By GUY LAMOLINARA
"Defining moments" in German-American relations was the topic of the Carl Schurz lecture, delivered May 18 at the Library by Charles Maier, an internationally recognized authority on European studies.
"Fifty Years On: Defining Moments in the German-American Partnership," was the fifth lecture in the Carl Schurz Lecture Series, established in 1989 in cooperation with the German- American Cultural Fund of Washington to honor German-born Schurz (1829- 1906), who was a U.S. Senator (R-Mo., 1869-1875), secretary of the interior in 1877-1881 (the first foreign-born Cabinet member in 70 years), a journalist, abolitionist and advocate of civil service reform.
Prosser Gifford, the Library's director of Scholarly Programs, provided the opening remarks for Dr. Billington and also acknowledged the efforts of Margrit B. Krewson, German/Dutch area specialist, for her work not only in organizing the Schurz series but also other Library events relating to Germany and its culture.
Dr. Gifford introduced Dr. Lothar Griessbach, president of the German- American Cultural Fund, who introduced the speaker.
Dr. Maier is Krupp Foundation Professor of European Studies and director of the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. His book Recasting Bourgeois Europe was nominated for the National Book Award and won two prizes from the American Historical Association in 1976. He is working on a new book, The End of East Germany, which will be published by Princeton University Press.
Calling V-E Day, May 8, 1945, "the initiation of a process and not an end," Dr. Maier said that "the beginning in this case [was] Germany's remarkable postwar recovery and a half-century partnership with the United States."
Dr. Maier traced the course of the German-American relationship through the interactions of important German and American leaders of the last half century. "I think it most helpful to view the German-American relationship in terms of interactions between leaders who together revealed the strengths and pitfalls of the evolving partnership, five German- American 'couples,' so to speak," said Dr. Maier.
In the early 1950s, American statesman John McCloy and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer were both working toward the creation of a stable democracy in Germany. According to Dr. Maier, "John McCloy served Adenauer's agenda well, for it coincided with his own objective, which was both to encourage Germany to build a responsible and autonomous national political life -- and simultaneously to tie it firmly to the West."
A decade and a half later, President Lyndon Johnson "sought to exercise ... remarkable personal diplomacy" over German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, said Dr. Maier, who recounted how when Ludwig visited LBJ at his ranch photographs showed the chancellor in a Stetson hat. He also told "the wonderful, if apocryphal," story that when Erhard was at the ranch, he had asked, "Is it true, Mr. President, that you were born in a log cabin?" To which LBJ replied, "No, Abe Lincoln was born in a log cabin. I was born in a manger."
Characterizing Ludwig and LBJ as an "odd couple," Dr. Maier assessed their interaction as being "less consequential for the long-term" German-American relationship. "Essentially Johnson left Europe to his ambassador and White House staff."
Dr. Maier was kinder to his next pairing: Henry Kissinger and Chancellor Willy Brandt. He called both "remarkable" men, who, although they "saw politics in different ways ... their respective priorities at least ran in parallel and allowed success for each."
For America's policy of detente with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to work, the East German-West German detente also had to succeed, said Dr. Maier. Kissinger's "own detente policies could not have advanced without some demobilization of the German-German confrontation," he said.
Dr. Maier believes that the Kissinger-Brandt relationship yielded "a significant series of advances which both Americans and West Germans might be credited for alike. Thus a treaty structure ultimately emerged," culminating in the formation of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The next set of leaders, President Jimmy Carter and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, fared poorly, in Dr. Maier's opinion. "Of all the odd couples considered tonight, this relationship proved the most frustrating and unproductive," he said. The speaker placed much of the blame for this failure on the leaders' personalities. While Carter was "preoccupied by detail," Schmidt "understood how to isolate the grand lines of politics. Carter had a moralistic streak. ... For Schmidt, the emphasis on human rights testified to the inexperience and provincialism of the American administration."
It took President George Bush and Chancellor Helmut Kohl to restore smoother U.S.-German relations. According to Dr. Maier, Bush "was willing to trust Kohl to the utmost and to second his call for quick unification in 1990. "In this case," he added, "German and American agendas did not merely run parallel; they were congruent. White House policy saw German unification as the fulfillment of a long-maintained U.S. policy."
Dr. Maier summed up, saying, "The German-American relationship must enter a new phase, not one perhaps of less mutual need or less mutual friendship, but one more normal and subject to political conflicts. The last 50 years allowed a degree of German-American cooperation which, for all its transitory vicissitudes, was extraordinarily easy."