Right-Wing Gains Spark Protest : Kohl Cites ‘Anxiety of People’ in W. Berlin Election Defeat

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl on Monday blamed the “anxiety of the people” for his party’s defeat in Sunday’s West Berlin election and the strong showing of the Republicans, an extremist right-wing party.

Kohl conceded that the election was a bitter defeat and “a clear warning signal to all of us.” His Christian Democratic Party lost 12 of the 67 seats it had controlled in the West Berlin state legislature.

Thousands of demonstrators chanting “Nazis out!” marched through West Berlin protesting the Republican showing: 7.5% of the vote and 11 of the 138 seats in the state legislature, as well as two seats in the federal Parliament.

Taunting Banner

A banner carried by some of the marchers referred to Germany’s Nazi past by asking: “Nothing Learned?” Monday was the anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933.

Talking with reporters, Kohl blamed himself for the election results, which produced no clear winner and left unresolved the matter of who is to govern West Berlin. He said the voting was influenced by controversial reforms in health and welfare undertaken by the national government.

Alongside Kohl was the mayor of West Berlin, Eberhard Diepgen, who said his Christian Democrats will not cooperate with the Republicans, whose national leader is a former officer of the elite Nazi SS corps, or with the Alternative List, the Berlin version of the radical Greens.

Diepgen said the Christian Democrats are still the strongest political party in West Berlin. On the basis of nearly complete official returns, the Christian Democrats received 37.5% of the vote to the Social Democrats’ 37.3%. The two parties will each have 55 seats in the state legislature.

The Christian Democrats’ partner in the present coalition city government, the Free Democrats, were wiped out of state politics by Sunday’s results. They failed to receive 5% of the vote, the minimum necessary for representation in the Berlin legislature.

Some political analysts said the Christian Democrats might now seek to form a “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats.

The Republicans claim 8,500 members nationwide, most of them in Bavaria. This was their first appearance on the ballot in the city-state of West Berlin, and their success surprised political commentators in the old German capital. Heinz Galinski, leader of the Central Jewish Community of Germany, called the results “a deep loss for democracy.”

Galinski said the Republicans may now repeat their success in other parts of the country, and somehow, he said, “the democratic parties must avoid this.”

Jewish Group Protests

Adass Jisroel, a Jewish organization in West Berlin, said the Republicans’ showing demonstrates that “nationalist and racist ideologies still have a real chance in Berlin.”

The Republicans were led in the Berlin election by Bernhard Andres, 37, a motorcycle police officer who said his party is not extremist. He said it represents “German values such as cleanliness and punctuality.”

Franz Schoenhuber, 66, the former Nazi SS officer who is the Republicans’ national chairman, said the party emphasizes law and order. Germans, he said, “have shown again the need for a democratically purified patriotism.”

Throughout the campaign he had called for the expulsion of Turks and other foreign nationals from West Berlin. There are about 150,000 Turks in the city. Altogether, foreigners make up about 10% of the city’s population.

Schoenhuber joined the SS in 1942, at the age of 19, and fought with an SS unit in France and on the Russian front.