More Popular Than Chancellor : The ‘Ideal Head of State’--West German President

President Richard von Weizsaecker first attracted worldwide attention more than a year ago when he gave a remarkable speech to the federal Parliament urging West Germans to face their wartime past squarely and without flinching.

The speech, commemorating the 40th anniversary of the German surrender, was not popular in every quarter. The older generation of Germans was reluctant to dwell on memories of World War II; the younger generation saw no reason to be reminded.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl, in fact, had decided to bury the Nazi past by taking President Reagan to the Bitburg military cemetery, where among the 2,000 graves are those of 49 soldiers of the Waffen SS, the military arm of the Nazi party’s schutzstaffel, or security echelon.

Yet Von Weizsaecker, 66, a decorated infantry officer in the war, told the Germans and the world beyond: “We Germans need and we have the strength to look truth straight in the eye, without embellishment and without distortion.

“In our country, a new generation has grown up to assume political responsibility. Our young people are not responsible for what happened over 40 years ago. But they are responsible for the historical consequences.

“We in the older generation owe to young people not the fulfillment of dreams but honesty. We must help younger people to understand why it is vital to keep memories alive.”

And then he quoted the Jewish adage, “Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.”

Von Weizsaecker’s appeal to Germans to face the awful realities of the country’s Nazi past was not unique. Other West German leaders, especially former Social Democratic Chancellors Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt, have issued similar appeals, and, like Von Weizsaecker, sought to define the views and responsibilities of the postwar generation in dealing with the era.

Nor has the president engaged in a dramatic display of atonement as Brandt did in 1970 when he knelt in silent prayer before a memorial in Warsaw for the half million Jews killed during the German occupation of Poland.

Still, Von Weizsaecker’s speech was instantly perceived as morally cleansing: It served both at home and abroad to salve the prickly feelings raised by Kohl’s decision to go ahead with the Reagan visit to Bitburg despite the heated objections.

2 Years in Office

The beautifully crafted speech, and the decision to make it, help explain why, in his two-plus years in office, Von Weizsaecker has easily become West Germany’s most respected public figure.

The elegant, silver-haired patrician routinely tops public opinion samplings for his performance as president, a five-year post he has subtly upgraded from a ceremonial role to one of substance.

He is carefully listened to by Germans of all political views. For although he is a member of the Christian Democratic Party, Von Weizsaecker takes a highly independent and straightforward line on national issues.

His only political flaw, in the eyes of party wheel horses, is that he regularly outshines Kohl, the party’s often-bumbling leader.

The Bavarian conservative leader and state premier, Franz Josef Strauss, a man not given to praising other politicians, put it like this: “He is everyone’s ideal of what a head of state should be.”

Von Weizsaecker’s popularity is such that some commentators suggest that he should succeed Kohl as head of government. But a close aide scotches such talk.

‘Out of the Question’

“The president will never run for chancellor,” he said not long ago. “It is out of the question. He believes it would diminish the office of president.”

An associate attributes Von Weizsaecker’s success in large measure to his being “something of a political outsider.” For this reason, he said, “he can be his own man in assessing controversial issues, and I think the people realize this and respect him for it.”

Not long ago, for example, Von Weizsaecker warned that the country should reassess the dangers of nuclear energy--at a time when the government appeared to be in a dither at the result of the April 26 accident at the Soviet nuclear power station at Chernobyl in the Ukraine.

“We cannot discard modern technology,” the president said, “but with its help we must learn how to handle it better. Least of all, however, should we ignore the disaster and carry on as if nothing had happened.”

On another occasion, in an address to the International Labor Organization, Von Weizsaecker insisted that “a free society needs free unions,” and he complimented West Germany’s unions for “the important role they have played in developing our free and democratic society.”

This was at a time when the Christian Democratic government was being accused by the opposition of trying to crush the power of West German labor unions.

Von Weizsaecker has also tried to bridge the ideological gap between the two Germanys, preaching understanding, moderation and reconciliation with Eastern neighbors, a policy that was pioneered by Brandt’s policy of Ostpolitik .

“He believes,” an associate said, “that you have to progress step-by-step, and not necessarily wait for some great overall solution to the East-West problem.”

Von Weizsaecker seems to have a particular interest in--and appeal for--the young. “I want to hear what they have to say, what they think the problems are,” he has said. He frequently invites youth delegations to visit him at the presidential residence.

