East German Communists Lose Monopoly

The East German Parliament voted overwhelmingly Friday in East Berlin to strip the Communist Party of its monopoly on political power.

A handful of members abstained, but the rest of the 500 members agreed by a show of hands to abolish the party’s dominant position--a key step demanded by the popular movement for reform.

There was no debate before the vote, which canceled a clause in Article 1 of the Constitution that said the state should be “under the leadership of the working class and its Marxist-Leninist party.”

A substitute clause reads: “The German Democratic Republic is a socialist state of workers and farmers. It is the political organization of the working people in town and country.”

The amendment was the first since 1974 and reflects the startling change in the political complexion of East Germany over the past few weeks, since the hard-line government was ousted Oct. 18.

Friday’s action came just two days after the Czechoslovak Parliament agreed to remove a similar provision from its constitution.

The East German lawmakers are now expected to take up a proposal that some members be deprived of their parliamentary immunity so that they can be charged with illegally abusing their authority.

Reformers have called for an investigation into charges that Erich Honecker, the deposed hard-line president, and two senior deputies violated the public trust by maintaining a lavish hunting lodge at state expense.

Also on the agenda is a proposed statement to Czechoslovakia apologizing for East German support of the repression of the Prague Spring reform movement in 1968. East Berlin has said it regretted the move but has stopped short of formally apologizing, as Hungary and Poland have done.

East Germany’s newly formed Greens party demanded Friday that the government return to Jews property seized by the Nazi government in the 1930s and taken by the Communists after World War II.

The Greens said in a statement that East Germany had sought to minimize the role of German Communists in the persecution of Jews.

Dr. Maram Stern, a consultant to Edgar M. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, said after discussions with Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer that the East German government may make a statement on reparations to survivors of the Jewish Holocaust.

East Germany has not admitted any guilt for the Holocaust, but it indicated last year that it might compensate victims, not in the form of reparations but as a humanitarian gesture. Foreign Minister Fischer has said he would like to see relations with Israel improved.

Meanwhile, songwriter Wolf Biermann, one of East Germany’s best-known dissidents, returned home Friday after 13 years in exile and appeared at a concert in Leipzig, a focal point of the reform movement.

“Leipzig is the best place in the world to make a song now,” Biermann said, “because the people there are the ones who are making the revolution.”

Biermann, whose satirical lyrics aimed at the Communist leadership were immensely popular, was accused of being “an enemy of the state” while on tour abroad in 1976.