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West Germany was helped mightily by Marshall Plan aid and by history; the outbreak of the Korean war gave enormous impetus to German factories. But Erhard's own role as Minister of Economics was enormous. There he was year after year, laying down the rules, then applying Seelenmassagen. The pink, chubby optimist with the big cigar, who put them first onto bicycles and motorbikes, then into Volkswagens and Mercedes's, became a hero to West Germans. Despite long and stubborn opposition from Adenauer, who considered him an economist, not a politician, Erhard became der A he's inevitable successor.
Because he patiently took a lot of abuse from Adenauer, many Germans began calling him "Gummilowe" (rubber lion). There is a widespread sense of Autoritatsmudigkeit—weariness of authority—in Germany today, and Erhard fits that mood. Erhard is fasci nated by ideas and by people. Where Adenauer could loftily dismiss a dissenting aide, Erhard cannot resist the temptation to listen to all the arguments. "Ja, tell me more," he will grunt, and almost never flatly contradicts anyone.
But he knows what he wants, and he is a persistent negotiator. Last May, when C.D.U. fortunes were very much in question, Erhard took his political life in his hands by intervening personally in West Germany's biggest postwar strike, in which 400,000 metalworkers were off the job. Forcing a resumption of negotiations, he frightened labor leaders with threats of en actment of a German version of the Taft-Hartley law, then turned on management and extracted a substantial wage boost for the workers, though not nearly so much as labor was demanding. Similarly, he stepped in to break the deadlock between the U.S. and France during the Geneva talks on Common Market tariffs last spring.
Life with Lulu. At the office, Erhard keeps a relay of secretaries busy taking dictation and a host of aides busy shunting visitors in and out of the room. But he never lunches at his desk; when there is no official function, he drives home for a modest meal with Luise.
As Chancellor he will be forced to at tend more evening functions, which he dreads. He prefers a dinner of his favorite Pichelsteiner, a sort of Bavarian stew, after which he likes to sit in his black leather chair, looking at documents or playing cards with Luise. While he is reading, Erhard almost always has a stack of classical LPs on the record player: Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, Chopin. A fair pianist himself —he once hoped to become a conductor —he tolerates nothing modern. His watchword: ''Not one step beyond Strauss" (he means Richard, not Franz Josef). As he listens, he sips a long, cool Scotch and soda ("a habit I picked up from the Americans") and inevitably puffs a cigar. "Lulu, you are smoking too much," Luise chides now and then.
The Inheritance. As Erhard moves from behind his semiprivate smoke screen into the Chancellor's office, he faces several distinct disadvantages. Though enormously popular, he has no electoral mandate from the