West Germany: An Imperishable Place

Konrad Adenauer would have liked the company, and enjoyed being the center of attention. To his funeral in Cologne this week came the rulers and statesmen of the Atlantic world, including Presidents Johnson and De Gaulle, Britain's Harold Wilson, and the heads of some ten or more other European governments. It was a fitting tribute to the man who, more than any other, had shaped the destiny of postwar Europe. His death last week at 91 came at a time of change and unease within Europe and between Europe and the U.S., and the summit gathering for his funeral thus focused attention on one of his favorite approaches to trouble: whatever the disagreements, get together and talk.

Though no formal talks were planned, the statesmen attending the funeral would have plenty of chances to get together, particularly at a lunch and dinner given by the West Germans. Lyndon Johnson especially wanted to meet West German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, and he would, of course, see Charles de Gaulle, to whom he had not talked in person since President Kennedy's funeral. In the American delegation were Secretary of State Dean Rusk; former High Commissioner in Germany John J. McCloy; General Lucius D. Clay, onetime military governor of the U.S. zone; and former CIA Director Allen Dulles—all old friends of Adenauer.

The funeral obsequies themselves were planned to take careful note of the detailed habits and personal preferences of der Alte. Through the streets of the village of RhÖndorf, where he had so often walked, rolled his caisson, passing the white Catholic church in which he had worshiped, crossing his beloved Rhine on a ferry beneath the brooding Drachenfels. It proceeded over the exact route through Bonn that Adenauer had always taken on his way to the Bundestag. There, on the very spot where for 14 years as Chancellor Adenauer had presided over Cabinet meetings, the simple brown oak coffin lay in state for two days, while thousands of Germans filed past. Then, in the soaring, twin-spired Cathedral of Cologne, where he had knelt as the city's mayor, a pontifical Requiem Mass was to be sung by Josef Cardinal Frings. From Cologne, Adenauer's body was to be taken by a German navy patrol boat up the Rhine and back to RhÖndorf for burial in the secluded family plot where rest his two wives and an infant son.* Adenauer loved flowers and trees, and the site is already blooming in azaleas, pansies, primulas and red and pink rhododendrons.

Hideous Heritage. Der Alte himself bloomed late in life, beginning his main mission when he was 73. In 1949, when, as Chancellor Kiesinger said last week, "he took over the office of Chancellor, the name of Germany in the world was that of an outcast. He who had opposed dictatorship had to take over the heritage of misery, bitterness, hostility and hatred that it had left behind." As the architect and first Chancellor of West Germany, Adenauer singlehanded led his nation from the ruins of that hideous heritage to a respected and prosperous place among Western nations.