German Interior Minister Is Shot at Political Rally

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Wolfgang Schauble, the German Interior Minister and one of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's closest advisers, was shot and seriously wounded tonight at a campaign rally, his ministry reported.

The assailant, a 37-year-old man, was immediately seized, and the Interior Ministry said he was not associated with any terrorist group. A spokesman for the ministry, Roland Bachmeier, said the man was known to the local police as a member of the local drug subculture who had been under medical care for schizophrenia. The Interior Ministry said that Mr. Schauble was hit twice, once in the cheek and once in the chest area, although other reports from the scene described different wounds.

The 48-year-old minister was said to be severely injured, but officials said he remained conscious and he was not in danger of losing his life. Bleeding heavily, he was taken first to a local hospital, then flown to the university hospital at Freiburg.

The attack occurred shortly after 10 P.M. in Oppenau, near Freiburg in the southwestern state of Baden-Wurttemberg, after Mr. Schauble finished a speech at a campaign rally of his Christian Democratic Party attended by about 300 people.

Mr. Schauble is a resident of Offenburg, which is about 10 miles from Oppenau, and his parliamentary constituency is in the region.

Witnesses interviewed by a local radio station said that the assailant rose and fired three rounds from a pistol at Mr. Schauble. They said the gunman had curly black hair and was wearing a black leather jacket.

The minister was hit twice. A third bullet struck his bodyguard, who had thrown himself onto Mr. Schauble after the initial shots were fired. The assailant was quickly seized, and one witness said he screamed as he was handcuffed. The German press agency quoted him as shouting, ''I feel hounded by the state.''

It was the first attack on a political leader in the new unified Germany. On April 25 a deranged woman stabbed the Social Democratic candidate for Chancellor, Oskar Lafontaine, at a campaign rally in Cologne, seriously wounding him.

Attack on His Aide

On July 27, Mr. Schauble's state secretary in the Interior Ministry, Hans Neusel, was slightly wounded in an attack by the Red Army Faction, a terrorist group that has killed or injured a number of West German politicians and businessmen over the last 20 years. A letter from the group after the attack in July declared war on the united Germany, which it said would constitute a fascist Fourth Reich.

The Interior Ministry was quick to rule out terrorism in the attack tonight on Mr. Schauble. Officials offered no other possible motive except to say the attacker was ''from the drug scene.''

Mr. Schauble is regarded as one of the most competent and industrious members of Mr. Kohl's cabinet. As one of the primary architects of German unity, he was the chief negotiator of the two treaties joining the two countries.

A lawyer by training, he first entered the West German Parliament in 1972. He was a founder in 1976 of a group of young supporters of Mr. Kohl, and became the Christian Democratic floor leader in 1981. Mr. Kohl made him his Chancellery Minister in 1984 and named him to the Interior Ministry in April 1989.