Party Leaders Challenged at E. Berlin Rally

Thousands of East Berliners rallied Sunday at an opposition meeting that developed into an emotional exchange with their Communist leaders. Among those present were the city’s Communist Party chief, who admitted that there has been disagreement within the regime on easing tight political controls.

In the dialogue, sponsored by Mayor Erhard Krack to discuss reform, the Communist leaders were sometimes booed, and many in the crowd of 20,000 accused them of misdeeds, errors and excessive privileges. Some in the crowd called for election reforms, while others charged police brutality against pro-democracy protesters during the visit of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev earlier this month.

One worker demanded that the Berlin Wall be torn down, declaring, “It’s time we were allowed to go where we want.” Another at the rally shouted, “Allow free elections now!” The crowd applauded.

Guenter Schabowski, East Berlin’s Communist Party leader and a member of the ruling Politburo, told the open-air gathering outside the old City Hall, “There are arguments in the leadership of the Communist Party” regarding the relaxing of rigid rules by East Germany’s new leader, Egon Krenz.

Microphones were provided to individuals who wished to speak. Some of those in the crowd demanded the release of demonstrators arrested during the marches and referred to those in custody as political prisoners.

East Berlin Police Chief Friedhelm Rausch apologized for the brutal suppression of previous pro-democracy demonstrations in the city. But the crowd jeered and whistled when he maintained that police were correct in arresting some of the protesters, who he said had resorted to violence.

A second rally in East Berlin at Congress Hall attracted several thousand more participants, while the official news agency ADN reported additional thousands assembled in the southern industrial city of Karl Marx Stadt.

Sunday’s rallies were permitted by the East German leadership, and the ADN agency said that members of the opposition New Forum group attended the meeting in Karl Marx Stadt.

New Forum, which claims more than 30,000 followers, is denied official status but has been tacitly recognized since Schabowski and other senior Communist figures in the past few days have spoken to some of its leading members.

The protests and public discussions have sharply increased in East Germany since Krenz, 52, took over power from the ousted 77-year-old Erich Honecker 11 days ago.

One speaker at the East Berlin City Hall rally was cheered when he declared, “If we dissolved the security police, there would be a bigger work force to produce things.”

And another was applauded when he said: “It seems to me that the Marxist dialectic has been lost. Should it be replaced by rubber truncheons?”

The Communist Party’s major policy-making body, the Central Committee, is scheduled to meet Nov. 8-10 to discuss ways to solve the crisis caused in part by the exodus to the West of 120,000 East Germans so far this year.

The East German regime received some advice Sunday from Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, whose country’s ruling Communist Party recently reorganized itself as a democratic socialist party. Nemeth said the Krenz government must speed up reforms.

In an interview in the West German newspaper Die Welt, Nemeth declared: “A society cannot be forced in the long term to follow a political and economic model it feels uneasy with. I seen no viable answer for East Germany but an acceleration of its reforms.”

Nemeth said that Hungary’s decision to open its border to the West for East German refugees has played a role in reforms promised by Krenz, including more open media, an end to travel restrictions and an amnesty for those who fled the country.

“What we did has definitely played a big part in the changes,” Nemeth said.

As for the Berlin Wall and its equivalent along the East-West German border, built in 1961, Nemeth said: “Building the wall was wrong then, and it is more wrong now. I believe in a common European home without walls or barbed wire. The wall exists, but such solutions cannot stop the wheels of history or people’s wish for freedom.”

Nemeth said he does not know when the wall would be dismantled to follow Hungary’s example in taking down its barbed-wire fence with Austria, “but I know the time will come.”