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Notes on the Political Scene in Western Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Otto Kirchheimer
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Extract

We are looking for an explanation of the German miracle. Only yesterday an outcast among the nations, eternal troublemaker, never to be trusted, Germany is today the eagerly sought ally of the Western world, next to Great Britain apparently the most stable of the European states. How has this transformation occurred?

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , April 1954 , pp. 306 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1954

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References

1 Even Carlo Schmid's polemic antithesis between the lEven Carlo Schmid's polemic antithesis between the “true Europe,” embracing the whole of Europe, and “little Europe” contains the affirmation of “Europe as the Fatherland of us all” (“Die Aussenpolitik der Machtlosen,” Aussenpolitik, No. 2 [1952], p. 17). To the same effect, cf. the remarks of Kurt Schumacher which he prepared for delivery at the 1950 SPD party convention; reprinted in Turmwächter der Demokratie: Etn Lebensbild von Kurt Schumacher, Berlin, 1953, II, p. 224.

2 Gerhart Lütkens makes a claim for the generally beneficial effect of the foreign policy influence of the opposition under the Bonn regime (“Parliamentarische Opposition in der Aussenpolitik,” Aussenpolitik, No. 2 [1952], pp. 403–4).

3 It may be pertinent to give the wording of its foreign policy passages, which comprise one out of a total of seven paragraphs. They show skillful and well-calculated restraint: “You know which important program faces us now—the reunification of our two still separated Eastern and Western territories. For achieving this goal we need friends in foreign lands who support us. None of us wants war. Therefore, our whole policy aims at solving problems which concern us by peaceful negotiations. All our plans and actions, however, promise success only if there is a government which pursues a straightforward policy. Just look around and you will see how the absence of a firm, lasting government weakens a country. If I was often successful in my negotiations, this was largely due to the comforting feeling of security which is caused by the knowledge of being backed by our healthy and peaceful people.”

4 COMPARATIVE VOTING STRENGTH, 1949 AND 1953

5 In addition to three million new voters, coming in part from the ranks of those first eligible to vote in 1953 and to a larger extent from those who had previously abstained from voting, the CDU most likely drew over three-quarters of a million votes from smaller Catholic parties, which were all but eliminated, and almost a million from former rightist voters. The SPD in all likelihood contributed not more than 250,000 to swell the CDU ranks. The SPD, for its part, suffered from the large ballot, which increased from 78.5 to 86.2 per cent of the eligible voters (it did much better in the subsequent Hamburg election, where participation decreased considerably), from its inability to make any dent in the following of the center and right-of-center parties, and from the continued preference of women's and old-age (above sixty) groups for the CDU. See Statistische Rundschau für das Land Nordrhein-Westfalen, Nos. 10–11 (October-November 1953); Staat und Wirtschaft in Hessen, Statistische. Mitteilungen, v, No. 1 (October 1953).

6 Expenditures for social services alone arose from 4.6 billion DM in 1949 to 9.3 billion DM in 1953, or from 15.9 per cent to 18.4 per cent of the total net social product (figures taken from Deutschland Jahrbuch 1953, Essen, 1953, p. 197).

7 Today constitutional lawyers are apt to consider as a basic liability to the new state the hypertrophy of legal procedures which were encouraged and to some degree made necessary by the Basic Law. It may be conceded that danger might conceivably develop in this direction from the too far-reaching judicalization of the political process via the Federal Constitutional Court. German literature on this point is already abundant; for a concise discussion, see Loewenstein, Karl, in Governing Postwar Germany, edited by Litchfield, E. H., Ithaca, N.Y., 1953, pp. 260–61.Google Scholar Yet there is a tendency to overlook the fact that from the viewpoint of the citizen at large, the grandstand proceedings before the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe are infinitely less interesting than is his individual case, pending, as may be, before any of the multiplicity of social, economic, finance, labor, or administrative courts which have come into existence since 1950.

8 Eisner, Ilse and Proske, Rüdiger (“Der Fünfte Stand: Untersuchungen über die Armut in Westdeutschland,” Frankfurter Hefte [February 1953], pp. 108ff.)Google Scholar include among the poverty groups two million old people, 1,800,000 women and 750,000 men without access to the labor market, 500,000 structurally unemployed, and 1,700,000 women over twenty-four years of age who are unmarried or no longer married. To these they add 1,900,000 men without adequate income. While the last category may seem problematic and possibly dwindling, it should be noted that another estimate, starting with 5,700,000 pensioners and publicly supported persons, and adding 2,600,000 dependents, ends up with figures of roughly the same magnitude.

