From Tel Aviv to Coventry, the cities of Western Europe and the Mediterranean have lately been afflicted with a phenomenon familiar to the U.S.: the beatnik. Unwashed, unshaven, unregenerate, clad in turtleneck sweatshirt, Levi's and sandals, the European variety is often armed with a tin cup and either a guitar or colored chalks to wrest pennies for wine and smokes from sidewalk patrons. Britons, who tend to consider eccentrics national assets, regard their beatniks with tolerant amusement. Charles de Gaulle's police have been trying, with scant success, to shoo them out of newly scrubbed Paris. Chancellor Ludwig Erhard is truly outraged, for the happy-go-lucky Gammler, as they are known in West Germany, are an insult to the image of neat, tidy, hard-working Germans.
"So long as I govern, I shall do everything to destroy this pest," Erhard thundered in a recent speech. He did not stop with rhetoric. Calling a Cabinet meeting on the subject, Erhard instructed Interior Minister Paul Lücke to ask regional officials to submit reports on the Gammler menace in their areas. Last week the reports came in. All agreed that West Germany's beatniks are just about as conscientious as any other West German citizens.
West Berlin reported that "most of the so-called Gammler have a regular home. They are merely protesting against the existing social order." Declared the state of Hesse: "It would be wrong to condemn all young people who neglect their clothing and keep their hair long." Even the police chief of West Germany's unofficial Gammler headquarters, Munich's Schwabing quarter, could report only 32 infractions of the law by beatniks so far this year, and they were mostly minor.
The only folk offended by such a clean bill of health were the Gammler themselves. Sniffed one T shirt at a coffeehouse in Hamburg: "It's impossible to work during the day and gammeln at night." At that point, his companion had to leave the table for a minute. He explained that he had to call his mother and tell her he would be home late.