In Search of Coalition

The reporters waiting impatiently outside a caucus room in the Bundestag last week could only guess at the events inside. Then, suddenly, a rhythmic wave of stamping feet told them that the Bundestag delegates of West Germany's ruling Christian Democratic Union had elected a new candidate for Chancellor. Moments later, C.D.U. backbenchers rushed out with the news: the man was Kurt Georg Kiesinger, 62, the silver-haired Minister President of the southwestern state of Baden-WUrttemberg.

Kiesinger's predecessor, Ludwig Erhard, had been shunted aside unceremoniously. Lost was Erhard's own chance to rebuild the coalition government that had crumbled three weeks ago when the Free Democrats walked out in protest against his decision to raise taxes. Neither his friends nor enemies within the party wanted to leave the task of government building to the man who clearly had no future left. All that now remained for him was to carry on as a lame-duck Chancellor until some one else succeeded in forming a new coalition.

Powerful Friend. It took three ballots; but on the third, Kiesinger had a comfortable margin: 137 to 81 for Foreign Minister Gerhard Schroder and 26 for C.D.U. Parliamentary Leader Rainer Barzel. One reason was that Kiesinger had been away from the Bundestag for eight years, thus had fewer enemies. He also had a powerful friend: Franz Josef Strauss, the burly boss of the Bavarian branch of the party, which had publicly endorsed Kiesinger the day before. Another was that he fitted the C.D.U.'s concept of a candidate by being not too Gaullist to alienate the party's Atlanticists and not too Catholic to offend the Protestants. But the main factor in Kiesinger's success was that, as a man of moderate, flexible views, he seemed to stand the best chance of forming a coalition with either the Socialists or the Free Democrats. Said he: "I hope for success in forming a solid--and I especially emphasize solid--coalition."

To be sure, a shadow over the candidate was his own Nazi past. In a sense, his selection came at a bad time. Only a few days before, the nearest thing West Germany has to the old Nazi Party won eight seats in elections for the Hesse state legislature. Kiesinger faced the issue headon. He told a press conference that he had joined the party in 1933, but had become disillusioned the next year and remained inactive after that. He insisted that he was drafted into Von Ribbentrop's Foreign Ministry in 1940 and served only in a minor position in the section that beamed broadcasts abroad. To buttress his statement, he released a wartime document in which a Nazi informer had denounced him to the Gestapo for sup pressing anti-Jewish material on broad casts to the U.S. and for harboring liberal ideas.

Kiesinger also, played up the fact that he had proved himself to be a good democrat and a tireless advocate of Franco-German friendship. That seemed good enough for most Germans. Both opposition parties pledged not to attack him for the Nazi ties. The German press seemed to agree with the mass-circulation tabloid Bild Zeitung that "Kiesinger has to blame himself for nothing more than youthful error."

Common Goals. The more immediate fear for Kiesinger and the Christian Democrats was that the two opposition parties would form a coalition of their own and toss the C.D.U. out of office after 17 years of uninterrupted rule. In a series of meetings, Socialist Leader Willy Brandt and the Free Democrats' Erich Mende discovered that their par ties -- once bitter foes -- now share a number of important goals. Both, for example, favor more contact with East Germany, stable taxes, and unilateral renunciation of nuclear arms for West Germany. In fact, the Socialists and Free Democrats seemed far closer to each other than the Christian Democrats were to either of them.

Still, Willy Brandt was not yet pre pared to pop the coalition question to Mende. First, said Brandt, he wanted to hear Kiesinger out. Mende would also be huddling with the C.D.U. candidate. How long the talks would continue no one could guess. Nor was it quite cer tain that Kiesinger would be able to form a government. If he failed, the Christian Democrats would have to nominate another candidate, perhaps Schroeder or Interior Minister Paul Lucke, who is known to be regarded by the Socialists as a suitable Chancellor for a "grand coalition."

Weimar Memories. The politicians were reluctant to rush into any coalition until after next Sunday's Bavarian state elections, which could suddenly change the bargaining positions. But an other reason was that it is no easy mat ter to change governments in West Germany. The present constitution was written with the experience of the un stable Weimar Republic in mind. Weimar's troubles were blamed in part on the ease with which a Chancellor could be toppled. As a result, a clause was written into the postwar constitution making it impossible to replace a Chancellor unless a majority of the Bundes tag had previously agreed on a succes sor. Ironically, the system was working so well that it all but paralyzed the process by which the country could dispose of a rejected leader and get things moving again under a new one.

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