‘Gives Straight Answers’

And young people seem to warm to him. “What I like about him when I seem him on television is that he gives straight answers,” a 16-year-old high school student from Bemsberg said. “He is not evasive.”

Straight talk is what he gave the Germans in his uncompromising speech to the Parliament on May 8, 1985, the 40th anniversary of the German surrender to the Allies in 1945.

“Today we mourn all the dead of the war, and the tyranny,” he said. “In particular we commemorate the 6 million Jews who were murdered in German concentration camps. We commemorate all nations who suffered in the war, especially the countless citizens of the Soviet Union and Poland who lost their lives.

“As Germans, we mourn our compatriots who perished as soldiers. We commemorate the Gypsies, the homosexuals and the mentally ill who were killed, as well as the people who had to die for their religious or political beliefs. We commemorate the hostages who were executed. We recall the victims of the resistance movements in all the countries occupied by us.

‘Homage to the Victims’

“As Germans, we pay homage to the victims of the German (anti-Nazi) resistance--among the public, the military, the churches, the workers and trade unions and the Communists.”

Von Weizsaecker, who is married and has four children, also spoke to the younger generation, declaring: “There is no such thing as the guilt or innocence of an entire nation. Guilt is, like innocence, not collective but personal. The vast majority of today’s population were either children then or had not been born. They cannot profess a guilt of their own for crimes that they did not commit. No discerning person can expect them to wear a penitential robe simply because they are Germans.

“But their forefathers have left them a grave legacy. All of us, guilty or not, old or young, must accept the past. We are all affected by its consequences and liable for it. Whoever refuses to remember the inhumanity is prone to new risks of infection.

“In our country, a new generation has grown up to assume political responsibility. Our young people are not responsible for what happened over 40 years ago. But they are responsible for the historical consequences.

‘End of an Aberration’

“There is every reason for us to perceive May 8, 1945, as the end of an aberration in German history, an end bearing seeds of hope for a better future,” he said.

When Von Weizsaecker talks about the past, he speaks from deep experience. Not only did he serve in the army for seven years; his father, Ernst Freiherr (Baron) von Weizsaecker, was the senior official in the German Foreign Office under Joachim von Ribbentrop. At Nuremberg, the elder Von Weizsaecker was convicted of war crimes, and he served almost two years of a seven-year prison sentence.

Richard Von Weizsaecker was born in Stuttgart on April 15, 1920. He grew up in Berlin and in other European cities where his father was posted in the diplomatic service. His eldest brother, Carl Friedrich, became one of Europe’s foremost physicists and played a leading role in Germany’s unsuccessful World War II effort to make an atomic bomb.

In the late 1930s, Von Weizsaecker studied law and history at the universities of Oxford, Grenoble and Goettingen. In 1938, on the eve of the war, he joined the 9th Potsdam Infantry Regiment and the following year took part in the invasion of Poland that started the war. A brother, Heinrich, who was in his battalion, was killed on the second day of the war.

Disturbing Reports

Von Weizsaecker fought against the Soviet armies and was wounded three times. He was decorated and promoted to the rank of captain, serving as regimental adjutant. But he and other officers in his unit heard disturbing reports of what SS troops were doing behind the lines. Several of them began plotting against Adolf Hitler, and some of his friends were involved in the abortive July, 1944, plot to kill Hitler.

Hitler came to distrust the Potsdam Regiment’s officers, and time after time the regiment was thrown into combat against the Soviet forces. It counted many casualties. Von Weizsaecker was wounded for the last time in April, 1945, as the regiment was retreating. His evacuation probably saved him from death or capture.

Defended Father

After the war, he completed work for his law degree, and he took part in his father’s defense at Nuremberg. He believed that his father, even though a faithful follower of the Nazi foreign policy line, had not created policy but simply carried out orders.

In 1953, he qualified as an assessor, or assistant judge, but turned to private industry and was legal counsel and personnel specialist for several leading firms during the reconstruction period. In 1954, he received a doctorate in law from Goettingen University and joined the Christian Democratic Union, the conservative party of Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first chancellor.

He also became active in the Protestant Church and from 1964 to 1970 was president of the German Evangelical Convention, later becoming a member of the church’s synod.

In 1969, he was elected to the Bundestag, the West Germans’ national assembly, and quickly became chairman of its important General Policy Committee. In 1979, he was elected vice president of the Bundestag, and two years later the party asked him to run for mayor of West Berlin. He won, and took up the difficult problems of housing, youth unemployment and foreign “guest” workers. He also played a part in improving the divided city’s declining economic fortunes.

