a275  1949  16 Jul 88
BC-APN--East Germany, Adv31,1007
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For Release Sunday, July 31
From AP Newsfeatures
(APN SUNDAY ILLUSTRATIONS: Mailed print subscribers get 1 b&w photo.)
    
    EDITOR'S NOTE - Ever since its founding in 1949, East Germany's
Communist leadership has marched to the tune piped in the Kremlin.
When the melody changed with Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, the aging
chieftains developed a political defense, despite increasing
pressures at home. But their era may be ending.
    
By KEVIN COSTELLOE
Associated Press Writer
    BERLIN (AP) - Facing mounting dissent at home and pressure for
reforms similar to the Soviet Union's, the aging leadership of East
Germany is clinging to power as the nation nears its 40th birthday.
    Economic troubles have been aggravating chronic shortages of
consumer goods, while young people are demanding the freedoms they
see on West German television broadcast over the border.
    ''Down with the Berlin Wall! Down with the Berlin Wall!'' young East
Germans shouted in one recent protest. East German police quickly
moved in and broke up the demonstration of more than 5,000 people.
    Communist leader Erich Honecker, the man who built that wall in 1961
at the direction of Communist Party chief Walter Ulbricht, turns 76
in August. He and his septuagenarian deputies are holding onto the
power some of them gained shortly after the country was formed in the
Soviet image in 1949.
    In the Soviet Union, the Stalinist repression of those days has
given way to Mikhail Gorbachev's crusade for perestroika and glasnost
(restructuring and openness) and young East Germans lately have taken
to gathering near the wall with cries of, ''Gorby, Gorby!''
    But East Germany's leadership has emphasized that it does not intend
to change course.
    ''Honecker is a fossil and still shows the characteristics of his
era,'' says Guenther Buch of the All-German Institute, the Bonn
government's research branch that keeps tabs on East German
developments. ''The old officials are clinging to their jobs.''
    The aging leaders in the nation of 16.6 million people include:
    -Honecker, a member of the ruling Politburo since 1958 and head of
the Communist Party since 1971.
    -Premier Willi Stoph, 73, a Politburo member since 1953.
    -Erich Mielke, the 80-year-old head of the state police, has been a
central committee member for 38 years.
    -Deputy Premier Alfred Neumann is 78 and a Politburo member since
1958.
    In all, 46 of the 160 members of the party's central committee have
been there more than 20 years. The party is officially known as the
Socialist Unity Party (SED).
    ''The SED isn't thinking of change, but they are under pressure,''
says Buch. ''Certainly, the Honecker era is heading toward an end.''
    Buch looks for a gradual hand-over of power shortly before the next
Communist Party Congress, expected in 1991. The succession remains a
matter of much speculation. One name frequently mentioned is that of
Egon Krenz, the 51-year-old Politburo member who since 1983 has been
in charge of youth, sports and security.
    Honecker himself has pledged to stick to the course East Germany has
followed for nearly two decades. Perestroika, he said last June,
originated in the Soviet Union's internal needs. ''They wanted to
break open a certain incrustation of the economic life.''
    East Germany, he said, intends to follow ''the proven way.''
    Party leaders note that the country already has made some
significant changes in the economic structure.
    In the mid-1960s, the East Germans introduced a new economic system
that eased some central planning controls and allowed factories to
make profits if they were reinvested in operations or redistributed
to workers as bonuses. After several years of growth that put it at
the head of the Soviet Bloc, however, the economy showed signs of
slowing in the late 1970s.
    The German Institute for Economics Research says last year's
economic growth rate of 3.6 percent, measured in terms of national
income, fell significantly short of the target of 4.5 percent set by
economic planners. It was East Germany's second lowest this decade.
    A harsh winter last year and a drought this spring are hurting
agriculture, which employs about 980,000 people.
    ''Shortage was the dominating feature in the economic area,'' said
the West Berlin-based institute. Especially hard-hit are consumer
goods outside major cities.
    Public dissent threatened to boil over earlier this year, when
scores of East Germans were arrested in crackdowns.
    Young people grouped under the protection of the Lutheran Church
have been clamoring for more freedom, especially the chance to travel
abroad. The May Day parade on May 1 brought out an unprecedented
number of security agents to prevent disturbances.
    Travel restrictions were eased temporarily.
    After the June disturbances near the Berlin Wall, East German
security agents roughed up two West German television crews.
    That prompted the West Berlin Morgenpost newspaper to suggest that
the actions were a government-organized attack and not an on-the-spot
decision. The paper wondered ''whether Erich Honecker hasn't been
overridden by comrades who see his course as being too soft.''
    While the speculation continues, the Lutheran Church in East Germany
keeps up its pressure. More than 80 percent of the population is
Lutheran and the church remains a vital force in this Communist
nation.
    ''We have to start recognizing what is not right, and then we have
to go about starting to live in a new way,'' the Rev. Joachim Gauck,
a Lutheran leader in the northern region of Mecklenburg, told a
church convention last June.
    ''We'll want to stay here, once we're also allowed to leave,'' he
said, referring to the thousands of East Germans who have been denied
permission to leave the country.
    Gauck also asked for ''more openness'' in East Germany, an indirect
reference to Gorbachev's political reforms in the Soviet Union.
    He said that East German Christians are encouraged by Soviet signs
''that a mistake can be called a mistake.''
    END ADV
 