9 Privatization is probably the most important single social phenomenon of the postwar German scene. The most fruitful hypotheses on both the reasons for privatization and its impact on the social and political structure may be found in the basic study by Schelsky, Helmuth, Wandlungen in der Deutschen Familie der Gegenwart, and ed., Stuttgart, 1953.Google Scholar Yet the concomitance of increasingly uniform social standards with unchanged ideologies raises many still uncharted problems; see ibid., pp. 237ff. There also exists a highly impressionistic account of the phenomenon of privatization as evidenced among young Viennese workers by Bednarik, Karl, Der Junge Arbeiter von heute—ein neuer Typ, Stuttgart, 1953.Google Scholar

10 Not enough time has elapsed since the Plant Constitution Law of October 14, 1952 (Bundesgesetzblatt, 1952, p. 652) came into effect to permit an adequate judgment of its operation. The material so far published relates mostly to the effects of codetermina-tion in the steel and coal industries as enacted by the statute of January 27, 1951. However, the parliamentary report of the Bundestag Committee for Labor (Anlage 3 zum stenographischen Bericht, 22 bv bv 3rd Session, July 16, 1952, pp. 1,010–27), as well as the speeches made during the discussion (223rd Session, pp. 9,946–53; 225th Session, July 17, 1952, pp. 10,058–94), amply shows how little the actual terms of the legislation corre-iponded to the objectives of the SPD and the DGB. The satisfaction of employers' organizations is expressed in “Wirtschaftsbürger ohne Gängelband,” Der Arbeitgeber (August 1, 1952), p. 576. The weakness of the legal position of labor representatives on boards of directors under the Plant Constitution Law becomes apparent from the discussion in Spethmann, D. and Schnorr, S., “Die Beteiligung der Arbeitnehmer in Aufsichtsräten nach dem Betriebsverfassungsgesetz,” Recht der Arbeit, No. 6 (1953), p. 448Google Scholar; see especially the conclusion 5b on page 456, which seems to reopen the door to the time-honored Weimar practice of excluding labor members from important committees of boards of directors. Lack of interest in and understanding of union and works council objectives among workers as a major difficulty in implementing union policies becomes apparent from Mausolff's, A. detailed study, Gewerkschaft und Betriebsrat im Urteil der Arbeitnehmer, Darmstadt, 1952.Google Scholar

11 The last scaffoldings of the occupation regime are still in the process of being takendown; no full account, therefore, of its achievements and failures in terms of its impact on German institutions exists as yet. However, material may be found in many of the individual chapters of Litchfield, ed., op. cit.; the unavoidably distorted focus of responsibility may be considered as a paradoxical feature of any democratic occupation regime. Such a regime remains unaccountable to those whom it administers; to the extent to which its home authorities care enough to enforce the responsibility of its occupation officials, they inevitably start from premises and use yardsticks which are not necessarily meaningful to the occupied In a humorous vein, Federal President House recently spoke of the “education” of the lower grades of the fly-by-night school (Klippschule) which the members of the German national community were made to attend (Stuttgarter Zeitung, January 37, 1954).

12 For a detailed account of the inequities created by the currency reform, cf. the Bundestag deliberations in connection with the passage of the Lastenausgleichsgesetz (Equalization of Burdens Law) in 1952. In particular, the arguments adduced by members of the SPD are revealing. See Deutscher Bundestag Stenographische Berichte, 207th Session, May 6, 1952, pp. 8,980–82; 208th Session, May 7, 1952, pp. 9,055, 9,063ff.; 209th Session, May 8, 1952, pp. 9,130–31; 211th Session, May 14, 1952, pp. 9,263–68.

13 Rate of increase of gross national product (in constant prices) since the second half of 1948 (after currency reform):

14 German research on the interrelationship of pressure groups and political organizations is still scant; cf. some interesting remarks in Deutschland Jahrbuch 1953, p. 90. Among the CDU-CSU faction, the degree of representation of the most important social and economic groups in the 1953 Bundestag is as follows: refugees and war-damaged, 3.7 per cent; proprietors and managers of financial and industrial enterprises, 12.7 per cent; officers of industrial associations, 3.3 per cent; proprietors of agricultural enterprises and officers of the corresponding associations, 17.2 per cent; artisans and retail proprietors and officers of corresponding associations, 10.7 per cent; trade union, consumer cooperatives, and related organizations, 5.3 per cent; white-collar employees, technicians, and officers of related organizations, 1.2 per cent. For comparative figures for the first Bundestag and a description of the criteria used, cf. Kirchheimer, Otto, “The Composition of the German Bundestag, 1950,” Western Political Quarterly, in (December 1950), p. 597.Google Scholar

15 German neo-liberalism remains closely connected with the literary endeavors of the school of which Wilhelm Röpke is the most indefatigable member; see, e.g., Civitas Humana, and ed., Erlenbach-Zurich, 1946, and, more recently, Wirtschaft und Soziale Ordnung als Aufgabe der Freien Welt, Dortmund, 1952. However, as Röpke and his friends recognize the necessity of what they call “Marktkonforme Intervention,” the gap between neo-liberals and their foes narrows down considerably; cf. Dourge, Friedrich Wilhell, “Der Neuliberale Interventionismus im Wandel Zweier Jahrzehnte,” Gewerk-schaftliche Monatshefte, IV (December 1953), pp. 725ff.Google Scholar While the head of the Ministry of Economics, Ludwig Erhard, has for a long time been an adherent of Röpke, Berg, the president of the German Federation of Industrialists, in a speech before the Chamber of Commerce in Hagen on December 4, 1953, rejected the neoliberal credo and demanded that any forthcoming cartel legislation only be promulgated with what he called a “positive regulation of fair competition.” A recent official statement deferring cartel legislation altogether until after the passage of tax reform measures represents a full-fledged victory for the foes of neo-liberalism.