Leading From Strength
It was an anniversary that passed without fanfares or triumphalism. May 23 marked the 30th birthday of the Federal Republic of Germany as a democratic country. Six days earlier, the 518 members of the lower house of parliament had assembled inside Bonn's Bundeshaus —a white, flat-topped, modern building with none of the grandeur of other, older European parliaments. Under a 30-ft. backdrop of the national insignia, a black eagle with spreading wings, Chancellor Helmut Schmidt took the podium. Sturdy-looking as a Hamburg dock, chin set squarely as a chopping block, he methodically reviewed the state of his...
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