Die Spiegelaffaire

Democracy appears to have worked well in West Germany since the war; despite fierce inter-party conflict Adenauer's government has maintained an aura of respectability and competence. Yet within the last two weeks this aura has been tarnished by "die Spiegelaffaire," a sequence of events which has brought to the surface the darker currents in German political life.

On the night of Friday, October 26, security police sealed and began to search the offices of the news magazine Der Spiegel in Hamburg and Bonn. The magazine's editor-and-chief Rudolf Augstein and several Der Spiegel executives were arrested and jailed. Simultaneously, Spanish police arrested Conrad Ahlers, one of the magazine's assistant editors, in Madrid. These arrests aroused immediate public outcry against the Gestapo-like violation of freedom of the press.

Although the government explained its sudden action on the grounds that Der Spiegel had committed treason in publishing secret information on the performance of German troops in NATO exercises last September, other less honorable motives were immediately apparent.

For two years members of the Adenauer government, especially Franz Josef Strauss, Minister of Defense, and Walter Strauss, a secretary of state in the Justice Ministry, have been under heavy fire from Der Spiegel, which expresses views held by the government's more conservative coalition partners, the Free Democrats.

When it was discovered that the Herren Strauss had ordered the arrest of Der Spiegel editors without the knowledge of Justice Minister Stammburger, a Free Democrat, the opposition parties, the Free Democrats and much of the public interpreted the action as a personal vendetta with political overtones. The affair was made even more ominous by the government's request for laws which would enable it to rule partially by decree.

The Spiegel case will not be resolved for many months, but so far Adenauer has behaved like an angry child caught with his hand in the cooky-jar. It is disturbing to see the leaders of a constitutional Western democracy revert to police methods to suppress criticism. Hopefully the German people will keep their government on the path of democracy which it has followed since the War.