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The uneven distribution of Germany's new-found wealth gives the Socialists ammunition to fire at Adenauer. Their particular targets: Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard and Finance Minister Fritz Schäffer, a pair of thrifty Bavarians who go together like stocks & bonds. These men prescribed hard remedies for Germany's sick economy—and they also effected a cure. Erhard, a professional economist, unshackled German industry from bureaucratic controls. One June day in 1948, he closed the banks and abolished the grotesquely inflated Reichsmark (1,000 marks for a carton of U.S. cigarettes). He introduced the new Deutsche mark at a rate of one to ten of the old Reichsmarks. The exchange wiped out many Germans' savings, but it restored the nation's faith in its currency. Overnight, business boomed.
Erhard has seen to it that business profits are high. Unemployment has kept the price of labor low. With Adenauer's backing, Finance Minister Schaffer slashed social security benefits to a bare minimum. Widows and veterans suffered, but the German budget balanced. Today, German workers are eating better and earning higher real wages than they did before the war. Most thanked Adenauer for it.
Beamter. The man they thank is a Rhenish bourgeois, and proud of it. The son of a Prussian official, Konrad Adenauer was born in the shadow of Cologne's magnificent Cathedral. His father wanted him to be a banker, but young Konrad was more impressed by the high Beamte (officials) who strode about the city in the name of the Kaiser's Reich. At 30, after studying law and economics, he became a Beamter too.
Promotions came fast for this grave young man with the Kaiser Wilhelm mustache and high, starched collar. In four years he was deputy mayor. One day in 1917, his driver fell asleep at the wheel and smashed into a streetcar. Adenauer's handsome features were frozen into the scarred mask that distinguishes him today. While he was in the hospital the mayor died, and Cologne's city fathers dropped in to give him the news. "It was a delegation," says Adenauer. "They wanted to make sure I was still normal." He was, so they named him mayor.
Devoted to the mellow, humanist culture of his native Rhineland, Adenauer makes no secret of his distaste for the "uncivilized" Prussians. In 1919 he approved a French-inspired attempt to detach the Rhineland from the Reich. It failed. Today, a German patriot, he is the world's most ardent champion of a Franco-German entente. Explaining his preferences, Adenauer, who seldom drinks, once observed: "There are three Germanys. One (Bavaria) is the Germany of beer. A second (Prussia) is the Germany of schnapps, and the third (the Rhineland) is the Germany of wine. The only people sober enough to rule all three in a sane, sensible manner are those from the wine country."
The Good Gardener. The Nazi revolution first came to light in the beer cellars of Bavaria. Prussians made it strong. One day in 1933 Hitler planned a visit to Cologne. His followers draped the Rhine bridge with swastika flags, but Adenauer ordered his police to tear them down. Hermann Göring moved in, fired the bold mayor and ran him out of town.