The No. 2 Man

It was no accident that Rainer Barzel chose to make his controversial proposals on reunification before the American Council on Germany in Manhattan last week. For months, he had watched the upsurge of German interest in new moves toward reunification. But on his last visit to Washington in April, he found senior officials totally unaware of either the depth or strength of West German feeling. After his speech last week, State Department officials cautiously let it be known that they were re-examining the matter. For while Barzel is relatively unknown in the U.S., he is deputy chairman of the Christian Democratic Union in West Germany, majority leader in the Bundestag, and widely considered one of the most likely candidates to succeed Chancellor Ludwig Erhard some day.

The suave, cigar-smoking Barzel (pronounced Bart-sell) acts as Erhard's right-hand man in the Bundestag, conferring with him weekly on all major legislation and in between times on other top issues of the day. He traveled 13,000 miles speechmaking for the Christian Democrats in last summer's election campaign, has been responsible for the past two years for shepherding all major legislation through the legislature. In the Bundestag, he has become famous for his ability to reconcile squabbling factions in the party.

Out the Boss. Nowadays this is usually done with tact--but originally it took toughness as well. Shortly after he took over in 1964, Barzel called a caucus of the party's 240 deputies and announced that if one more squabble erupted in public, the party could consider his resignation. "Everybody looked at Konrad Adenauer and the other older leaders, waiting for challenge," recalls one deputy. "It did not come. Young Barzel walked out of there the boss."

It was quite an accomplishment for a man of 40 in a nation that seldom considers a man fit for high public office until he is well past his 50s. But Barzel had long since established himself as a comer. He joined the Neues Deutschland young Catholic movement while still a law student at the University of Cologne, and by the time he was elected to the Bundestag from a heavily Catholic Rhineland district in 1957, was already spokesman for an influential group of young Catholic laymen.

In 1962, therefore, it was only natural for Konrad Adenauer to ask him to prepare a memorandum on whether or not the Christian Democratic Party should continue to emphasize its Christian background. The "High-C Report," which favored the "C" in "C.D.U.," became basic party doctrine and won for its author the Ministry of All-German Affairs in Adenauer's Cabinet.

No Apologies. A native of East Prussia (now part of Poland) and a wartime student in a Berlin Jesuit Gymnasium, Barzel soon impressed his fellow Ministers with his command of his portfolio. He broadcast regularly to East Germany and negotiated the first ransom arrangements for East German prisoners. Much of his interest in reunification dates from that time, but his proposals last week served a more immediate purpose as well. They were bannered on Page One of every major West German newspaper and were the topic of furious debate throughout the nation. A reporter in Washington asked Barzel, shortly after he had conferred with Lyndon Johnson for 40 minutes on the subject, whether he was satisfied with the uproar he had caused. He beamed, "Very." For Barzel makes no apologies for being an ambitious man.

A good many politicians, in fact, think Barzel has come too far too fast. Last February, when Konrad Adenauer resigned the C.D.U. chairmanship and Erhard showed reluctance to take it, Barzel suddenly announced that he would run for the post. Outraged at what they considered a grab for power, party leaders talked Erhard into taking it in order to keep Barzel out--even though Erhard himself has a well-known dislike for backstage politics. After last week's bombshell, Erhard met with his party presidium in Bonn, heard Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroder argue angrily that Barzel's proposals would wreck NATO, and issued a glacial statement sniffing that Barzel's ideas were strictly "personal opinions."

What concerns Barzel is public opinion. The opposition Social Democrats have grabbed the initiative from the C.D.U. and harvested potential voting strength by accepting an East German invitation to a speakers' exchange. As a result, the Social Democrats are given a fighting chance to unseat the Christian Democratic state government in the July 10 elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, where nearly a third of West Germany's voters live. "These things have to be said," Barzel maintained last week. "My feet are firmly planted." What he meant is that they have to be said by a Christian Democrat if the party is to continue to lead West Germany. And if Rainer Barzel is to have the chance he wants at Germany's top job any time soon.

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