Ruling Party Candidate Is Elected President in Germany : Europe: Opposition decries indirect voting. It fears election-year boost for Christian Democrats.

Roman Herzog of the Christian Democratic Union was elected Germany’s seventh postwar president Monday at the end of a day of electoral-college voting that solidified the governing party’s position in a key election year but discouraged Germans who believe they should be able to elect their leaders directly.

Herzog, 60, the chief justice of Germany’s Constitutional Court, won a clear majority on the third ballot, decisively defeating his chief rival, Johannes Rau of the opposition Social Democrats.

“Thank you, Berlin. I’m back,” the white-haired Herzog said in his acceptance speech, his voice choking with emotion as he recalled the difficult Cold War days of 1969, the last time a presidential election was held in Berlin’s Reichstag. The balloting was then moved to Bonn.

“We never thought an hour such as this one would be possible again in our lifetimes,” Herzog said, standing at a podium in the historic prewar parliamentary building, which was filled with flowers to mark the return of presidential balloting. “I thank all the people who made it possible.”

Herzog’s election, by an electoral college composed of 1,324 federal legislators and selected “ordinary citizens,” had little to do with public opinion. In fact, had the German public been allowed to vote, Rau would almost certainly have defeated Herzog.

That, and the scheduling of the presidential vote just months before Germans are to elect a new Parliament, angered opposition politicians, who fear that the Christian Democratic victory will fuel the party’s fortunes later in this election-rich year.

By the end of 1994, Germans will have gone to the polls 18 times, choosing their representatives at the municipal, state, federal and European levels.

“We should never again hold a presidential election just before a federal election, as we are doing this year,” complained Gregor Gysi, a legislator from the former East German Communist Party. “Everybody is in a campaign mood and says, ‘With this president, it means there will be such-and-such a result in the federal election. . . .’ It would be much more sensible to hold a presidential election, say, three or four months after the federal election or to elect the president directly.”

As things now stand, however, the German constitution deliberately makes presidential elections indirect to prevent any possible replay of the events of 1933, when President Paul von Hindenburg used his powers to appoint Adolf Hitler chancellor.

And even as Gysi was complaining that the presidential selection process gives too much clout to the governing party, Christian Democratic Chancellor Helmut Kohl was calling Monday’s electoral results “a good omen” for his party.

A key factor in Herzog’s victory was support by delegates of the centrist Free Democratic Party, which is the junior partner in Kohl’s coalition government. Lack of such support would have suggested that the dissolution of the governing coalition was imminent.

Although he has been a justice of Germany’s highest court since 1980, Herzog is not well known. Before becoming a Constitutional Court justice, he served as interior minister in the southern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and carved out a reputation as a law-and-order hard-liner. He made headlines by advocating the use of rubber bullets by police and by forcing protesters who staged unauthorized sit-ins to pay the costs incurred by the police who hauled them away.

But after joining the Constitutional Court, Herzog softened his stance, ruling that protests could not be banned in advance just because they might turn violent.

Most recently, the unpredictable Herzog made headlines by telling an interviewer that he thought it would make sense to send certain foreigners home if they declined to take German citizenship.

Although Herzog rightly complained that the remark was taken out of context, the gaffe may have cost him votes Monday, and it demonstrated a lack of political sensitivity and timing. There have been repeated attacks on foreigners here since East and West Germany reunited in 1990, and five days after Herzog’s remark was published, the eastern city of Magdeburg erupted in riots between German rightists, blacks and Turkish residents.

In the debate that followed, critics charged that Herzog’s comment was in keeping with the “foreigners out” thinking of the German attackers.

In his acceptance speech, Herzog took pains to portray himself as a conciliator in the much-admired style of his popular predecessor, Richard von Weizsaecker.

“I will try to be the president of all Germans,” he said.