East Germany: Making the Best Of a Bad Situation

From a reviewing stand on East Berlin’s Marx-Engels Platz, Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht waved a bouquet of red roses as goose-stepping troops paraded past. Alongside “Spitzbart,” as Ulbricht’s unloving citizens call him because of his well-tended goatee, stood Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev and a high-powered array of other Communist visitors. The occasion was the 20th anniversary of the founding of East Germany’s Communist state. What was perhaps most striking about the celebrations was not the relatively modest military show but the new skyline of East Berlin: ultramodern apartment buildings and office skyscrapers, dominated by a 1,200-ft. television tower with a revolving restaurant.

Determinedly Apolitical. Rivaling West Germany’s famed Wirtschaftswunder, East Germany has undergone an economic miracle of its own since the end of World War II, when the Soviets carted off nearly all the plants and machinery that had survived the heavy Allied bombing. Today East Germany is the world’s ninth greatest industrial power. With a population of 17 million and an area roughly the same as Tennessee’s, East Germany has a gross national product of $31.7 billion.Cameras from the Pentacon works at Dresden compete with Leicas from West Germany. TV sets from East Berlin are sold in the Federal Republic. Per capita ownership of TV sets is even higher in East Germany (211 per 1,000) than in West Germany (210 per 1,000).

Ulbricht’s economic success rests in part on one of the monstrosities of modern times: the Wall. From 1945 until 1961, when the Communists erected the 28-mile barrier that seals off East Berlin from western parts of the city, 3,600,000 East Germans, including some of the most promising scientists and young workers, fled to the West. The Wall forced those penned behind it to acknowledge that they would be spending the rest of their lives in the East—so why not try to make the best of a bad situation? To encourage the changing mood, Ulbricht in 1963 instituted a new economic plan that gave considerable authority and rewards to individual plant managers, freeing East German industry somewhat from the embrace of Communist bureaucracy.

Prosperity has given the East Germans an overpowering feeling of pride —after all, they were creating a society that seemed to them more just, more German and more morally korrekt than the permissive, cosmopolitan atmosphere of the West. It is also more drab, despite all the new prosperity and the new buildings. Parts of East Germany have an oldfashioned, almost prewar look. Other parts have yet to be rebuilt. Women make up 46.9% of the working force, one of the highest ratios in the world. They are everywhere—directing traffic, working on construction sites and painting buildings.

Despite impressive economic progress, East Germany still lags far behind the Federal Republic; its living standard is estimated to be as much as one-third lower. Politically, it remains under tight Communist control. One of the last of Eastern Europe’s doctrinaire Stalinists, Ulbricht is backed by 167,000 soldiers and security forces. Not since the riots of 1953 has he been forced to cope with a major disturbance. To be sure, there are some signs of disquiet. Some 1,135 East Germans last year managed to flee over the wall to the West. At one point during last week’s celebrations, 200 restless young East Berliners paraded down Unter den Linden chanting: “Eins, zwei, drei, Sex!” But they knew better than to shout anything more defiant—such as demands for political reforms. Culturally, Ulbricht maintains such a tight rein that most of Evgeny Evtushenko’s poetry is proscribed, and even some recent Soviet films have been banned as “unsafe.” Determinedly apolitical, most of East Germany’s citizens seem concerned exclusively with getting on.

Squeeze Play. In the midst of last week’s celebrations, East Germany’s leaders were preoccupied with the problem that has been uppermost since the regime was born—how to deal with West Germany. Ulbricht has always feared that closer ties with Bonn would weaken his grip on East Germany. Now Socialist Willy Brandt, who is scheduled to be installed as the West’s new Chancellor next week, is calling for reduced tensions in Central Europe and for closer links between the two Germanys, just short of formal diplomatic recognition. Speaking in his high-pitched Saxon twang, Ulbricht reiterated his old demand for full recognition, which would be unacceptable to Bonn. Russia’s Brezhnev seemed far more conciliatory. “We would be pleased about a more realistic approach in West Germany,” he said, “and would be prepared to act accordingly.”

Ulbricht is unlikely to dismantle the Wall or allow closer contact with West Germany until he feels that East Germans will no longer be tempted by better jobs and living conditions across the border. Now 76, Ulbricht might not be on the scene much longer, but the two men most likely to succeed him, Premier Willi Stoph, 55, and Deputy Party Chief Erich Honecker, 57, are likely to follow the same course. Yet neither Ulbricht nor his heirs can overlook the fact that some day perhaps the Soviets and other East Bloc comrades may become weary of allowing East Germany’s leaders to stand in the way of a long-overdue relaxation of tensions in Central Europe.