E. Germans Pour Across Czech Line : East Bloc: Communist regime announces plans to ease travel rules. The latest exodus to West Germany approaches 12,000.

Facing an open route to the West, thousands of East Germans poured across a sliver of Czechoslovakia into West Germany on Sunday.

At the rate of between 100 and 200 an hour, the latest wave of refugees from their Communist government took cars, buses and trains in their trek to the West, causing traffic on the Czechoslovak side of the West German border to back up for miles.

West German border police said the exodus through Czechoslovakia would total at least 12,000 by the end of the weekend, the biggest of four refugee waves since September.

And in another development, an official in East Berlin announced Sunday that travel rules will be broadened for all East Germans.

To the weekend’s refugees, this tiny community nestled in the rugged Erz Hills represented “the hole in the wall,” as one put it Sunday--a passage outward to freedom. Schoenberg is the East German-Czechoslovak border crossing closest to West Germany itself.

On Sunday night, a long line of tiny, sputtering East German-made autos, most of them Trabants, creaking with passengers and baggage, waited under the highway’s blazing yellow lights to cross into Czechoslovakia.

Once across the border, it is just a 10-mile trip to Schirnding in the West German state of Bavaria. From there the refugees travel on to a West German government receiving center in Hof. They are received as citizens since West Germany does not recognize a separate East German citizenship.

Authorities in Prague, the Czechoslovak capital, decreed that East Germans could pass through their country without presenting the travel documents previously required.

On Wednesday, East Germany lifted its month-old ban on travel to Czechoslovakia, the only country East Germans can visit freely.

Those who have stayed behind have demanded that their regime make democratic reforms and allow freer travel. As many as 1 million people demonstrated Saturday in East Berlin urging reform.

Here at the border, the drivers and passengers in the Trabants and other flimsy East German-made autos sounded a recurrent theme: They did not trust the regime of East Germany’s new leader Egon Krenz to reform the Communist society, so they were leaving now, while they have the chance.

“There is no hope here,” said a mother with an infant in the back seat.

“We just don’t have confidence in Krenz making the reforms,” said a bearded driver of another car. As the control light snapped from red to green, he drove away.

In East Berlin, meanwhile, Interior Minister Friedrich Dickel announced that travel rules will be broadened for all citizens.

He said the laws would be presented today to the Volkskammer, the East German Parliament, and he expressed the hope that the proposals would be enacted into law by Christmas.

Among other things, the proposed law would allow every citizen 30 days of foreign travel. Individuals would be required to apply for such trips 30 days before the event--three days in urgent cases.

The government hopes that by liberalizing travel, it will partly satisfy East Germans’ demands for reform and stem the flood of refugees to the West. So far this year, about 170,000 people have left.

Other provisions, according to the interior minister, specify that fleeing the country without a hard-to-get exit visa would no longer be a crime.

However, the law covering the Berlin Wall, making it illegal for citizens “to directly violate the border,” would remain in place.

The main inner border between East and West Germany is sealed off by a series of walls and fences, and West Berlin itself is cut off by a double wall around the western portion of the city.

Armed border guards with attack dogs also protect the wall, and in the 1970s, the Communist regime installed devices that automatically opened fire on anyone who violated the space at the edge of the wall. These devices were dismantled during this decade--but the wall remains.

The first way around the wall proved to be in Hungary last August, when the reformist-minded Budapest government decided to take down its own barbed-wire fence with Austria, and later dropped its objections to East Germans crossing from Hungary into Austria.

As the number of such refugees mounted, East Germany was beset with a crisis that resulted in its leader, Erich Honecker, resigning on Oct. 18.

More recently, many have suggested that the Berlin Wall is now out of date.

Late Saturday, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, speaking in Bavaria--where many of the refugees have sought shelter in resettlement camps--said, “The wheel of history is turning.”

And he said he hopes that the Berlin Wall would soon be torn down, totally opening the border between the Germanys.

On Sunday in East Berlin, Culture Minister Hans Joachim declared, “We need a new government as soon as possible.” By that, he said he meant a new lineup in the ruling Politburo.

Since Honecker’s resignation, seven members of the 18-member Politburo have already been dropped.

And a major shake-up is expected when the policy-making Central Committee of the Communist Party opens a three-day meeting in East Berlin on Wednesday.