Word: saarlander
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...visibly relaxed as he toured four of West Germany's eleven states. He softened his rhetoric, at one point predicting that the border between East and West Germany will one day "no longer divide us but unite us." The most touching moment came when Honecker arrived in Wiebelskirchen, the Saarland town where he grew up. After visiting the graves of his parents, Honecker seemed close to tears as he greeted acquaintances he had not seen in 40 years...
People around Neunkirchen, the Saarland coal-mining town where Erich Honecker was born 75 years ago, remember him as a serious-minded boy who passed out political newspapers after school at age ten and shunned religion class as a matter of working-class principle. "He didn't play with us in recess or go swimming in the summer," recalls Kurt Humbs, 76, a classmate in nearby Wiebelskirchen, where Honecker grew up. "Sometimes," he adds, "you had the impression you were looking into a mirror with no glass...
Nonetheless the results, coming only two months after the Christian Democrats lost control of the industrial state of Saarland for the first time in 30 years, suggested that Kohl's re-election in 1987 is by no means certain. "In only two years, the party has lost 1.7 million voters," said Kurt Biedenkopf, the Christian Democrats' co-chairman in North Rhine-Westphalia...
Personality seemed more important than party last week in two West German state elections, both of which produced surprises. In the Saarland, the country's smallest and poorest state, Oskar Lafontaine, 41, a shrewd and charismatic leftist, led the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to an absolute majority in a state assembly that had been dominated by conservatives for three decades. By contrast, in West Berlin, long a stronghold of the SPD, the ^ winner was a conservative, Christian Democratic Mayor Eberhard Diepgen, 43. Two elements common to both votes were the resurgence of the center-right Free Democrats, thought...
Chancellor Helmut Kohl conceded that the setback for his Christian Democrats in the economically depressed Saarland was "very painful." Privately, he ascribed it to the tireless zest of Lafontaine, who represents an emerging group of left-wing Social Democrats who are calling for their country's withdrawal from NATO's military structure and an end to U.S. missile deployment in West Germany...