Western Officials Cite a Lack of Trust : Flight of E. Germans--Internal Crisis Mounts

The stream of people fleeing East Germany, along with the underlying causes of the exodus, reflects a growing crisis in this hard-line Communist state, Western officials and diplomats agreed Friday.

“The situation has definitely reached a crisis,” one Western envoy said. “There is a complete lack of trust between the government and the governed. Large numbers of East Germans want to escape, and the authorities don’t know what to do about it. In almost any other country, there would have been serious street demonstrations by now.”

Most of the officials interviewed here said the crisis facing the nation is the most serious since a surge of citizens to the West in 1961 forced the Communist regime to erect the Berlin Wall and the fortified frontier between the rest of East Germany and West Germany.

An estimated 90,000 East Germans are expected to emigrate legally this year, and thousands more will escape by illegal means.

Vacationers Underscore Crisis

The crisis is underscored by the great number of East Germans, on vacation in Hungary, who have tried to cross the border there into Austria and planning to move on to West Germany.

East Germans have seen and heard little of this in the controlled domestic news media. The rare reference has been to random acts of disloyal citizens. But East Germans can easily tune in to West German television, and on this they have seen film of their countrymen being welcomed in Austria and West Germany.

The East German government, headed by Erich Honecker, seems to have been immobilized by the hemorrhage of its citizens. Honecker himself celebrated his 77th birthday Friday in a sickbed in an undisclosed place after surgery last week for a gall bladder disorder.

The current flight from East Germany began this summer when the annual flow of vacationers to Hungary coincided with a decision by the government in Budapest to dismantle most of the heavy fence along its frontier with Austria.

More than 3,000 have already succeeded in getting across into Austria, and an estimated 200,000 East Germans are still in Hungary on vacation.

Offices Had to Shut Down

Some East Germans have sought refuge in West German diplomatic missions in East Berlin, Budapest and Prague, Czechoslovakia, forcing the Bonn government to close those offices until the situation can be resolved.

In East Berlin, the West German mission on Hanover Street is currently playing host to 116 East Germans ensconced on mattresses in a building within the diplomatic compound. According to a West German official, they are being fed and housed and advised to leave--because they cannot be issued passports or other travel documents that would enable them to leave East Germany.

“We are only a mission, not an embassy,” a West German official there said. “We can’t issue passports, but it would do them no good anyway since they can’t leave the country without proper exit clearance from East German authorities.”

The official did not say so, but it is understood that in recent months many of the East Germans who have made it into the West German mission have been quietly moved on to West Germany--with the help of Communist authorities.

The East Germans in the mission are for the most part young, in their 20s and 30s, and many have children. They are fed up with the political and economic strictures of the Communist regime and the bleakness of their lives and shabby surroundings.

‘They See No Hope’

“They are frustrated,” the West German official here said. “They see nothing moving, no hope, and they want a more attractive life.”

Another Western official said, “East Germany is losing its best people, the young ones, and those with skills, professionals like doctors and teachers, but also carpenters and plumbers.”

Compounding the problem, analysts here say, is the fact that East Germany’s Honecker has chosen to reject the reforms undertaken by Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

A senior Western diplomat said: “Everywhere, from Warsaw to Vladivostok, change is in the air, and the East Germans feel this. But the political leadership here doesn’t understand it. They think that because they have achieved 19th-Century dreams of full employment, housing and even cars for some, the people are happy.”

Stefan Heym, the most prominent novelist in East Germany, said Friday that he doubts that the rulers are capable of reform. He told a West German newspaper, “When I imagine what Marx and Engels would have said to a form of socialism from which people flee . . . with what scornful laughter they would have greeted this situation!”

Most observers here say that even if the East German government were prepared to address the refugee problem, it would be hard put to come up with workable answers. If it should block travel to Hungary, it would only aggravate the people. If it should liberalize travel, it would risk losing even more people to the West.

The West Germans, too, seem unable to help much. They are committed by the constitution to grant citizenship to all East Germans, and it would not be politically wise to close the doors to refugees, even though many West Germans object to penniless East Germans turning up to share in all the welfare benefits.

“There is a lot of foreboding in East Germany today,” one Western observer said. “Something’s going to happen. I don’t know what, but something’s got to happen.”

And, one diplomat said, “I think the regime hopes that when the vacation season is over next month, the Hungarian exit problem will be reduced. It will be interesting to see how many East Germans return from their holidays in Hungary.”