Beleaguered German Presidential Nominee Withdraws : Europe: Chancellor’s handpicked candidate drew fire for his stands on the Holocaust and immigrants.

In a major blow to Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s personal prestige, his handpicked candidate for the German presidency Thursday succumbed to a mounting wave of public criticism and withdrew from the race for the country’s highest office.

“The decision was mine alone,” Steffen Heitmann, the 49-year-old little-known east German politician, told a handful of reporters summoned to an early morning news conference in his hometown of Dresden. “Concern for my country and for the office of the president leads me to this decision.”

As Kohl’s personal choice, Heitmann had the official endorsement of Germany’s largest political party, the Christian Democrats. But he seemed lost and overwhelmed from the day Kohl introduced him to a surprised party conference last September. Inexperienced and unaccustomed to the glare of national publicity, Heitmann made a series of early blunders and controversial statements from which he never recovered.

At the time of his withdrawal, he had public approval ratings of around 10% to 15%, well behind that of the main opposition Social Democrats’ candidate, Johannes Rau, who is governor of the country’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia.

While the German presidency is a largely ceremonial office, it stands as a symbol of the state itself. That, coupled with the fact the president is chosen indirectly by an assembly of representatives from the national and state parliaments, makes election the subject of enormous political infighting.

The second term of the current German president, Richard von Weizsaecker, expires on June 30 and his successor is scheduled to be elected May 23.

Both the manner in which Kohl brushed aside initial criticism to ram his little-known choice through his party’s nomination process and the subsequent disastrous result of Heitmann’s actions constitute a humiliating defeat for the chancellor. It is also certain to raise questions about his leadership within his own party on the eve of a major election year and at a time when the popularity of both Kohl and his Christian Democrats is in the doldrums.

It is considered politically significant that some of the pressure that eventually toppled Heitmann came from within Kohl’s Christian Democrats--a party he has ruled over as a kind of personal satrap for two decades.

Von Weizsaecker, a Christian Democrat at the time of his election in 1984, is also said to have actively worked behind the scenes to torpedo Heitmann’s candidacy.

*

In an initial statement Thursday, Kohl defended Heitmann as a “noble and fair” individual and blamed the candidate’s withdrawal on what he called “an intolerable campaign . . . of personal attacks and defamation.”

“Criticism is one thing, but this kind of malice is not good for the country,” he said at a news conference later in the day.

It was not immediately clear who would replace Heitmann as the Christian Democrats’ candidate, although speculation centered on Roman Herzog, president of the Federal Constitutional Court.

Sensing the dimensions of a rare, clear-cut, personal reversal for the chancellor, opposition leaders launched a wholesale verbal assault against Kohl.

“For the chancellor, this is the most serious political defeat of his entire (11-year) period in office,” said Guenter Verheugen, national party manager for the Social Democrats. “Today marks the beginning of the end for the chancellor.”

Exactly how and why Kohl came to choose Heitmann remains largely a mystery. Some argue he seemed to fulfill the only major qualification the chancellor cared about--that the next German president come from the east. The two reportedly met for the first time only early this year and the chancellor was said to be impressed by Heitmann.

Heitmann is a Protestant pastor and was a lawyer in Dresden during the Communist era. He eventually became a modestly successful justice minister in the first democratically elected government of the eastern state of Saxony. But virtually from the start, his statements embroiled him in controversy.

His comments that Germans needed to put the Holocaust behind them, that the influx of foreigners needed to be halted and that the role of the mother should be made the focal point of society not only frightened political moderates within his own party but quickly made him the darling of the country’s extreme right fringe.

Although he was immediately given an experienced party press spokesman to try to better control his comments, problems continued.

“National Disaster,” summed up the headline of a recent article on Heitmann in the leading news weekly, Der Spiegel.

Despite Kohl’s dogged defense of his candidate, it became clear that Heitmann was hopelessly unsuited for the job of president, whose role in part is to stay above the political fray, walk with dignity as a symbol of the nation and be ready with the right words at the right moment.

Von Weizsaecker’s displays of solidarity with victims of neo-Nazi violence in the past two years, for example, and his constant reminders to Germans that they cannot again passively watch the persecution of a minority have encouraged human rights activists at home and helped limit damage to the troubled country’s reputation abroad.

*

Times staff writer Dean E. Murphy, in Bonn, contributed to this report.