Refugees

By William R. Doerner

The timing of Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to East Germany could not have been more awkward. On the 40th anniversary of the country's founding as a separate socialist state, the government in East Berlin found itself utterly humiliated. Like storm-besieged dikes, the borders of the country had sprung one leak after another, and thousands of refugees were pouring out. The routine anniversary visit threatened to turn into another diplomatic nightmare for the Soviet President, fraught with the kind of tensions and prodemocracy demonstrations that marred his trip to China last spring. It was Gorbachev's message of change, after all, that had largely inspired the freedom flight.

But through a combination of cautious diplomacy on Gorbachev's part and careful crowd control by his hosts, the two-day visit went off without any major embarrassments. Arriving at Schonefeld Airport on Friday, the Soviet leader was greeted with enthusiastic cries of "Gorbi! Gorbi!" but the reception remained calm. About 3,000 people gathered the next day in Alexanderplatz to demand government reform, the biggest such demonstration in East Berlin since 1953, but again the police managed to control the crowd. Officials were less successful in keeping the lid on demonstrations outside the capital: in Dresden and Leipzig violent clashes between protesters and police continued throughout the weekend.

In public statements Gorbachev walked a fine line between encouraging reform and offering support for Erich Honecker, East Germany's aged and embattled leader. Wading into a crowd with characteristic aplomb, the Soviet visitor urged patience. "Don't panic. Don't get depressed. We'll go on fighting together for socialism." He made a strong show of solidarity with Honecker, standing shoulder to shoulder with him as they reviewed a torchlight parade. When he alluded to the current crisis in a televised address, Gorbachev took pains to be circumspect. "We know our German friends well," he said. "We know their ability to think creatively, to learn from life and to make changes when necessary."

But those measured words came too late for the East Germans who had already opted to make a run for a better life in the West. Last week alone some 8,200 fled, raising the total number of refugees over the past five months to 50,000. Some jumped at the opportunity without a moment's hesitation, others agonized over it. "We talked about it way into the night for days on end," said Christiane Weinbauer of Halle, who joined the exodus with her husband last week. "One minute we had decided to go, and the next we were staying for the sake of our relatives or the children or for reasons of security. Then we heard on a West German radio station that the people in the embassy in Prague were being taken to the West. It was Saturday night. We stayed up talking again, and by early morning we were packing. We had finally made up our minds."

So had enough other young men, women and children to turn a trickle of refugees into a torrent, pouring out of every crack they could find in the crumbling Iron Curtain. The first route, through Hungary, has largely shut down since East German officials cut back on exit permits to that country a month ago. Next, East Germans by the thousands planted themselves in the West German embassy in Prague, as Czechoslovakia was the only country to which they were allowed to travel without an exit permit. Those who could slip into Poland converged on Bonn's compound in Warsaw. And when special trains carrying the refugees to West Germany were routed back through their homeland, near riots resulted. Dozens clambered over fences, lunged at the passing cars and climbed aboard, convinced that the moving trains offered the last opportunity to get out.

The illegal exodus has been going on since May, when Hungary began clipping the barbed wire separating the East bloc from Austria. But nothing dramatized the crisis so vividly -- or posed the hard questions for East Germany so immediately -- as the swarm of tents packed with would-be emigres overflowing the embassy compound in Prague. Last Tuesday, after the first freedom trains had rolled out of Prague, Honecker sealed off the country's border to Czechoslovakia, leaving East Germans isolated and caged once more. There were signs late in the week, however, that restrictions on emigration might be eased, according to West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher.

The paradox is that East Germany's 40th birthday party should have been a glorious moment for the 77-year-old Honecker. Largely because of his grimly orthodox leadership, "Honi" could boast of giving the German Democratic Republic the strongest economy, the finest industry and one of the best-fed, best-housed and best-educated populations in the East bloc. It was the world's most successful -- or least unsuccessful -- example of Marxist government.

The refugees' flight seemed not only a dramatic act of rejection by his own people but also a challenge to the legitimacy -- and perhaps the very existence -- of Honecker's country. Beneath the flags and banners, East Germans are increasingly questioning who and what they are -- and not liking the answers. Those who have made their way to the West since the beginning of the year have done so not out of material desperation or fear of persecution but in blunt renunciation of the East German system. "It is a suffocating place, and we didn't see any chance of the present regime's changing," said Karl Weinbauer as he waited, dirty and cold, in Prague.

Many who stay behind share the same anger and frustration. "People are leaving East Germany because they have lost all hope of change, because the Communists are closed to Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika," said Reinhard Schult, one of the founders of the biggest new opposition movement, New Forum. "We can no longer tolerate the kindergarten atmosphere or being constantly led by the nose on all fronts."

Few expect things to get better under Honecker. And though in failing health, he shows no signs of turning power over to the next generation. While their neighbors in Poland and Hungary rush to embrace the reforms of perestroika and glasnost, East Germany's aged chieftains have stoutly withstood all blandishments, even from Gorbachev, to abandon the strict orthodoxies of conventional Communism. The result: a country so calcified that its citizens find a hopeful future only in flight.

