TLIAW: Politikerwanderung

[iserlohn]

Politikerwanderung 

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A Very German Timeline in a Week 

by Nils "Iserlohn" Nicolai 

It took you a while to jump onto this bandwagon, huh?



Less than three years, buddy. Anyways, I got this idea a few days ago and really wanted to get it on paper.



Paper... Bloody troglodyte. So what exactly do you mean by “idea”?



A twist on the “Shuffling the Deck” formula, but for Germany.



Ooh, how original! Let me guess, Merkel becomes chancellor in 1974?



You know, because of Merkel I actually came up with a nice twist for this: I won't be using the OTL chancellors. Also not the losers of each election.



So who will it be instead? The winners of the German version of I'm a Celebritiy... Get Me Out of Here!?



No, the German presidents. Hence the “Politikerwanderung”. You know, like the Völkerwanderung, but from one major political office to the other?



I’m not 100 percent sold on this yet but if you manage to pull this off, it might be something. Your track record when it comes to finishing timelines isn’t great though, you know?



Look, I think I can write this and this is something that hasn't been quite done before so let me try and finish this, okay?



Okay. Just promise me that if you ever start another TLIAW you won't start it off with one of these stupid forced dialogues again.



I make no promises.

Now onto the TL!

[iserlohn]

Gustav Heinemann - "Der Macher" (CDU, 1949-1953) 

The nomination of Gustav Heinemann as the CDU chancellor candidate was a surprise. The post-war mayor of Essen defeated the "old man" Konrad Adenauer, former mayor of Cologne. Adenauer was instead elevated to the position of the first president of the new German republic. The forty year-old Protestant jurist was quite popular within the CDU for several reasons. For instance, his participation in the Kirchenkampf [1] during the Nazi dictatorship was revered. He also represented the inter-confessional nature of the new Christian Democrats compared to the Catholic Zentrumspartei. His outspoken criticism of both “unhinged capitalism” and communism also followed the party consensus. With Heinemann at the helm, the Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, were ready for the first free election in Germany since Hitler's Machtergreifung.



The 1949 election proved to be a minor success for the CDU. After a heated campaign against the socialist-leaning SPD, led by the idealistic Kurt Schumacher, the Union between the CDU and the CSU narrowly emerged as the strongest party in the new Bundestag. While gaining 31.4 percent of the popular vote and thus 140 out of the 402 seats total, the Union lacked the ability to govern without coalition partners. At first, Heinemann and several other CDU politicians considered a grand coalition with the defeated Social Democrats, but the portions of the party close to Adenauer opposed this, preferring a coalition with smaller parties. Once the negotiations were over, the FDP and the Deutsche Partei joined the Union in government, for a total of 219 seats.



Heinemann and his cabinet first worked towards ensuring the creation of a Christian economic system, masterminded by the Bavarian economist and Minister for Economic Affairs Ludwig Erhard. The "Soziale Marktwirtschaft" proved to be just what the rebuilding German economy seemed to need, making the new government quickly popular. But before the economic reforms started to kick into gear, a major point of contention emerged: the capital question. With government control being confined to the former occupation zones of the Western allies, Berlin was out of the question for being the new German capital city. So, in early September 1949 a heavy debate raged in the provisional Bundestag in Bonn. The result was seen as a surprise: Frankfurt am Main narrowly defeated the provisional capital of Bonn with 203 votes for Frankfurt. 179 delegates voted for Bonn, 2 abstained, and 18 were absent. It was also decided that the move to Frankfurt would happen just prior to the 1953 election. [2]



Another major debate was the future foreign policy of the new German state. While in essence every German politician wanted to mend relations with the Western Allies, the big questions were if Germany should re-militarize, if reunification should be an immediate priority and if Germany should ally with the United States. The debate was especially big within the CDU. Heinemann and others believed that reunification should be the top priority, while most Union members believed that early reunion was unlikely given the current geopolitical climate. That divide in particular was even visible within Heinemann's cabinet. Despite his own wishes, Heinemann ultimately sided with the majority of the party when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin offered to reunite the Germanies as a neutral state in 1952 with the Stalin Notes [3] Around the same time the military debate was reaching its peak as well. Vice-chancellor Theodor Heuss from the FDP, as well as Heinemann himself were against forming a new German army. And in the end, when it came to the debate in the Bundestag, the idea of a German military was shot down, at least for the present. [4]



When it became clear that his term was coming to an end, Heinemann felt like returning to his previous positions in the church, leading to him staying behind and stepping down from his positions within the CDU. He once again resumed his previous post in the Evangelical Church of the Rhineland in 1953 [5] just days after the CDU had a new leader….

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[1] The Kirchenkampf was the Nazi's attempt at taking over the Protestant churches and eradicating the so-called Confessing Church, whose most famous member was Dietrich Bonhoeffer but also Heinemann and a young Johannes Rau. Heinemann was also crucial in the denazification of the Protestant Church, co-authoring the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt.



[2] That was a serious debate IOTL and, as people should know, it ultimately favored Bonn. With Adenauer relatively sidelined, the move to Frankfurt goes through though.



[3] The Stalin Notes did entail what's mentioned here and have been dismissed as an empty promise of Stalin by modern historians.



[4] Yet again, another serious point of contention IOTL.



