Youthfest in Berlin

The dull gray streets and squares of the most rigidly doctrinaire Soviet-bloc country in Europe last week looked more like Watkins Glen than East Berlin. Along broad Karl-Marx-Allee strolled long-haired young men and women from every continent, laughing and singing. In the big fountain on Alexanderplatz, young people waded, danced and kissed. Their joy was punctuated by the loud beat of dozens of rock combos and brass bands and the music of choral groups.

The occasion was the tenth World Youth Festival, a quadrennial gathering of the young sponsored by the Communist bloc. It attracted 25,000 leftist youths from 134 countries, including 300 from the U.S. They were joined by at least 100,000 blue-shirted members of the German Democratic Republic's highly regimented Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ), Free German Youth.

On the surface at least, the youth festival reflected East Germany's emerging worldliness after the iron-fisted rule of Walter Ulbricht that ended two years ago (see story above). It was kicked off with a huge parade led by the Vietnamese delegates, who ignited strings of firecrackers to symbolize U.S. guns firing on their people. Speakers ranged from Black Communist Angela Davis to Palestine Guerrilla Leader Yasser Arafat, both of whom were given enthusiastic receptions.

The feeling of Gemuetlichkeit began to evaporate when West German youths engaged their East German counterparts in political discussions. Among the FDJ "youth" were more than a few East Germans in their 30s and 40s with the thick necks and receding hairlines of state security men. As West German Socialist youth Leader Wolfgang Roth began to speak on inter-European cooperation, his speech was drowned out by FDJ troublemakers. But at week's end the exuberance of youth seemed to overcome ideology, and Communists and Socialists mingled congenially--at least for the moment.

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