West Germany: Renewal on the Rhine

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Like West Germany itself, the massive grey and golden eagle that hung above the rostrum of the Bundestag looked pleasantly plump, more mercantile than martial and, with its blunted wings and studded breast, convincingly contemporary. Beneath it last week the 17-year-old Federal Republic of Germany swore in a new Chancellor whose accession to power marks the close of the postwar chapter of Germany's history and the birth of a new spirit and a new approach to the world for its 57 million people.

Before the Bundestag delegates stepped tall, silver-haired Kurt Georg Kiesinger, 62, holding in one hand the constitution of the republic and raising his other with its fingers held as for a blessing. Kiesinger, who until a few weeks ago was virtually unknown outside West Germany and known within it mainly as the Minister-President of a German state, then took the oath of office as head of an unprecedented government: a grand coalition of the two major parties—the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats—that have bitterly fought each other for years. A union of black and red, it was a marriage of convenience—but a stunning match nonetheless.

As Kurt Kiesinger finished the words that made him Germany's third postwar Chancellor, his hand was seized and pumped by Ludwig Erhard, his talented but luckless predecessor, who proclaimed last year that "the postwar era is over"—but failed to realize that his time had passed with it. Only a year after winning for himself and his party a major election victory, Erhard was unceremoniously pushed offstage in bitter political fighting that produced a five-week crisis in West Germany's government. When he left the Bundestag and took his leave of the Palais Schaumburg, where for three years he had ruled as Chancellor, Erhard was a lonely and dejected figure. No such emotions troubled flinty old Konrad Adenauer, Germany's first postwar Chancellor and the onetime boss of both Erhard and Kiesinger. While the delegates clapped and cheered for the new Chancellor, Adenauer sat on the front bench and busily autographed copies of his memoirs for all comers.

More than Majorities. It was fitting that Adenauer should be preoccupied with his memoirs, for the new coalition government could only have been put together in today's changing Germany. Because it will control an overwhelming majority of 90% in the Bundestag, it will have no effective opposition. Together the two parties will thus be able to undertake some badly needed reforms in German politics and make changes in German policy that neither would have the strength or courage to tackle alone. In foreign affairs in particular, the grand coalition will speak for Germany in a way that no single party ever could—and some changes are clearly in store.