So far this year, more than 110,000 East Germans have left, far and away the most since the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. Slightly more than half have departed with official permission, a sign that the Honecker regime has been forced to relax its policy of limiting emigration to the elderly and a few political dissidents. According to West German officials, some 1.8 million East Germans -- more than 10% of the population -- have applied to leave, despite the risk of job and educational discrimination.

But growing numbers refuse to wait for permission. In August and September, more than 30,000 vacationers took advantage of the newly opened border between Hungary and Austria to cross into West Germany. East Berlin tightened controls on travel to Hungary, yet new refugees continue to slip over at the rate of 200 to 500 a day. Hungary has rejected any suggestion that it close its borders.

Last week it was Prague's turn to play host to the refugee hordes. As East Germany's closest ally within the bloc, Czechoslovakia had long been deemed a safe foreign destination. Last year some 4 million East Germans, a quarter of the entire population, crossed into Czechoslovakia on vacation trips. Prague's hard-line regime demonstrated its reliability on the refugee issue by discouraging East German travel to neighboring Hungary at the height of the exodus there.

As the easy exit through Hungary all but closed, a sense of desperation spurred more departures. East German visitors to Prague began moving onto the grounds of the former Lobkowitz palace, a baroque edifice that serves as West Germany's embassy. There they joined several hundred other East Germans who had been living at the embassy for as long as two months waiting for permission to leave for West Germany. The ranks of the occupiers swelled steadily to 5,000. Their tents and blankets covered virtually every square inch of a football-field-size garden in back of the embassy, and hundreds more slept on floors inside. The plots of ground not covered were churned to mud by constant foot traffic, and bathroom facilities were hopelessly overrun.

Still they came, and as more and more East Germans clogged the streets around the embassy, overwhelmed officials sought a diplomatic solution. On Sept. 30, West German Foreign Minister Genscher arrived in Prague with word that the two Germanys had agreed to transport the emigres to the West. They left the next day.

But under terms dictated by the Honecker regime, the special refugee trains were required to travel back through East German territory before depositing their human cargo in Bavaria. The face-saving yet ultimately self-defeating scheme was designed to permit authorities to engage in the fiction that they were "expelling" disloyal citizens. In the end, this petty legalism only encouraged more to flee. As the freedom trains slowed along hills and at curves, daring East Germans hopped aboard and joined the flight to the West.

That solution proved astonishingly short-lived. Within a few hours of the first transfer, new arrivals began showing up at the Prague embassy, many of them drawn by news of the safe passage of the first group. East Germany, believing that its agreement was for a once-only exodus, reacted angrily to Bonn's decision to allow more refugees into the compound.

Barely recovered from gallbladder surgery, Honecker went on TV to accuse Bonn of trying "to turn East Germany upside down with a comprehensive % attack." West Germany flatly denied that it had reneged on a pledge to shut its doors to new refugees. "There was no such agreement," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Jurgen Chrobog. "We would never accept that German people should stand outside a German embassy with small children without giving shelter and care. The East Germans wanted to build a wall around our embassy. Now they're building a wall around themselves."

Day after day new throngs poured in. There were so many abandoned Trabant and Wartburg automobiles on Prague streets that police began towing away any vehicle with East German stickers on it. On Tuesday, Ambassador Hermann Huber ordered the embassy gates closed when the refugee population had reached 5,000, then hours later, as the night turned bitterly cold, reopened them to families with children. A new round of departures was scheduled and then delayed. East German officials, moreover, insisted that the second group of trains make the trip from Prague to the West German city of Hof at night, rendering it more difficult for hitchhikers to board.

Some trains did pass through Dresden, where up to 15,000 besieged the city's main train station, only to be driven back by police wielding clubs and water cannons. The crowd, which included casual onlookers as well as those trying to get on the trains, overturned police vehicles and pelted police with rocks. A total of 7,600 East Germans from Prague reached safety in Hof the next morning, and 600 more arrived from Warsaw the following day, bringing to 15,000 the total evacuated since the embassy occupations began.

East Germany's decision to permit the mass departures was almost certainly occasioned by the approaching national anniversary. But the larger dilemma remains unresolved. New travel restrictions do not address the root causes of widespread popular disaffection in East Germany. "It's like taking an aspirin for a toothache," said a Western diplomat in Prague. "It may relieve the pain, but it won't fix the problem." As the rioting in Dresden made only too clear, the refugees who had the good luck to act are hardly the only ones who want out. In Leipzig, 10,000 East Germans marched through the streets demanding change and shouting the name of the man who inspires them: "Gorbi! Gorbi!"

Things are unraveling fast for the East German regime. Some Western analysts fear a longer-term crackdown, but that would merely increase internal pressure, not diminish it. In the long run, Honecker, or his successors, will be forced into reform. Yet steps toward democracy and a free-market economy pose a special peril for the G.D.R. If East Germany became more like West Germany, what would be the point of a separate state?

With reporting by John Borrell/Prague and James O. Jackson/Berlin