Party Chief Linked to Secret Police Quits : East Germany: The Kohl-backed leader admits the charges. A crowd at a campaign rally is stunned by the news.

An election rally of about 200,000 East Germans here was stunned Wednesday with news that one of their leaders had worked for the Communist secret police.

The crowd, which had gathered in a buoyant mood to hear West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl deliver a rousing speech in this, the cradle for East Germany’s revolution, was instead told by a preliminary speaker that Wolfgang Schnur, head of one of the three parties in the Kohl-backed Alliance of Germany, had resigned after admitting links with the security apparatus, known as the Stasi.

Schnur, who has been confined to a sick bed in recent days, had previously denied a series of accusations claiming he had worked as an informant for the hated Stasi, as well as passing information to West German intelligence.

“I have to tell you a very sad and serious thing,” Oswald Wutzke, general secretary of Schnur’s party, Democratic Awakening, told the crowd. “Wolfgang Schnur has resigned from his position because he has admitted that part of the allegations against him are true.

“Wolfgang Schnur has unfortunately done the same thing as God knows how many other East German citizens,” Wutzke added. “It just proves how bad things were.”

Kohl did not refer to Schnur during his address. But he told a news conference just before the rally that it was neither correct nor possible to withhold what he termed “such serious information” just before a national election, which is scheduled for Sunday.

He expressed solidarity with the Democratic Awakening party.

Schnur, a lawyer from the northern port of Rostock, defended well-known opponents of the former neo-Stalinist East German regime and was widely viewed as a man of personal courage.

Many innocent East Germans were blackmailed into informing on fellow citizens during the Communist era.

How the affair will affect the moderate right-wing alliance is unclear. In interviews after the rally, several citizens admitted they were shocked by the announcement but said they will still vote for one of the alliance parties.

“This election isn’t about personalities, it’s about unification,” stated Werner Schramm, a locksmith.

The announcement took the edge off what was to have been a triumphant farewell appearance for Kohl on the East German campaign trail. The crowd’s original upbeat mood reflected a strong surge by the Alliance for Germany in the final days of the campaign.

Local residents and city officials described the crowd as both larger and more spirited than at a Social Democratic Party rally last month at which former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt spoke.

While early opinion polls had indicated a commanding lead for the Social Democrats, more recent surveys have shown the Alliance for Germany roughly even, with a sizable minority still undecided.