West Germany: Trail's End

The uproar in Bonn last week sounded little like the usual well-oiled functioning of the Federal Republic of Germany. All the factions in Bonn seemed to want weary Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, 86, to cross the Rhine to his rose gardens in Rhöndorf, and stay there. At week's end der Alte at last agreed to do so—in about a year.

Caught in the riptide of the Der Spiegel scandal, Adenauer did not go down without a fight. When his own coalition was endangered, Adenauer proposed that the potent opposition Social Democrats (S.P.D.) join with him" in a "grand coalition." Unconcerned by...

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