Where Have the Commies Gone?

By JOHN ELSON.

On the morning of May 5, some 400 people gathered in a park near Berlin's Alexanderplatz and scattered flowers at the base of the Marx-Engels memorial to commemorate the 173rd birthday of the philosopher who prophesied the ultimate triumph of proletarian revolution. Karl Marx, proclaimed a speaker, should not be blamed for the errors of the former Socialist Unity Party, which for 40 years had ruled East Germany. WE'LL DO BETTER NEXT TIME read a slogan someone had chalked at the base of the memorial. WE'RE NOT GUILTY said another. A third graffito was sardonically realistic: SEE YOU AT THE UNEMPLOYMENT OFFICE.

How the mighty have fallen. In what used to be the German Democratic Republic, the Communist Party is an anorectic shade of its former self. With a peak membership of 2.3 million, it once embodied East Germany's political, intellectual, military and bureaucratic elite. Now reborn as the Party of Democratic Socialism, it has a scant 250,000 adherents, the majority of them former communist functionaries who, says one observer, "cannot believe they can hang up the socialist dream like a soiled coat." They remain loyal even though thousands have lost their jobs because of what Germans call Ausgrenzung, or discrimination against those linked to the communist hierarchy or the Stasi.

There is no one to lead them now. Officials in Bonn looked the other way last March when Erich Honecker, chairman of East Germany's Council of State and party general secretary, was spirited by Soviet operatives from a military hospital near Potsdam to a similar facility outside Moscow. Honecker faces charges of manslaughter in Germany, but at 78, and reportedly suffering from cancer, he is unlikely ever to face trial. That is also true of Erich Mielke, the former Minister of State Security and boss of the Stasi. Mielke is 83 and, according to his lawyers, incompetent to stand trial by reason of senility.

Roughly half the Politburo's 26 former members are under investigation for possible treason, corruption and abuse of power. But court inquiries have been hampered by a shortage of investigators, legal questions about what exactly constituted crime in the east, and missing evidence. Alexander Schalck- Golodkowski, 58, formerly in charge of the foreign-exchange procurement agency, is being probed for fraud in the disappearance of $13 billion in East German government funds. Prosecutors have been stymied because a ton of files were hastily shredded after Schalck-Golodkowski fled to the West in 1989 to escape arrest by East German reformers. From a lakeside villa in Bavaria, he now complains that he has been made a scapegoat for corruption by higher-ups in the Communist Party. "Every piece of dirt suddenly landed at my feet," he says.

Other leading party cadres are suffering for their sins. Gunter Schabowski, a former editor of the party newspaper Neues Deutschland, recently suffered the humiliation of being rejected for a menial job at the city's waterworks. But he may have been relatively fortunate. Another red Bonze (bigwig) was reportedly seen washing dishes at Berlin's Grand Hotel -- rather like those exiled archdukes from czarist Russia who eked out a living as waiters and doormen in post-1918 Paris.

"All generals were dismissed on the eve of unification," says Werner Hubner, a former major general in the National People's Army. He worries about making ends meet because of a new law that will rule out higher pensions for those who, like Hubner, had special status under the old regime. "This is unjust," he says bitterly. "Since I paid in higher than average contributions, I feel robbed of my life's savings." Not that Hubner can be accused of living in splendor. "I live on the fourth floor in a three-room apartment with oven heating. I carry the coal up myself."

Except for a few interpreters and administrators, the East's entire 2,500- member diplomatic corps was dismissed. Hermann Schweisau, who was East Berlin ambassador to Finland, Afghanistan and Vietnam, is currently deputy head of the Association of Former Diplomats, which has helped about 125 of his former colleagues train for jobs in sales, insurance and banking. "A lot of potential is being wasted," he says, noting that many of his clients are knowledgeable about countries where the Federal Republic had little or no diplomatic representation. "The former ambassador to Mongolia is just sitting at home, although he is an expert in his field and commands excellent contacts built up over many years."

Only a few old functionaries have prospered since unification. Hartmut Lehmann, a veteran engineer with the Transport Ministry, made plans in 1989 to start a construction business in Hungary where, he says, "capitalist trends had already begun." Unification changed his mind: he stayed at home to found Economy & Market, a monthly journal aimed at eastern Germany's new entrepreneurs, and a construction firm with 200 workers. He recently bought the old East German trade-union newspaper Tribune for a mere $85,000, converted it into a nonpolitical daily and moved to make it more efficient and profitable by replacing its typewriters with Apple computers.

Some of the east's economic managers have found new careers with western firms eager to exploit their expertise. One of the most politically influential factory chiefs, Heinz Warzecha of the machine-tool manufacturing company Kombinat "October 7," is a managerial consultant for the Munich- based Trebag AG.

The renamed Party of Democratic Socialism, which espouses socialism but disavows communism, remains the largest political organization in the five eastern states even though it has a mere 17 votes in the 663-seat Bundestag. ) Dietmar Keller is one of only two members of the former government who are serving as P.D.S.deputies in the Bundestag. "I've never had it so good," he says of unification, but adds that representing a party with an unsavory past can sometimes be painful. "We are treated like criminals ((in the Bundestag))," he says, "as if we are responsible for everything that went wrong in East Germany. No matter what you say, you are interrupted by catcalls. I think I have shown more courage and dignity than some of those insulting me."

Egon Krenz, who succeeded Honecker as communist leader for 50 tumultuous days in 1989, contends that "not all 2.3 million party members were villains." If Germany opts to deal with them only through Ausgrenzung, he says, "we will never have a peaceful unification." Krenz is a victim of that policy, although some might argue that he had it coming. Both he and Keller fear that the shunning -- combined with hardships caused by the collapse of the socialist economy -- could encourage a popular tide of nostalgia for the good old, bad old days. Politically, of course, there is no going back. But the mood of disenchantment could leave an unpleasant pall over the ongoing struggle to build a unified Germany.

With reporting by Rhea Schoenthal/Berlin