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reaction to the country's authori–
tarian past, German parents have
s~ung
in the opposite direction.
Many are notoriously lax in disci–
plining their offspring. The com–
mon attitude is to give children
"love" instead of needed correc–
tion.
At the same time there exists a
curious
Kínderfeindlichkeit-the
dislike and disregard of children.
More children are injured in auto
accidents in West Germany than
anywhere else in Europe. Sorne
social experts attribute the atti–
tude to a repressed aggression
meted out agai nst something
smaller and weaker-perhaps re–
flecting the manner in which
Germans in the past treated
smaller national neighbors.
There are several campaigns
afoot to try to get German motor–
ists to "love our children." Many
cars now sport two decals,
En–
gelchen
(little angel) and
Teu–
feichen
(little devil), both of
which caution road safety.
Thus, in many respects, Ger–
man society mirrors the ills that
have beset the United States, the
country Germans still most readi–
ly identify with- but with a teu–
tonic touch. Continued prosperi–
ty, however, blinds many Ger–
mans to the corrupting influences
eating away at their social fab–
ric.
Keeping "der Macher" in Power
Helmut Schmidt, the brilliant,
sharp-tongued 61-year-old chan–
cellor from Hamburg, is variously
known as
der Macher
(doer or
fixer) and "the managing direc–
tor"-as if he were sti ll in his
former post as finance minister,
manipulating the strings of a
mythical "Germany Incorpo–
rated."
German voters generally felt
that with storm clouds appearing
on the horizon-such as the
lran-lraq war in the Persian
Gulf, source of much of Germa–
ny's energy-the tried and
tested Mr. Schmidt, a leader
who exudes self-confidence, was
the best man at the tiller of the
ship of state. They believed the
same way that the Democratic
Party wanted American voters to
4
believe about Jimmy Carter–
that he was the man who would
best keep them out of war and
preserve their prosperous way of
life.
Conversely, German voters did
not "huy" the theme of challen–
ger Franz Josef Strauss who con–
sistently, but vainly, warned of
radicalism taking over Chancellor
Schmidt's Social Democratic Par–
ty and of a false sense of peace-a
peace, he said, which was being
"brought about by gradual capit–
ulation to the East."
The West German electorate,
however, hardly gave the slate of
SPD candidates a ringing en–
dorsement. The Socialists made
only fractional gains over the last
election in 1976.
The real winners of this time
were .the Free Democrats
(FDP), the small party that
operates in coalition with the
larger SPD. The Free Demo–
crats increased their share of the
vote to 10.6 percent from 7.9
percent in 1976- remarkable for
a party that sorne believed only
a few months ago might not
even clear the 5 percent hurdle
necessary for representation in
the Bundestag.
Clearly what West German
voters did was to try to slrength–
en the moderate center of Ger–
man politics-a trend common
throughout all of cautious West–
ern Europe today. They first of
all did not want to give the SPD
more power, fearing the impact of
the party's growing number of
radical leftwing representatives
(up from 50 to 70).
Many newer SPD party mem–
bers are outright Marxists, their
minds molded at Communist–
infiltrated German universities in
the '60s. The younger Socialists
would like to transform the entire
German economy to one operat–
ing by means of centralized state
planning- a
la
Moscow. In for–
eign relations they opt for neu–
tralism and for much weaker ties
to NATO and the United States.
(Mr. Schmidt himself is on the
conservative side of the SPD.)
On the other hand, a sizable
block of voters simply could not
conscientiously support Mr.
Strauss, whom they considered to
be too far to the right. (Sorne
vicious campaign lJropaganda pic–
tured Mr. Strauss as virtually a
reincarnated Hitler.)
At least half-a-million regular
supporters of the Christian Dem–
ocratic Union (CDU) or the
Christian Socialist Union
(CSU)- Mr. Strauss's Bavarian
affiliate-cast their votes (or
more correctly their
second
votes
in Germany's unique two-ballot
system*) for the middle-of-the–
road FDP. In doing so, they
believed the moderate Free Dem–
ocrats would act as enough of a
brake on the Socialists, without
having to risk a chance on Mr.
Strauss, whose single-mindedness
was constan
ti
y . portrayed by the
opposition as "uncontrolled" and
" unpredictable."
The result was the worst show–
ing for the conservative "Union
parties" since the first West Ger–
man elections in 1949. Neverthe–
less, the CDUJCSU alliance,
with 44.5 percent of the vote
(down from 48.6 in 1976) and
226 seats in the Bundestag re–
mains the single largest party in
parliament, retaining an edge
over the SPD, which pulled 42.9
of the vote and 218 seats.
Thus Mr. Schmidt's Socialists
continue to govern only with the
help of the Free Democrats, who
upped their seats in the Bundes–
tag to 53 from 39.
"Hardest Period" Ahead for
Schmidt
Mr. Strauss found out how hard
it is to unseat a successful incum-
(Continued on page 43)
*In West Germany, each voter casts
two ballots in the national election, one
directly for a representative to parliament
from his local constituency, the second for
a list of candidates put up by each party in
the land or state in which he lives. Half of
all Bundestag members are directly elect–
éd
by way of the first ballot, the other half
are drawn from the party Iists, proportion–
al to the votes cast for each list. The FDP
strength comes entirely from this second
ballot; it has no directly elected members.
What happened in this election was that
many CDU voters, Joya! to their party but
suspicious of Mr. Strauss, split their votes,
sending a CDU representative to the Bun–
destag on the first ballot, while voting for
the FDP list on the second.
The
PLAIN TRUTH