To the dismay of some in his party and some American diplomats, Von Weizsaecker crossed into the East to talk with Communist leaders.

In 1984, many Berliners were sorry to see Von Weizsaecker leave the mayor’s office to become the Christian Democratic candidate to succeed Karl Carstens as president of the republic.

Broad, Sophisticated View

As president, he has worked hard to bring together a country torn by fractious and polemical politics. In his trips outside the country, he has tried to represent a broad and sophisticated German outlook.

“He really likes the semiofficial visits,” a foreign policy adviser who accompanies him said. “That way he can see people without a lot of time-consuming protocol.”

He was the first West German head of state to visit Israel, making a sympathetic speech there aimed at helping to heal the wounds caused by Hitler and the Holocaust. “We Germans,” he said, “will certainly not shun remembrance of the past.”

Last month, while on a state visit to Britain, he became the first German head of state to address Parliament. In his speech, he forthrightly referred to the World War II German air raids on London and appealed both for European unity as well as solidarity with the United States.

Not long before that visit, he had flown to address the International Labor Organization, visit CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, and call at the headquarters of the International Red Cross to review its refugee programs.

At a dinner of U.N. officials, speaking in impeccable English, Von Weizsaecker joked that, at the physics lab, everyone was “trying for collisions, while here everyone is trying to avoid them.” More seriously, he warned against governments that would too readily withdraw from U.N. institutions, declaring:

“We must be careful in such decisions. It is easy to get out of the U.N., easier to destroy it than it is to build it up again.”

Presidential Priorities

On the plane back to Bonn, he sipped a beer and talked about his priorities as president.

“I see my task as looking at the long-term perspective,” he said, “rather than dealing with the next question around the corner. Our politicians are elected for four years, and they think they have to solve every problem in that time. But this means there are questions they can’t deal with in that period.

“Often they are preoccupied with the next election campaign. But the president is not under such stress. So I should be thinking about such long-range problems as energy, say, or the condition of youth. And I should speak out on such subjects in the general interest. This doesn’t mean I go out of my way to oppose our government.”

‘Enormously Important’

Asked how deeply his war experience shaped his character and thinking, Von Weizsaecker said: “It was enormously important to me. You can say that those years were lost, spoiled, in a terrible and senseless war.

“We were just boys when we went in. Yet we found ourselves with heavy responsibilities. As a young captain and regimental adjutant, I had to give orders to the battalions that could lead to men’s deaths, including my friends. It was very difficult when you could see the consequences in loss of life. But we had to carry out our duties.”

At the front, Von Weizsaecker’s own fate was always in the balance.

“It was not altogether self-evident that I would survive,” he said, with a dry smile. “I was also very impressed by the other young officers in my regiment, particularly my best friend, Alex von dem Bussche, who shaped my thinking. We heard that terrible things were going on behind the front and we sent Alex to find out.”

Von dem Bussche returned with a report that 1,000 Jews had been massacred by SS troops at an airport near Dubno, a Polish city now in the Soviet Union. He strongly influenced many of his fellow officers in their decision to turn against Hitler.

Lunch in Geneva

“He was the outstanding figure of my generation,” Von Weizsaecker said. He had had lunch with Von dem Bussche in Geneva, where the latter now lives with his English wife.

The experience of defending his father at Nuremberg impressed him deeply, he said, for reading the documentation helped him to realize the enormity of the Nazis’ crimes. And it led him to question whether he should continue his legal career.

“I thought I might become a historian,” he said, “but I finally decided I’d rather do things involving the future rather than the past.”

As for the future, his most compelling problem is the ultimate fate of the divided German people, divided by history, politics and ideology.

“In the long run,” he said, “it is not a question of the reunification of Germany. It is a question of overcoming the division of Europe. That is, our task is not to change the borders but to minimize the dividing character of those borders. To that end, I prefer taking small concrete steps rather than insisting on grand principles.”

Ambiguous Role

Von Weizsaecker is aware of the ambiguous role West Germany plays in Europe.

“On the one hand,” he said, “we have the strong will to belong to the West, to be a member of the Western Alliance. But at the same time we want to search for agreement with the East. This is an uncomfortable situation for many Germans, and also for our allies.”

When his long and varied career is over, what would Von Weizsaecker liked to be remembered for?

He looked out at the rolling green hills of Germany below, and said: “I don’t know yet. I’ve enjoyed my life and work--not so much the memory of it.”