Word: weste
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Without the slightest air of suspense, the hand-picked candidate -of Konrad Adenauer was elected President of West Germany last week. He is Heinrich Liibke, 64, Adenauer's obscure Minister of Agriculture, who when apprised of his nomination last month said: "I don't think I am cut out for this very high office. I shall have to force myself to cope with it." But, badly split following the resounding feud between Adenauer and Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard, the Christian Democrats were in dire need of an uncontroversial candidate for the high, if largely ceremonial, office of President...
...there had been hints of mutiny among Christian Democrats angered by Adenauer's highhanded methods, but in the end they were united by their desire to hang together and hold office. As more than a thousand electors gathered in the huge, marble Nazi-built East Prussia Hall in West Berlin, it was clear that Christian Democratic ranks were solid. Even Liibke's rival. Socialist Candidate Carlo Schmid, 62, hoped Lubke would be elected on the first ballot to save everybody time and effort. Delegates in the humid hall wandered out to the lobby for sausages, beer and soft...
...result was considerably less exciting than the hullabaloo that went on outside the hall. Moscow, objecting to holding the West German election in Berlin, had made noisy threats before hand. Allied officials nervously watched the Autobahnen, expecting some kind of traffic obstruction by the Russians, and scores of police with walkie-talkies moved into position to guard against Communist demonstrations at the voting hall...
Adenauer himself had urged that the election not be held in West Berlin, lest it give provocation to the Soviets. Similarly, the U.S. had suggested that the votes of West Berlin's own electors be dropped into a separate urn to underline the city's position as a four-power occupied area; on this "special status" of Berlin hangs much of the Western legal argument at Geneva. But the boss of West Germany's Bundestag, Eugen Ger-stenmaier, capturing the mood of many patriots, was determined to dramatize the opposite-that West Berlin indeed is part...
...Communists made no trouble, and on the assumption that the U.S. would not either, West Berlin delegates, on Gerstenmaier's orders, dropped their ballots into the same box that their West German colleagues used...