Leipzig Mayor Resigns Under Fire : East Germany: Five Politburo members to also depart as the political turmoil continues.

The mayor of Leipzig, the East German city rocked by pro-democracy street protests for the last six weeks, resigned under fire today, the latest victim of the country’s most serious political turmoil in 36 years.

Bernd Seidel, 40, stepped down because he had lost the confidence of Leipzig residents, the state-run news agency ADN said.

Hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated for political reform every Monday in Leipzig since late September in East Germany’s largest protests since its formation in 1949. Up to 300,000 people massed in Leipzig, a city of 650,000 people, last Monday.

Also today, East Germany’s new leader, Egon Krenz, said five members of the 18-man Communist Party’s ruling Politburo will resign next week. A West German newspaper reported that East German Prime Minister Willi Stoph will also step down.

The mass-circulation Bild newspaper, which forecast the ouster of East German leader Erich Honecker last month, reported today that Stoph will be removed at a party Central Committee meeting convening Wednesday.

The pro-reform demonstrations began in Leipzig at about the same time thousands of East Germans began fleeing to the West. The protests spread across the country, which was rocked by protests again Thursday night.

About 70,000 East Germans have fled the country since August, citing dissatisfaction with the authoritarian government.

About 4,000 East Germans were jammed into the West German Embassy in the Czechoslovakian capital of Prague today with new arrivals pouring in each hour, all eager to emigrate West despite promises of reform from their Communist leaders.

The new leaders are “just the same hardheaded idiots as before,” said a bricklayer from Karl-Marx-Stadt. “What’s going to change? The corrupted socialism in our country is just getting new clothes, that’s all.”

“I don’t believe that anything will change there,” said another young man. “The reforms are only for the outside world.”

Red Cross workers and refugees unloaded tents and bedding trucked in from West Germany.

East Germany has agreed to let its citizens here renounce their citizenship and then go to West Germany, where they are automatically granted citizenship.

Some people arriving today said the roads to Prague were crammed with East German cars.

A senior East German health official said today that the exodus of thousands of skilled workers is seriously straining medical services in East Germany.

Dr. Geerd Dellas, the health administrator for East Berlin, told a Communist newspaper that 1,100 doctors and nurses had left East Berlin so far.