Life in The Golden Ghetto

As the East German regime collapses before its anti-Communist opponents, it is yielding up enough evidence of corruption to provide yet another cause of bitter popular resentment against the discredited hierarchy. The allegations of illegal nest feathering have shocked and outraged ordinary citizens, party members and nonmembers alike. Disgrace knows no limits for Erich Honecker, less than two months ago the most powerful man in East Germany: last week the former party chief and eight of his erstwhile top lieutenants were formally charged by the state prosecutor's office with "enriching themselves through abuse of office." Seven of the ex-Politburo members were packed off to jail pending trial. Illness spared the other two, including Honecker, from suffering the same fate -- at least for the time being.

No evidence uncovered so far in East Germany indicates plundering on a scale to rival world-class pillagers of national treasuries like the Marcos family of the Philippines or the Pahlavis of Iran. Honecker, along with other top party officials, lived a decidedly bourgeois life inside the walled luxury compound of Wandlitz, a few miles north of East Berlin. But last week it was revealed that he also had a $1.2 million vacation villa on the tiny island of Vilm in the Baltic Sea, previously thought to be an uninhabited bird preserve. Some of the perks claimed by East Germany's elite had a style reminiscent of ward pols in the U.S. Several Politburo members, for example, held the presumably undemanding post of "honorary member" of the Construction Ministry's "academy," for an annual pop of about $10,000. Another favorite ploy was to requisition scarce building materials for use in the construction of homes for children and other relatives.

There has been one scandal that adds up to major marks. The Politburo's once powerful economic czar, Guntar Mittag, and Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, a shadowy financial dealer and former state secretary for foreign trade, are suspected of helping divert to Swiss bank accounts tens of millions of dollars' worth of hard currency. The proceeds came from the illegal sale of arms, artworks and other goods. The affair has become known as the Ko-Ko scandal, after the office of Kommerzielle Koordination, through which the funds were funneled. Last week Schalck-Golodkowski surfaced in West Berlin, offering to return some of the funds and promising to fight any attempt by East Germany to have him extradited. Crimes involving hard currency are especially offensive to ordinary East Germans, who blame its scarcity for much of their economic hardship over the years.

Politicians are not the only ones who are paying for their lives of privilege. Members of East Germany's formidable athletic machine, a cosseted elite who have access to automobiles and posh apartments not available to most East Germans, have come in for sharp criticism. But it is the abuses by the Bonzen, or party bigwigs, that especially rankle. The East German populace was not happy with the country's meager living standards over the years, and finally it judged them to be intolerable. But ordinary folk remain stunned that the leaders of a party ostensibly formed to champion the cause of workers and peasants could secretly assume a life-style closer to that of wealthy capitalists. Says Hans Berger, a rank-and-file East Berlin party member: "We did not expect this of Communists and their creed of equality."