"Cabinet of Personages"

A swaggering name that savors of success was flung like a jaunty cloak, last week, around a strange, anomalous, new Cabinet formed by the Socialist Hermann Muller.

Though the recent election gave his party a huge plurality in the Reichstag (TIME, May 28), Socialist Muller at first failed for 17 days to assemble a Cabinet able to command a majority. Nine major parties continued deadlocked. Jeers were heard about "A Cabinet by Christmas!" No one seemed much impressed by Hermann Mueller's owlish spectacles, low voice, plaintive air. And yet the Socialist plurality is now too large for a Cabinet to be formed by a Prime Minister of any other party. . . .

Telegram. From Baden Baden, famed spa, a sick man telegraphed to break the deadlock. His signature read simply "Stresemann." The great Foreign Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner wired: "From the start I have regarded skeptically the attempt to establish a Ministry on the basis of a program approved beforehand by the various parties." He continued that, although it seemed "psychologically scarcely possible" for Herr Muller to forge a majority pledged to support him, he might carry on with a "Cabinet of Personages," that is to say, a government composed of distinguished party men whose parties would probably support them but would not be pledged to do so-- as is the usual custom. Concluding with wily logic, Dr. Gustav Stresemann observed that, "This Cabinet formation coincides with the spirit of the German Constitution, which recognizes only the personal responsibility of Ministers and not the responsibility of parliamentary factions."

Hindenburg Helps. Though the Stresemann telegram seemed to offer a plausible solution, difficulties continued to crop up and 48 hours later the press received an impression that Hermann Muller was about to return his mandate for forming a cabinet to President von Hindenburg. Just after breakfast, next morning, the old Feldmarschall received Herr Mueller, spoke weighty words and crisp. Before the day was out Germans had a resplendent "Cabinet of Personalities."

Prime Minister--Hermann Muller (Socialist).

Minister of Foreign Affairs--Dr. Gustav Stresemann (People's Party).

Minister of the Interior--Carl Severing (Socialist).

Minister of Finance--Dr. Rudolph Hilferding (Socialist).

Minister of Justice--Erich Koch (Democrat).

Minister of Defence--Lieutenant General Wilhelm Groener (Independent).

Minister of Economic Affairs--Dr. Julius Curtius (People's Party).

Minister of Agriculture and Food--Hermann Dietrich (Democrat).

Minister of Communications and Occupied Regions--Geheimrat Theodor von Guerard (Catholic Centrist).

Minister of Posts--Dr. George Schaetzl (Bavarian People's Party).

Minister of Labor--Rudolph Wissell (Socialist).

The new Socialist Government--the first one in five years--took office just nine years to a day after the Treaty of Versailles was signed by Hermann Mueller and other Germans, cowed, docile. Hermann Mueller was Prime Minister in 1920 for a brief term. His present swaggeringly named Cabinet will probably be revamped when Great Dr. Stresemann is able to be up and active again.