 
AP-NY-07-16-88 2227EDT
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a277  2008  16 Jul 88
BC-APN--East Germany-Lifestyle, Adv31,0772
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For Release Sunday, July 31
From AP Newsfeatures
With BC-APN--East Germany
    
By KEVIN COSTELLOE
Associated Press Writer
    BERLIN (AP) - While East Germany has a high standard of living
compared with other Soviet Bloc countries, the wait for a new car
runs 11 years and Communist leaders have been acknowledging shortages
of consumer goods.
    A growth spurt in the late 1960s and early 1970s made East Germany's
living standard No. 1 in Eastern Europe. Now, experts say,
Czechoslovakia shares the top honors.
    Lines of 20 to 30 people are common to buy fresh fruit and
vegetables in East Berlin, and such produce often is virtually
impossible to find outside major cities.
    Getting a home telephone can be a major challenge in East Germany,
just as it is in other parts of Eastern Europe. The Communist Party
sets guidelines for telephone installations, which give preference to
people of ''socio-political importance.''
    Average East Germans are quick to point out the tiers of privileged
classes within their nation.
    ''The party leadership has everything they want,'' said a
40-year-old East Berlin house painter, who asked anonymity.
    He worked in the homes of party leaders, he said, and, ''They shop
from the Neckermann catalog (West Germany's leading mail-order house)
and have Philips TV sets. They even have their own hospital in East
Berlin.''
    More than 90 percent of all East German households have a washing
machine and television, but the demand for better quality products is
growing.
    Despite a big housing construction program, getting an apartment can
take years for citizens, forcing many young married couples to live
with relatives.
    But, compared with other Soviet Bloc countries, housing is one of
many areas where East Germans are relatively well off.
    West Berlin's DIW German Institute for Economic Research said in a
new study: ''At 6.6 million, the number of housing units in (East
Germany) is almost as high as the number of households.''
    ''The ratio is less favorable in other countries, particularly in
the Soviet Union, where a large number of families still live in what
is known as communual accommodations in which each family has a room
to itself but has to share kitchen and bathroom,'' DIW adds.
    New housing units average a relatively spacious 96 square yards in
East Germany.
    Slightly more than 40 percent of East German houses and apartments
are in private hands, with half of them occupied by the owners and
the other half rented out at state-controlled low rents, the
institute says. The private owners receive the rent income.
    East German workers lead the East bloc in monthly income, the
institute says. Meat consumtion is the highest in East Germany, 207
pounds a year per capita. The Soviets are last, with 133 pounds,
according to the latest figures available, for 1984.
    Last year's economic growth rate, as measured in national income,
was 3.6 percent, the lowest this decade and far short of the 4.5
percent goal.
    Heavy state subsidies help keep apartment rent and public
transportation costs low, thus allowing families to spend more money
on household items.
    East Germany has been successful with a comprehensive preventive
medicine program, but there have been signs of discontent within the
socialized medicine system.
    East German sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity said
that anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 of the nation's 40,000 physicians
are seeking permission to emigrate to West Germany.
    The dissatisfaction, caused in large part by low salaries provided
by the state, even sparked an appeal from East Berlin's Lutheran
Bishop Gottfried Forck. Last spring, appealing to their
''humanitarian responsibility,'' he asked the doctors to stay.
    The West German newsmagazine Der Spiegel recently reported: ''Many
doctors are simply fed up with shortages, sloppiness and corruption
in the socialized medicine system, above all in the provision of
medicines.''
    East German Communist Party officials also have been acknowledging
difficulties for consumers, in guarded terms.
    Kurt Hager, a member of the ruling Politburo, told the Communist
Party central committee in Berlin: ''For several types of products,
the need is currently greater than industry can produce.''
    Hager said the shortages included clothing, furniture, radios and
even cosmetic products.
    Like the Soviet Union, East Germany has an alcoholism problem -
''society-wide and of the first rank,'' as Friedhelm Merrchel, an
expert with the Lutheran Church, described it. Six percent of the
adult population are alcoholics, he said, and alcohol plays a part in
70 percent of divorces.
    END ADV
 
 
AP-NY-07-16-88 2250EDT
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a278  2012  16 Jul 88
BC-APN--East Germany-Glance, Adv31,0183
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For Release Sunday, July 31
From AP Newsfeatures
With BC-APN--East Germany
    
    BERLIN (AP) - East Germany, or more correctly the German Democratic
Republic, was formed on Oct. 7, 1949 in the zone controlled by the
Soviets after the Allies victory in World War II.
    Beginning in 1952, the East Germans constructed heavily fortified
borders to halt the flow of millions of refugees to the West. The
Berlin Wall, built in 1961, cut off the last major escape route.
    Here at a glance are some of the other facts about East Germany.
    -Population: 16.6 million.
    -Size: 41,610 square miles, about the size of Virginia.
    -Capital: East Berlin.
    -Per capita income: $8,000 (1984).
    -Sources of income: About 80 percent comes from industry, including
chemicals, plastics, cars, and electronic products, textile and
steel. The largest trading partners are the Soviet Union, along with
neighbors Czechoslovakia and West Germany. The agricultural sector
employs about 980,000 people.
    -Religions: About 80 percent Protestant, 11 percent Roman Catholic.
    END ADV
 
 
AP-NY-07-16-88 2304EDT
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