GERMANY: Balk in the Bundeshaus

Konrad Adenauer stood inside the glass-walled caucus room of Bonn's ultramodern Bundeshaus one afternoon last week, white-faced and trembling. Nobody could recall ever seeing him quite so mad before. He had personally hand-picked Eugen Gerstenmaier, 48, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, as the man to succeed the late Hermann Ehlers as Speaker of the Bundestag (Lower House). Gerstenmaier was a Christian Democratic Deputy, a leading Protestant Church official (and thus a politically useful counterweight to the Catholic Chancellor himself), a devoted follower of Adenauer, a passionate believer in European unity....

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