The Bridge on the River Saale

Nothing is quite so symbolic of unity as a bridge, and last week West Germans celebrated the opening of a bridge that seemed the very embodiment of their dreams of reunification. The structure, 656 feet long, spans the River Saale, the boundary that divides the southern parts of East and West Germany. To add to the glow, the bridge was the first project of any kind on which the two Germanys have collaborated: the West put up the money, the East supplied the labor.

But symbolism and reality do not always coincide. Although the new bridge shortens the autobahn between Munich and West Berlin by 21 miles, it provides no link whatsoever between East and West Germany: the autobahn runs through a sealed corridor from which motorists cannot stray. Its inauguration, moreover, had to be accomplished without ceremony because the two governments refused to meet each other to open it. Bridge or no bridge, the truth is that the two Germanys seem to be drawing farther apart. For the first time since 1962, the Berlin Wall remained closed for Christmas this year: Bonn and Pankow could not agree on terms to renew their informal "humanitarian" pact to allow West Berliners to visit relatives living in the Communist sector of the city.

Impossible Price. One basic reason for the widened gap is the fact that East German Party Boss Walter Ulbricht has imposed an impossible price for any further dealings with Bonn. Whereas he was willing to negotiate before on an informal basis, Ulbricht now refuses to talk unless the West Germans decide to give official recognition to his regime--and, in the process, accept the principle that Germany must remain divided. There is another reason for the freeze: Pankow wants absolutely nothing to do with Herbert Wehner, Bonn's new Minister of All-German Affairs.

Wehner, 60, is a powerful and puritanical figure in the coalition government that took office last month. He has never run for election and has never before accepted a government office of any kind, preferring always to remain in the background. Until recently, he operated out of an office so small that he could fit in only one visitor at a time. For the past eight years, however, he has been deputy chairman--and the organizational brains--of Willy Brandt's Social Democratic Party.

A tireless and meticulous worker, he often spends all day receiving visitors, then works far into the night to catch up on his backlog of paper work. His ascetic self-discipline and brilliance as a back-room negotiator have put him in firm command of his party and won him the grudging respect of opposition leaders. Franz Josef Strauss, Bavaria's powerful Christian Socialist leader, calls him the "most important man in German politics."

It was Wehner who in 1959 rammed through the Socialists' far-reaching "Bad Godesberg Plan," which swept Marx aside, renounced class warfare and came out in favor of progressive capitalism. It was he who worked out the details of the coalition government with the Christian Democrats, then talked rebellious party members into accepting it. It was he also who conceived the series of television debates, scheduled to begin this year, that would have been the first public political dialogue between East and West Germany--if Ulbricht had not stepped in at the last minute to overrule Communist participation.

Pal & Peer. Wehner holds a special terror for the Pankow regime: before the war, he was in the top echelon of the German Communist Party. He was Ulbricht's pal and peer, gave orders to many of the men who now make up East Germany's coterie of bosses. Arrested in Sweden in 1941, he renounced Communism from his jail cell and was expelled from the party. Ever since, his former comrades have regarded him as a traitor and a menace. Twice their gunmen have tried to kill him, and his appointment as All-German Affairs Minister brought bitter screams of rage from Pankow.

Despite the complaints from the other side, Wehner believes he can make progress toward bringing the two Germanys closer together. He plans to offer easy credit to encourage "inner-German trade," hopes eventually to set up a formal economic federation. To soothe Eastern feelings a bit, he has already ended Bonn's long insistence on referring to Ulbricht's realm only as "Soviet-occupied Germany"; the new official euphemism, calculated to be less offensive, is simply "the other Germany."

Wehner has also scrapped one of the primary articles of faith of all previous Bonn governments: that West Germany will never, under any circumstances, recognize the Pankow Communists. He would be happy to establish relations with East Germany, Wehner allowed last week, under one condition: that "the present regime" hold "free and secret elections" to prove that it represents the 17 million people it rules. Communist states being what they are, that day is anything but imminent.

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