TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/070891/0708001.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 7.2 KB | 161 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 35

GERMANY

Where Have the Commies Gone?


The old party elite is out of work and out of sorts

By JOHN ELSON -- Reported by Rhea Schoenthal/Berlin


    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.