Shaken Chancellor: His Political Popularity Falls Off The Wall : Germany: An electoral setback in Kohl’s home state leaves his party weaker, but don’t expect his opposition to rise to the occasion.

It was not a good winter for Germany’s Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and spring is starting out even worse.

In elections last Sunday, Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union lost control of the government of Rhineland-Palatinate--the chancellor’s home state--for the first time since World War II. As a result, the party lost its majority in the Bundesrat, the upper chamber of the federal legislature, thereby endangering its legislative program. The campaign had revolved around Kohl, who was vilified by the victorious Social Democrats as an “electoral liar” for going back on his promise not to raise taxes to help finance the reconstruction of former East Germany.

The jubilant young people dancing on The Wall, the fireworks, Leonard Bernstein conducting Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”--all the thrilling images of the miraculous, headlong rush to German unification have long since given way to pictures of a different kind: somber Easterners by the thousands joining the unemployment rolls each week, bitter street demonstrations against Kohl’s economic policies, instances of neo-Nazi skinhead violence and, earlier this month, the murder, by leftist terrorists, of the head of the government agency charged with disposing of inefficient, formerly Communist, state-run industries.

Kohl temporarily shifted the spotlight when he ordered 2,000 German troops to Iran to build camps for Kurdish refugees near the Iraqi border. In doing so, he brought to boiling an already heated domestic debate involving Germany’s alliance and other international obligations.

As an occupied country long shielded from having to conduct an independent foreign policy, reunited Germany had its first international test in the Gulf War. It proved a public-relations disaster. Although Germany aided the allied war effort more than any non-Arab U.S. ally, except Britain and France, it managed not to gain commensurate credit.

Through inexplicable diplomatic laxity before the air war, compounded in the first days of hostilities by a tremulous policy that abandoned the field to anti-war demonstrators, Kohl squandered immense political capital in Washington. It took Saddam Hussein’s Scud missile attacks on Israel to galvanize Bonn and turn public opinion around.

The grotesque spectacle of Iraqi rockets--their range extended by free-lance German scientists and threatening the Jewish state with poison gas created by German technology--split the German “peace movement” and sent politicians of all the major parties winging off to Tel Aviv to demonstrate solidarity.

The issue of participation in international military actions continues to vex the German body politic. During the Gulf War, for example, a tragic-comic debate took place about whether Germany would be legally bound to respond if NATO-ally Turkey were attacked by Iraq. Now, Christian Democrats want future German military participation in joint European actions, Social Democrats only in noncombatant U.N. peacekeeping operations. How the Kurdish relief operation unfolds will influence Bonn’s future activities.

The primary focus of German attention, though, is understandably riveted on the economic and social turmoil in the five new federal states and East Berlin--formerly East Germany. Officials fear that unemployment and under-employment there may rise to 30%-40% by summer. Whole sectors of the economy--shipbuilding, for example--are being eliminated, and several others are finding it difficult to compete. Unaccustomed to free-market competitiveness, most newly unemployed easterners have no idea how to secure a job, and government retraining programs will require some time to yield results.

In western Germany--the “old federal states”--the boom continues. Germans in the east complain about the colonial mentality of their western compatriots. Westerners reply with stereotypes of eastern workers made lazy by decades of socialist featherbedding. Massive investment from western Germany and from abroad is needed, but until recently it has lagged, due to bureaucratic red tape.

Economic hardship is made even more psychologically burdensome because many officials of the old communist regime have retained managerial positions. Moreover, the matter of the files of the Stasi--the hated communist secret police--still hangs like a malignant cloud over already polluted eastern Germany. Bonn would undoubtedly like the whole matter to go away, but incensed victims of the Stasi and civil-rights activists insist innocent persons’ names must be cleared and guilty persons identified.

Two other issues complete the catalogue of problems: the final withdrawal of Soviet troops and selecting the seat of national government. With 370,000 Soviet troops still on German soil, the Kohl government is bending over backward not to give the Kremlin any excuse to miss the 1994 withdrawal deadline.

The choice of Bonn or Berlin as the seat of government will be resolved this summer. Increasingly, this is viewed by the five new states as a litmus test of the federal government’s commitment to bringing them up to complete economic equality with the rest of the country. These states believe only Berlin can attract the human and financial resoures necessary for the Herculean task.

Prominent politicians are lining up behind one or the other city--with Kohl and President Richard von Weizsaecker both backing Berlin. Polls indicate a healthy majority for Berlin, but the German constitution does not lend itself to national referenda. Instead, the Bundestag will vote on it, and many observers feel the parliamentarians will give heavy weight to personal convenience, and choose to stay in Bonn. The vote is expected to be close. In either event, ministries will almost certainly be divided between the two cities.

Last Sunday’s stunning electoral results have set pundits speculating about an impending turnabout in German politics. The Social Democratic Party has moved considerably to the left of where it stood under its last chancellor, Helmut Schmidt. Its return to power in Bonn would not only change the course of domestic German politics but also profoundly alter U.S.-German relations. This is not in the cards, however.

The next national elections are not until 1994, and the increased support for the Social Democrats is not deep. Only a few weeks ago, the party seemed disorganized and divided. In the event of a total collapse of the eastern economy, a grand coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats would be thinkable, if unlikely. The current coalition of Christian and Free Democrats should hold.

With all the upheavals and setbacks of the last five months, it is easy to exaggerate Germany’s problems. Kohl’s misleading electioneering promises may have cost his party one state election, but, more important, the chancellor did change his “read my lips” pledge in little more than three months; the parliamentary form of government allowed rapid action on a tax package in time to avoid wrecking the national budget.

The German economy, as a whole, remains strong. Some hi-tech sectors of German industry, such as computers, are having difficulties holding their own against U.S. and Japanese competitors, but the industrial infrastructure and management in western Germany is generally in good shape. Moreover, although the task is daunting, there exists an opportunity to build an ultramodern physical plant on the ruins of East Germany’s state-run economy. Germany’s overcrowded universities could use more government support, but its solid secondary schools and well-developed system of apprenticeships assure a continuing flow of literate workers.

Germany’s economic clout and population guarantee that it will remain the single leading force in the European Community and the keystone of any future European security system. Yet it has still fully to define its identity and to work out several key policies.

In the immediate future, Bonn will have a strong say in the speed and type of European political and economic union. Until now, it has usually spoken in several voices. Issues are complex, and the United States clearly hopes Germany will remain an advocate of free trade in the European Community against the protectionism of Italy, Spain, and France and, in security matters, an advocate of continued trans-Atlantic cooperation.

Future crises in the Third World threaten to exacerbate tensions between Germany and the United States--many Germans’ sanctimonious criticism of using military force even as a last resort inevitably irritates Americans used to shouldering global responsibilities. The two countries’ outlooks are products of differing national experiences and change will not come easily. The Germans’ Kurdish relief effort, while noncombatant, is a step toward assuming more international responsibility outside of Europe.

President Bush’s vision of Germany and the United States being “partners in leadership” may have been optimistic, and has certainly been called into question by the Gulf War and its aftermath. But despite Germany’s current difficulties, it remains fundamentally healthy--politically, economically and socially.