Word: bundesrat
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Died. Dr. Otto Ernst Heinrich Hermann Suhr, 63, Socialist lord mayor of West Berlin, doughty foe of Communism, Social Democratic delegate to the Bonn parliament and President-elect of the Bundesrat, the Parliament's Upper House, sometime (before Hitler and since 1948) professor of political science, onetime (1922-33) secretary of the German Trade Union Association; of leukemia; in Berlin...
...Bonn the old Chancellor glowered. His local defeat had national repercussions: seats in the federal upper house are chosen by the local governments. He was thus deprived of North Rhine-Westphalia's five votes there, and lost his two-thirds majority in the Bundesrat. Adenauer needs the two-thirds majority to put through constitutional changes permitting German rearmament...
...same time, Adenauer put pressure on the Bundesrat (the Upper House) to push through an emergency bill for recruiting army volunteers, without waiting for the complicated enabling legislation setting up terms of the new army...
...there are others, too, who fear a Blank check. They protested that Adenauer's three-paragraph emergency bill set precedents without creating safeguards. By a unanimous vote, the Bundesrat (where Adenauer usually has his way) sent his bill back with a demand for clarification of policy...
...Adenauer had the votes. He also had an impressive argument: under the Paris treaties, a mere ten years after Yalta, Germany will receive national sovereignty, the right to create a 500,000-man army, to join NATO and a seven-nation Western European Union. After a short debate, the Bundesrat completed (29 to 9) ratification of the Paris treaties. Now the only possible roadblock to German rearmament is the French Senate, which is scheduled to vote this week...