Word: socialist
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Background: Born in Magdeburg (now in the East zone) March 27, 1901, son of an old-line Socialist bricklayer...
Career: Joined the Socialist youth movement as a 15-year-old printer's apprentice, rose in Germany's highly stratified Socialist bureaucracy to be an editor and organizer, reached the national executive committee the year Hitler took over. Hitler, like Bismarck before him, suppressed the party. After twelve years' exile in Czechoslovakia, France and wartime Britain, Ollenhauer was one of three surviving leaders who met to rebuild the party in 1946. He swung behind the fiery nationalist Kurt Schumacher against Otto Grotewohl's plan to merge with the Communists (Grotewohl wound up as Premier of Communist...
Outlook: In squabbles in what is one of the world's oldest working-class movements. Socialist Ollenhauer usually comes down on the conservative side. After losing the last election fighting rearmament and Western alliances, Ollenhauer has become convinced that in its prosperous, complacent mood, West Germany is not interested in dogmatic Marxism. Karl Marx's face has been turned to the wall. "Free competition is a decisive means of Social Democratic economic policy," Ollenhauer proclaims. He soft-pedals the old class war, plays up Socialist efficiency in running state and local governments. He offers as his 1957 slogan...
Personality: Paunchy, moonfaced, tousle-haired, Ollenhauer presides placidly over his party's bureaucracy, delivers cautiously hedged speeches, and keeps easy control of his temper. "I have never seen Erich pray, tremble or curse," says a fellow Socialist. Evenings he sips wine with cronies and plays skat, a German pub card game. His chauffeur-driven Mercedes fetches him to work at an unproletarian midmorning hour. A solid and comfortable householder type, if no intellectual giant, Ollenhauer pitches his appeal as a safe sort of Socialist both to Germany's middle-class voters and to workers who now have...
...this point, with the Christian Democrats attacking to cover their own confusion, the Socialists pulled their surprise. Blue-suited for the TV cameras but wearing a red tie for old Socialism's sake, Party Chairman Erich Ollenhauer had himself one of the best days of his parliamentary career. Carefully endorsing the U.S. stand on Suez and Hungary as "prudent," he announced that Socialists favor honoring Germany's treaty obligations "including those of a military nature," i.e., in NATO. Abandoning another longtime Socialist position, the party now accepts a standing army...