WEST GERMANY: Defender of the Family

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From the bench, Wurmeling turned to the movie industry. "The average film." he said, "accents prostitution, eroticism and woman-chasing . . ." He proposed i) a "people's censorship." and 2) a boycott of films made by "errant .[Hollywood] actors . . . who announce they are getting divorces so as to be free to marry each other." The moviemakers screamed ("Terrorism . . . generalized slanting . . ."), but busy Wurmeling was undeterred. For one officially worried about the state of family life in postwar Germany, there were plenty of other problems to tackle: ¶With only 23 million men (many of them war-wounded) to balance 26 million women, West Germany's birth rate (15.5 per 1,000) is lower than France's (18.9), far lower than Russia's (26) or that of the U.S. (24.7). "We are a dying nation," Wurmeling insists. As solutions he proposes relief, family allowances, 20-mark pay bonuses for each child after the third, cut-rate train and bus fares for larger families. "Raising the birth rate," he insists, "is not a political plot."

¶ Some 500,000 German couples live together out of wedlock. The Germans call these liaisons "uncle marriages" because the older children are usually told that "uncle" has come to stay with mother. Biggest single reason for the uncle marriages: the woman (usually a war widow) can go on collecting her state pension so long as she is legally single; if she remarries, her pension is forfeited. ¶ West Germany celebrates a high percentage of shotgun weddings. "Above all," said one man in delicately explaining Wiirmeling's job, "he wants to root out conditions that made the seventh month of marriage the most usual one for the birth of the first child."

Small Shop. Under Bonn's postwar constitution, German women, for the first time, were promised "equality"; but so far, the Bundestag (with only 45 women

Deputies) has been unable to agree on implementing legislation. Wurmeling, who is supposed to draw up the new rules, accepts the theory of equal rights for women only grudgingly. In a recent Bundestag debate he stoutly maintained that "the family head must have the final say . . ." A woman Deputy cut in: "Even if the family head is a booby?" Wurmeling smiled coldly and replied: "We should not repeat daily the mistakes of the French Revolution in always thinking only of rights."

For all the storm he has kicked up, Wurmeling still has the all-out backing of Chancellor Adenauer. He is pressing for stiffer divorce laws, better family housing ("Marriage flowers better in one's own home"), church-run marriage classes, "guidance offices" to patch up broken marriages. "They asked me whether I wanted a grown-up ministry," said Wurmeling last week. "I said no ... I like my shop small."