BERLIN BRIEFING

March 18, 1963

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+ The Berlin elections which brought an overwhelming victory to Willy Brandt's party, enabling him to create a new government in record time, will have important consequences for Berlin and, perhaps, for Germany.

Willy Brandt has strengthened the executive arm of his government. The new Senate is younger, more prominent and probably more imaginative than the last. Brandt persuaded the renowned economist Karl Schiller to remain in Berlin as Senator for Economics, and one of German democracy's most impressive legal minds Adolf Arndt has joined the executive team as Senator for Scientific and Cultural Affairs.

A reorganisation in City Hall brings the administration of security matters closer to the chief executive and provides a firmer basis for conducting viability planning. Heinrich Albertz, hitherto Senator for Internal Affairs, has become Brandt's deputy Mayor. The two men function well together; Albertz will relieve Brandt of many time-consuming routine chores. Willy Brandt wants more time for the major problems devolving on Berlin from the East-West conflict.

The election returns reveal a clear-cut constellation of political opinion: SPD 61.9%, CDU 28.8%, FDP 7.9%, and a mere 0.4% for the communist SED. With only 20.889 votes left the communists have lost, since 1958, one-third of their following in West Berlin.

Willy Brandt was elected to the legislature with the highest vote given to any candidate: 75.8%.

Although the election results are clear, the meaning of the vote has been confused by some western commentators who exaggerated outside influences on the outcome or even implied, as the communists did in a desparate attempt to cover-up their defeat, that Berliners have gone "soft".

Regarding "outside" influences, the Brussels development and the Bonn-Paris treaty did aggravate the Berliners, who knew they were of one mind with Willy Brandt. However, these events - and criticism of de Gaulle - were not what cost the Berlin CDU so many votes. Since last Fall, and throughout the campaign, polls showed no basic change in the relative strength of the two major parties.

Aggravation over repeated government crises in Bonn did present the Berlin CDU with a serious handicap, but not necessarily an insurmountable one. Berliners are open-minded. The local CDU failed to make any headway with them in an up-hill fight because it chose to campaign in a style and with issues that were not convincing here.

Perhaps the CDU's first mistake was to pose the issue as one of personalities without having a candidate who could rival Willy Brandt. Before the campaign West Berliners had a favorable impression of Franz Amrehn as a selfless deputy Mayor and loyal "Beamte".

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But Amrehn and the CDU damaged this modestly advantageous image by the style of their attack on Willy Brandt: with slogans and dramatic stunts intending to show Brandt up as an adventurer with illusions. The climax was intended to be Amrehn's ultimatum threatening to break up the SPD/CDU coalition government if Brandt did not cancel his appointment with Khrushchev.

West Berliners did not buy that. They feel protected under Willy Brandt's leadership. With hindsight a great many people here felt that Brandt should have seen Khrushchev anyway. But even his decision not to do so, with a shattered government at his back, was more evidence to Berliners that the CDU's charges were false: Brandt's behavior was in character as a dependable and as a democratic leader.

West Berliners are realistic about the chances of opening the Wall and soon seeing relatives on the other side. The level of their expectations is rather low, but they do want reliable leaders to keep trying. When Willy Brandt tried, his coalition partner tripped him up. After that the CDU could only lose.

Hitherto, Berlin resistance norms have required the democratic parties to agree on principle matters; the "great coalition" in Berlin between SPD and CDU lay under the sanctity of a taboo, and since the early days of the blockade there has, in consequence, never been a foreign-policy debate in the Berlin legislature.

These standards are now being questioned. The coalition taboo is broken. When the CDU insisted on becoming the opposition, the SPD formed a new government with the FDP. A constructive opposition could be good for Berlin. Harmful, however, would be a feud over foreign policy issues inside Berlin's common resistance front.

It is an open question whether the Berlin CDU will confine its opposition to urban government issues or continue to campaign with suspicion of "talks" and "flexibility" by construing up "fundamental differences" on foreign policy.

Immediately after the elections Willy Brandt took action to encourage loyal opposition by creating a consulting gremium in which he could discuss confidential matters with leaders of the parliamentary opposition. Helpful may be the fact that a local CDU opposition cannot reasonably expect to gain much by debating foreign policy in Berlin. For both the Berlin Senate and the Bonn Government are truly obligated to act in unison where such matters pertain to the city.

Rather than developing a Berlin foreign policy of its own - which is what Willy Brandt has been charged with wanting to do - he evidently does intend to have Berlin exercise a stronger influence on the molding of the Federal Republic's foreign policy. In the future he may be expected to make greater use of his seat in the Bonn parliament's upper house, the Bundesrat; he is chairman of that body's foreign-affairs committee.

Brandt's decision to form a coalition with the FDP rather than to govern solely on the basis of the SPD's firm majority provides Berlin with an additional link to Bonn's CDU/FDP coalition government. At the same time, a number of commentators have called Berlin's new SPD/FDP coalition the "model" for a future Federal Government.

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Be that as it may, it is the prospect of facing a rival capable of one day gaining an absolute majority of the West German vote that has stunned CDU leaders in Bonn. The Berlin elections provide an outstanding example of the rapid way in which Germany's traditional parties - once based on the loyalty of class and church groups - are being transformed into a system of democratic alternatives, of genuine people's parties that can appeal on their records to almost any citizen. In West Berlin this has meant the eclipse of left-wing romanticism within the SPD. The election landslide not only returned to the Berlin legislature many old supporters of Ernst Reuter; elected for the first time were also numerous young and intelligent moderates. The Berlin development has its parallel in West Germany. There, as a recent opinion poll showed, the social stratification of persons favoring Willy Brandt's party no longer diverges significantly from the social structure of the population as a whole.

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The Editor

HAROLD HURWITZ · 30 KILSTETTERSTRASSE · 1 BERLIN 37 (ZEHLENDORF)