, Erich Mende was reared in the strongly nationalistic atmosphere peculiar to Grenzlanddeutsche (border area) households. After getting through high school on a succession of scholarships, he joined an infantry regiment for his military service in 1936, decided to stay on as a career officer. Wounded three times in World War II, Mende collected a shelf of Iron and gold Crosses.

After the war, Mende studied law and political science, earning the doctorate dear to middle-class Germans. He strayed into politics almost by accident in 1945, when one of FDP's founders recruited him for party chores. Mende's eloquence and organizational ability propelled him rapidly to the party's top echelons. Though the Free Democrats pose as successors to the old German liberal parties, Erich Mende is by instinct and outlook a conservative who has turned to good advantage his distaste for extremes. By contrast, the party leadership embraces former Nazis, old-school German liberals, and a group with the sinister-sounding name, "technicians of power." In less than two years as its chairman, Mende has not only kept the party's fractious left wing in line but has also won heavy backing from the Ruhr's ultraconservative industrialists.

As the party's military and foreign affairs expert, Chairman Mende is one of its strongest advocates for retention of his country's present ties with the West. In strategic matters, his current difference with NATO concerns the U.S. helmets worn by German troops. As an ex-soldier and a nationalist, Erich Mende thinks German boys should wear old-style German steel helmets. He may yet be in a position to see that they get them.

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