It was a milestone of sorts. Into an austere caucus chamber in Bonn's Bundestag last week filed a delegation of Christian Democrats followed by a deputation from the opposition Social Democrat Party. With West Germany's political crisis entering its fourth week, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, the Christian Democrats' candidate for Chancellor, met with Socialist Leader Willy Brandt to discuss something that had never been tried before in the postwar period: a "grand coalition" between the red and the black.
Also active in tentative negotiations were Erich Mende's Free Democrats, who hold a slender balance of power between the two big parties in...
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