West Germany: A President's Defense

Heinrich Lübke, 73, the President of West Germany, has always cut a less than imposing figure in the country's highest, though largely ceremonial post as head of state. A conservative Catholic politician who served in postwar cabinets as Agriculture Minister, he was thrust into the presidency as a last-minute compromise candidate in 1959. Even many of his own Christian Democrats tried to keep him from running for a second five-year term in 1964. Benign but somewhat bungling, he won a reputation as West Germany's unexcelled master of the malapropism, has been long regarded by his countrymen as the butt of...