"Do Your Best, Max!"

Communist prestige was at low ebb in Western Germany. Yet in Duesseldorf last week a grinning, pinch-faced Stalinist with silver-grey hair was carried like a hero on the shoulders of a cheering, surging mob. He was Max Reimann, Communist boss of Western Germany.

The new statute for an International Ruhr Authority (TIME, Jan. 10), although it allayed French fears, had not brought peace to the humming Ruhr. Britain, France and the U.S. were still bickering over how many plants should be dismantled; plans for a three-zone merger (that is, for a merger of the French zone with Anglo-U.S. Bizonia) were stalled; and the Ruhr Germans themselves were making trouble. Some of the troublemakers were Communists, but some were non-Communists who considered themselves patriots.

Early this month, 5,000 Reds had jammed Duesseldorf's Rheinhalle for an anniversary rally. Reimann, an able rab-blerouser, harangued them for 2 1/2 hours. He denounced the Ruhr statute as a means to "dismember the heart of Germany and make dollar slaves of German workers." He shouted: "German politicians who today cooperate with the occupation forces under the Ruhr statute should not be surprised if they are considered quislings by the German nation." Then Reimann added that those who cooperate "may one day have to face reprisals."

Reluctant Witnesses. The British authorities could not tolerate this sort of intimidation. They decided to bring Reimann to trial for "encouraging discrimination against Germans who cooperate with the Allies." But they failed to police Duesseldorf's courthouse adequately and the Reds went into their act; they turned the hearing itself into a propaganda demonstration.

Six hundred of them--pimply youths, tough thugs, wild-eyed women--poured into the courthouse lobby and up the stairway and massed outside the courtroom. When Reimann appeared they howled an ovation. "Do your best, Max!" said a pink, pudgy hausfrau: "Just the way it was with Hitler--first he was sentenced to jail, then he became our Fuehrer. I wonder if this won't turn out the same way."

Pleading that he had not had enough time to prepare a proper case, Reimann's defense counsel asked for a postponement. The British magistrate granted it with alacrity. The only recording of Reimann's remarks at the Rheinhalle rally--a wire recording made by Northwest German Radio--had been "erased" (demagnetized) to make room for something else. The non-Communist German reporters who had heard his harangue were reluctant to testify.

Two of Reimann's henchmen were fined $150 and $90 for holding a political meeting without a permit. When the day's hearings were over, Reimann was carried off in triumph by Reds who sang the Internationale and shouted: "Down with the Ruhr statute--down, down, down!" A rueful Briton admitted: "It looks as if the trial is backfiring."

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