Bonn to Close Refugee-Crowded Embassy in Hungary : East Germans Seeking to Go to West Swamp Building; Protests Mark Wall Anniversary

The government announced Sunday that it will temporarily close its embassy in Hungary today because it has been swamped by East Germans who refuse to leave the building unless they receive asylum or visa documents to travel to the West.

The move came on the 28th anniversary of the start of construction of the Berlin Wall by East Germany. The anniversary was marked by demonstrations on both sides of the wall and an apparent failed attempt by an East German man to flee to the West through Checkpoint Charlie, a major crossing point.

The move to close the embassy in Budapest, the Hungarian capital, followed last week’s decision by Bonn to shut its mission in East Germany because of a similar influx of East Germans.

The influx into West German missions in East Berlin, Budapest, Warsaw, Prague and Belgrade has caused a serious rift with the East German regime and embarrassment with the Hungarian, Polish, Czechoslovak and Yugoslav governments.

The East German government, through its controlled press, has accused West Germany and its media of fomenting the surge of East Germans who are attempting to leave that country, which is under the repressive leadership of hard-liner Erich Honecker. As a lower ranking official at the time, Honecker supervised construction of the wall, built to halt the flight of hundreds of thousands of East Germans fleeing the Communist regime. Construction began on Aug. 13, 1961.

On Sunday, 10 East Germans among the 131 who had holed up in the West German mission in East Berlin were reported to have left the building after unsuccessfully applying for West German documents.

Although all East Germans are entitled to West German passports under the West German constitution, Bonn officials say they will not issue such documents inside Communist countries because it would not help the would-be immigrants.

“If we gave them passports or visas, they still have to go through official procedures in Eastern countries to get out,” a Foreign Ministry official said here.

“Neither the East Germans nor the Hungarians are allowing people with such documents to leave, so stamping visas into their East German documents just makes things worse for them.”

The Bonn embassy in Budapest has about 180 East Germans, who traveled to Hungary on vacation and then sought to gain visas. After they were turned down, they refused to leave the building.

West German officials here say that it is against government policy to forcibly remove East Germans from their missions in Communist states.

“The capacity of the mission in Budapest is absolutely exhausted,” said the Bonn Foreign Ministry. “The embassy must therefore be closed to the public from Monday until further notice.”

However, in an unsigned letter to the West German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, some of the East Germans in Budapest accused the embassy staff of threatening to expel them by force.

“We do not ask--we demand that something should be done by the German public to protect us from being pushed back into the (East German) zone,” said the letter.

West German officials admit that living conditions inside their missions for would-be immigrants are difficult, with a limited number of beds, showers and toilets.

Some of those in the Budapest embassy failed in their attempts to cross the Hungarian border into Austria, a popular escape route since Hungary removed much of the wire fencing along its frontier two months ago.

An estimated 1.5 million East Germans, or 9% of the population, are estimated to have applied officially for permission to emigrate.

At least 80,000 are expected to be granted exit permits this year, but the others will have to wait indefinitely.

The increase in the number applying to leave has been boosted partly by the willingness of the East German authorities to grant more applications and partly because of the depressing living standards in the country, which has resisted economic and political reforms.

The highly visible plight of the East Germans has reportedly angered Communist leader Honecker, because it has focused European attention on his failure to solve the country’s economic problems or introduce political reforms, as his Polish and Hungarian allies in the Warsaw Pact have done.

In East Berlin, security forces dispersed about 50 East Germans who tried to demonstrate at the West German mission to mark Sunday’s anniversary of the Berlin Wall, the Associated Press reported. Witnesses said the demonstrators tried to lay flowers at the mission gates.

An unidentified assailant hurled a firebomb at the wall near the Brandenburg Gate early Sunday, West German police said. The bomb exploded when it crashed against the wall but caused no serious damage.

The East German state news agency ADN said several masked assailants from West Berlin damaged border barriers in the southern sector of East Berlin.

ADN, which did not describe the damage, said a diplomatic protest would be lodged with West Berlin authorities.

Witnesses at the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing said that at least one man who attempted to flee across the heavily guarded frontier just before noon was arrested by East German border guards before reaching Western territory.