Basic HTML Version
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, January 25, 1980
Needs Outside Help
Page 15
Looking at the political climate as it exists today, Mr. Strauss could use
all the help he can get, even of the unintentional variety. Reports
Patricia Clough of the Times of London, who has been covering the Strauss
campaign:
"Now aged 64 and perhaps no longer at the peak of his abilities, he faces
a daunting challenge. As things stand, at present, he is very unlikely to
beat Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Only outside factors--if the "Green"
ecological group draws votes away from the ruling coalition,��
2!_
major
world crisis that seriously affected Germany, or a big terrorist attack-
could change the picture.
11
The first few months of his candidacy have been, to say the least, dis
appointing. He has made errors, as in Essen...Politically he has scarcely
improved on the lacklustre performance of Herr Kohl. Maybe he is holding
himself back for the final months of the campaign.
"Herr Strauss knows that he has nothing more
th an himself. If he is not to frighten away
his temperament constantly under control, if
allowed to be himself, his supporters worry,
Ambivalent Public
to fear in the coming months
many CDU voters he must keep
he can. Yet if he is not
what is thereleft?
,..
A German psychiatrist writing in the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit notes the
contradicting attitude many West Germans have towardllerr Strauss. Many
people who have serious doubts about him, he says, are also fascinated by
the same things in him that shock them.
The eminent psychiatrist, Professor Horst Eberhard Richter of Gissen
University, said that Strauss unleashes in West Germans the same kind of
irrational and unconscious reactions that contributed to the rise of N·azism.
Herr Strauss's bid for the chancellorship in next year's Bundestag
elections will be the "first really pitiless test of ·democratic maturity
we have had to face," he said.
On the collective level, Professor Richter suggested that people uncon
sicously wanted Herr Strauss "to wipe out that depressing national self
doubt and guilt feelings {about the past) which a certain number of
Germans still only regard as penance arbitrarily demanded from abroad.tt
That tendency to over-compensate for inferiority complexes, Professor
Richter sa�d, "is rightly considered a typical weakness of the so-called
German national character, and is feared abroad.•. It makes people
susceptible to political trends which make up for defective personal
self-esteem by enhancing national feelings."
If Germans were to learn from the mass psychology of fascism, Professor
Richter adds, they must realize that this weakness plus the tendenc Sa to�
easily swayed, was "the most explosive reaction potential which we
ve
to control with the greatest care if the worst is to be prevented."
Professor Richter concluded that the success or failure of this undertaking
would show whether democracy had really taken root in most of the popula
tion, or whether, as pessimists claimed, it was merely a facade of con
formity that hid powerful residues of national resentment.
Times of London writer Patricia Clough, quoted earlier adds this: "By the
end of this year West Germany will be ruled by, or--his enemies hope--rid
of, the most controversial, irrepressible, hated and adored politician it
has yet produced."
--Gene Hogberg, News Bureau