The Old Man Steps Aside

Monday, Apr. 20, 1959

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My wish is that when mankind looks beyond the clouds and dust of our times, it can be said of me that I have done my duty.

—Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Adenauer is a man used to making his own lonely decisions. With single-minded discipline and skill, he has done more than anyone else to raise his country from ruin and disgrace to riches and repute in ten short years. And it was his command decisions which committed West Germany firmly to Western Europe and the Atlantic Alliance.

Behind the flinty monolith of his public image stands a suspicious and emotional man, whose impulsiveness is generally held in check. Last week, at 83, under the duress of his days and years, der Alte came to his loneliest decision. Suddenly and dramatically, the greatest German Chancellor since Bismarck signified his readiness to give up his powerful office after ten years, for the more honorific post of President. It was his own decision, and yet the emotional overtones of his act showed that he was reluctantly anticipating a painful reality.

Only seven weeks ago Adenauer had insisted that he intended to stand a fourth time for Chancellor in the 1961 elections. His own candidate for President was his Vice Chancellor, Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard, the rotund, popular engineer of the German economic miracle. But for once, the icy Adenauer eye failed to transfix his party's politicos. Rebellious Bundestag backbenchers protested that to make Erhard President would be to deprive the Christian Democratic Party of "our best vote-getter in 1961," and Erhard himself declined the offer (TIME, March 16). A successful defiance of Adenauer was something new.

Fighting & Fears. All sorts of influences were now at work on the old man. His son Paul, a Roman Catholic priest, dared advise him that he must not try to stay in the front line too long. His old Cologne friend, Banker Robert Pferdmenges, gently explained how in big business a corporation president, by becoming board chairman, sloughs off the daily burden while overseeing the continuity of policy. Adenauer himself badly wanted a strong presidential candidate to head off the "catastrophic" possibility that a Socialist (the popular Carlo Schmid) might win the office. And Adenauer was also swayed by fears that his allies might be preparing to undercut Germany's position in negotiations with Russia; he felt deep dismay over John Foster Dulles' illness and the new American faces he must deal with; he felt pain at De Gaulle's public acceptance of the Oder-Neisse line as the German frontier on the east. His suspicions of the British burst out in the open before the week was out.

Events swept to a climax in a single day. Ostensibly to bid goodbye on the eve of a four-week Italian vacation, Adenauer went to see outgoing President Theodor Heuss, 75, who has served the constitutional limit of two five-year terms. For two hours the two elders talked about the role of the presidency. That night at home, Adenauer talked heart to heart with his son Paul until midnight. Next morning he complained that he had hardly slept—but he had made his decision.