[5] Heinemann was the leader of the Protestant Church of the Rhineland IOTL from 1949 to 1962. ITTL he assumes that post later, because of obvious reasons

[iserlohn]

Theodor Heuss - Der Idealist (FDP, 1953-1960)

It was clear that the 1953 German federal election was going to be very different from the one four years earlier. Together with the move of the Bundestag to Frankfurt am Main, the fact that Gustav Heinemann was no longer the Union candidate for chancellor was the big issue. After intense debates within the CDU the young Gerhard Schröder [1] was selected as the Union candidate over finance minister Ludwig Erhard. But when the election was over on the 6th of September, the Union found itself in an unusual situation—with 37.1 percent of the popular vote, they were the strongest force in the Bundestag and with their old coalition partners, the DP and FDP, they were able to get enough seats to narrowly form a coalition. But both the DP and FDP were not sure about Schröder’s ability to govern and the limited acceptance of him within his own party was also a hinderance to get him confirmed as chancellor. So, after two days of intense negotiations, it was decided to make Schröder vice-chancellor, while the FDP would provide the top job in the FRG. That man was Theodor Heuss, FDP candidate for chancellor and vice-chancellor under Heinemann.



Heuss made it very clear from his first day in office that his primary objective was to end resentments between Germany and the nations of Western Europe. In general, Heuss was heavily invested in improving Germany’s standing on the world stage, and his good sense of humor and open nature made him popular. He was greeted with applause by the public during his visits to Athens, Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris, which he conducted in spring 1954 and in 1955 West Germany’s sovereignty was fully realized with the Treaty of Paris, and it became a UN observer state the same year [2]. Another provision of the Treaty of Paris was the expansion of the Bundesgrenzschutz, officially seen as an extension of the police force, to allow for them to function as a rudimentary line of defense in addition to the troops of the Western Allies still posted there [3]. Originally both the United States and the British lobbied for the creation of a genuine German military but continued opposition by Heuss and the majority of the Bundestag led to that compromise. Yet another diplomatic victory was achieved when a referendum in the Saarland about their sovereignty status led to a resounding vote towards reunification with Germany, which was then scheduled for the 1st of January, 1957, allowing for the people of the Saarland to vote in the elections later that year.



The new German focus on Western Europe greatly helped to improve Germany’s internal situation as well. Solid fiscal policies, plus the negotiations about the creation of a European Economic Community (separate from the ECSC) did wonders for the German economy during Heuss’s first term, leading to the government coalition looking forward to the 1957 election. The sole issue of note was the Berlin question, which seemed to most contemporary voices as being out of the control of the West German government. So eventually, September rolled around and it was seen as the most determining election since 1949.



1957 was to be the first German election after a crucial electoral reform: while the 1949 and 1953 elections allowed for parties that either reached at least five percent of the popular vote or winning at least one constituency to enter the Bundestag, the new law made the latter option much more difficult, now requiring at least 5 direct mandates in order to ignore the five percent rule. This change was naturally quite controversial among the small parties and independents but got passed by the governing parties and almost all SPD members of the Bundestag. In late September, after the ballots had been cast, the number of parties represented in the Bundestag was reduced drastically. For instance the refugee party BHE [4] failed to get enough mandates while narrowly failing to cross the percentage hurdle. The KPD also failed to qualify. The conservative German Party (DP) meanwhile was able to procure enough direct mandates to qualify despite only receiving 4.0 percent of the total vote. In the end only five parties remained: the CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP and DP. Another change was that Schröder was no longer willing to serve as vice-chancellor, wanting to focus on his law practice. In his stead the inconspicuous former minister for agriculture, Heinrich Lübke, became the new vice-chancellor. Lübke was seen as a placeholder, a compromise candidate, representing the Catholic half of the CDU as well as the agrarian base.



The second Heuss administration was largely uneventful, except for the banning of the KPD in 1958, as well as the formation of the ECC in 1957 and the EURATOM in 1958. Furthermore Heuss did organize the exchange of ambassadors with Israel in 1959, which garnered him the scorn of some Union and DP members [5]. Otherwise everything was going well—the USSR even started sending home the last German prisoners of war. But then, shortly after Easter 1960, Theodor Heuss died in his residence during the night of the 19th of April. The entire nation was in shock…

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[1] Not to be confused with the other Gerhard Schröder of the SPD.

[2] IOTL West Germany only joined the UN in 1973, along with East Germany. It did become an observer in 1955, though, while East Germany became an observer in the late 1960s.

[3] The absence of the Bundeswehr is showing its butterflies.

[4] The BHE was founded in 1950 and was represented in the 1953 Bundestag. After it failed to re-enter the Bundestag in 1957, its members joined the CDU and CSU. Refugee associations are still noteworthy within the Union IOTL.

[5] This was true IOTL as well. Conservative support for Israel took some time in Germany.

[iserlohn]

Heinrich Lübke - Der Lü(b)ckenfüller (CDU, 1960-1960) 

After Heuss' unexpected death, the autopsy revealed that he just stopped breathing during the night and had early-onset lung cancer, president Adenauer visited vice-chancellor Lübke and requested him to become chancellor pro-tempore, until the Bundestag would confirm a new one. The shy Lübke accepted after several hours of consideration. Knowing his tenure would be a short one, Heinrich Lübke's chancellorship was uneventful. The sole act performed by him during his short turn at the top, Lübke signed the German recognition of the Republic of Cameroon, which was already considered in Heuss' last days in office, as well as the Togolese Republic, which gained independence during this transitional phase of German politics.



After twelve days of debate within the Bundestag, the governing coalition had decided on a new chancellor and on the 1st of June 1960 the Bundestag confirmed the new man at the head of German government. Lübke meanwhile stepped down from his positions and lived a mostly secluded life. In 1966 he visited both Togo and Cameroon with the German government's blessing, and announced that the Federal Republic would fund agricultural institutes in both states. For this visit, after which he stated that he "was shocked by the fresh, rough air of my beloved Sauerland" [1] he is occasionally remembered in West Africa, while in Germany he has been immortalized in his obscurity. Lübke died in the winter of 1968, with full government honors.



[1] He stated something similar IOTL after his visits to Asia in 1967.