The Minister's All Right.(Joschka Fischer)(Brief Article)

The footage dates from April 7, 1973. The scene: a street riot in Frankfurt, at the height of Germany's militant student-protest movement. Suddenly one of the radicals corners a policeman. Wearing a tight leather jacket and a motorcycle helmet, the apparent leader gathers four other rioters around him. In what looks like a well- rehearsed routine, the five overwhelm the policeman, tear his helmet away and throw him to the ground. The long-haired leader raises his gloved fist to punch the policeman. Seconds later he kicks the defenseless cop as he lies on the ground.

That cop-kicking radical was Joschka Fischer, currently Germany's foreign minister and vice chancellor. A Marxist in his youth, Fischer later joined the pacifist Green Party, which now governs Germany with the Social Democrats. As shocking as the TV footage--dug up earlier this month by the German weekly Stern--may be, Fischer's radical past has never hurt him. Not only has the 52-year-old dutifully repented his past sins, he also left many of his leftist convictions at the door to power. Soon after taking office, he played a key role in sending the German Bundeswehr to join the war in Kosovo, its first military mission since World War II. He's also dropped the leather jacket for a three- piece suit. Germany's reaction to the pictures? A collective yawn.

Germans might yet jerk awake. This week Fischer will have to testify about his relationship to Hans-Joachim Klein, on trial in Frankfurt for the 1975 terrorist killing of three people in Vienna. Klein is an old buddy of Fischer's, and one of the four who followed Fischer to gang up on the policeman in the Stern pictures. According to police, ...