The New Chancellor

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31215, 12 November 1966, Page 15

The New Chancellor

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter —Copyright) BONN, Nov. 11.

Dr. Kurt Georg Kiesinger, the Christian Democrat choice to succeed Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, is Premier of BadenWuerttemburg i n South-west Germany, and was the only regional politician to run for the Federal leadership.

He has a legal training, an academic outlook and a polished style of oratory. But he has been dogged by reminders of his record as a civil servant under Hitler's war-time Government

Last week, Dr. Kiesinger called a press conference after a Swiss newspaper assertion that he had acted as go-between for Dr. Josef Goebbel’s Nazi propaganda Ministry and the Hitler Foreign Ministry. He said he merely worked as a technical assistant for the Foreign Ministry between 1940 and 1945.

Dr. Kiesinger, a staunch Christian Democrat was considered a contender for the Presidency in the summer of 1964, but Dr. Heinrich Luebke won a second term.

Foreign Ministry He also lost a bid for the Foreign Ministry, which went to Dr. Gerhard Schroeder in 1961.

Dr. Kiesinger was born in Wuerttemberg on April 6, 1904, and was educated at Tueringen and Berlin Universities. He studied and practised law in Berlin until he became a Foreign Minis-

try assistant under the Nazis, an episode which he complains is always brought up when he is named for any post. He became a Bundestag (Lower House) deputy in 1949, and chairman of its Foreign Affairs Committee in 1954.

Dr. Kiesinger, a tall man, cut an elegant figure in the debates of the 1950’s when Dr. Konrad Adenauer, as Chancellor, controlled foreign policy. National Reputation

But he left Bonn for provincial Stuttgart in December, 1958, when he was elected Prime Minister of BadenWuerttemberg—and made a national reputation by his regional work.

He pulled his corner of Germany into the mainstream of economic and industrial life, created a new university of Konstanz, and averted the defection of Baden, the dissatisfied western half of the State.

Dr. Kiesinger became the chief vote-catcher of the Christian Democrats in Southwest Germany. In the 1964 State elections his party increased its majority over the Social Democrats from 4 to 9 per cent. In 1962, he was appointed president of the Bundesrat (Upper House, in which the States are represented) and thus became once again a figure on the Bonn Parliamentary scene.