Dazed E. Berliners Browse in World of Luxury

East Berliners found themselves in a dazzling world of consumer luxury Friday.

Many had never been inside a Western shop. Others retained faint memories from before their Communist leaders shut them behind the Berlin Wall in 1961.

Allowed through the wall for the first time in 28 years, they wandered around West Berlin’s best-known department store, the KaDeWe, with an air of dazed wonderment, accepting the free “welcome” cups of coffee offered only to them.

As a special concession, KaDeWe, situated on the fashionable Kurfuerstendamm, was allowing them to pay in East German marks at the Western rate of 10 for one West German mark.

As one packed elevator ascended inside the store, three East German boys could hardly contain their excitement as a recorded voice intoned the names of each department.

When the doors opened to reveal a display of video recorders, televisions and radios, they burst through shouting “ Technik ! Technik !” (Technology! Technology!).

KaDeWe sales staff said the electronic goods department was proving one of the big magnets for the East Berliners.

Another was the candy department, where chocolates and other confections vanished rapidly.

Amazed East Berliners stood in the toiletry section, gazing at what to them was an incredible array of soaps and toothpastes.

But the exchange rate was too much for most of the visitors. Everywhere in the store, strong Berlin accents could be heard saying, “I can’t afford that.”

“Leave it alone. Too expensive,” one husband advised his wife as she ogled a whole smoked ham priced at 34.80 marks--about $19.

The attendant in the elegant cosmetics department also had little to report. “Nobody has paid for anything here in East (German) marks; it’s probably too expensive,” she said.

But for Gisela Leander and many like her, the lack of purchasing power was not disappointing.

The 57-year-old woman said she had started out for the West the first thing Friday morning from Wolfersdorf, just outside East Berlin.

“I just came to look, and that was wonderful enough,” she explained, “especially just before Christmas.”

She spoke enthusiastically of all the good things the East Berliners were being offered by their rich Western neighbors, ranging from free visits to museums and free public transport to price concessions on a number of other attractions

She had already taken time during the visit to dash off a quick letter to Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Bonn, suggesting that other West German cities could emulate West Berlin.

“Then I’ll simply take off one morning for Hamburg and have a look around there,” she said, envisioning her next taste of Western exotica.