Knocking Eggheads Together

Lyndon Johnson is not the only Western leader to suffer the slings and arrows of criticism by vociferous intellectuals. As West Germany's election campaign gathers momentum, Chancellor Ludwig Erhard is also hearing the wrath of eggheads. Their complaint is hardly so dramatic an issue as Viet Nam is in the U.S.; they grumble that der Dicke and his party have been in power far too long, seem to suggest that there is far too much German prosperity for the good of the German soul.

The complainers are mostly the left-leaning writers and thinkers of Group 47, whose informal club includes such bestselling writers as Novelist Guenter Grass (The Tin Drum) and Playwright Rolf Hochhuth (The Deputy). They think that Willy Brandt and his Socialists would be a welcome change. Grass is currently on a campaign tour for Brandt. Twenty-five leading writers have contributed to a campaign book entitled Pleadings for a New Government. Grass's contribution was a partisan poem, Hochhuth's an essay in pseudo economics arguing that while Germany's rich are getting richer, the proletarians are being lulled into impotence by their proliferating cars, "which they can pay for but cannot afford." What's more, declared Hochhuth, Erhard was to blame for the low state of German education and science, and for the high rate of deaths in childbirth.

When Hochhuth's article appeared in the weekly Der Spiegel, Erhard, ever sensitive to personal criticism, could restrain himself no longer. "Today it has become fashionable for poets to be social critics," he exploded in a speech at Duesseldorf. "If they are, it is of course their good democratic right. But then they must permit themselves to be addressed as they deserve--as philistines and nitwits who pass judgments about things which they simply do not understand." In another speech he snapped that Hochhuth was a kleiner Pinscher (small terrier). As for Grass, Erhard growled: "There is a kind of intellectualism that can turn into idiocy."

Delighted at having drawn blood, Group 47's leader, Author and Film-Maker Hans Werner Richter, chortled that the "Chancellor's lack of self-control is shocking." "Embarrassing, embarrassing," clucked Writer Heinrich Boll. Der Dicke was unrepentant, but political aides with an eye out for his electoral image prevailed on the Chancellor to issue a clarification. A spokesman declared that Erhard's statements did not mean that he "disassociates himself from novelists and writers or the world of intellect as such," but were only a criticism of "polemic campaign contributions and direct attacks."

Germany's long, hot, campaign summer leading up to the election on Sept. 19 is well under way.

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