New Parliament Picks a Leader for E. Germany

On a crisp spring Thursday morning, democracy in East Europe passed another milestone as the region’s first freely elected Parliament in more than four decades was convened here in the East German capital.

The 400 lawmakers wasted little time in choosing Lothar de Maiziere, the 50-year-old Christian Democratic leader, to form a government.

Its primary task will be to negotiate unification with West Germany, then dissolve itself in preparation for all-German elections, possibly as early as sometime in the second half of next year.

De Maiziere’s Christian Democrats are the largest of the three groups that make up the conservative Alliance for Germany, which won 49% of the vote in the national election of March 18.

On Wednesday, after several days of hesitation, the moderate-left Social Democrats, who finished second in the March voting, agreed to take part in a coalition government.

Christian Democratic sources said they hope to present the new government and formally elect De Maiziere as prime minister next week when Parliament--the Volkskammer, it is called--is scheduled to meet again.

The lawmakers also elected a Speaker, Dr. Sabine Bergmann-Pohl, a Christian Democrat and physician, and it abolished the collective presidency created by the previous Communist regime. They also eliminated from the constitution’s preamble language that describes East Germany as a socialist state of workers and peasants.

They also established a committee to investigate accusations that some members of the Volkskammer had worked for the Communist security police, the so-called Stasi.

The leaders of two parties have been forced to resign because of alleged links to the Stasi. Press reports, mainly in West Germany, have sought to link several others with the Stasi, among them De Maiziere, though De Maiziere appears to have been cleared as the result of an independent check of Stasi files last week.

The opening Volkskammer session took place amid a mixture of hope and anxiety that has characterized East Germany and the other former Soviet satellites in the wake of last autumn’s revolutions.

“We are all aware of the significance of this historic day,” Democratic Socialist Lothar Piche said in the first speech of the session.

Piche, at 64, was the oldest member present, and this reflected one of the most visible changes in the new Parliament. The old, rubber-stamp Parliament was led by men in their 70s and 80s. One was 100.

Members of the new legislature were at times nervous and unsure of themselves, but they were clearly excited.

“The power of those who rule must not be misused,” Speaker Bergmann-Pohl told them. “We’ve been elected by the people in order to serve. That we must always remember. The call ‘We are the people’ must always ring in our ears.”

These were the words that rang out in the streets of Leipzig, Dresden and other East German cities, rallying the people who brought down the Communist regime.

Thursday’s proceedings were carried live on all East German radio stations and both television stations. Before it began, many of the lawmakers attended an early church service at the Gethsemane Church, where some of them had helped the revolution along with peace vigils in defiance of the Communist authorities.

Hans Modrow, the Communist caretaker leader, and Gregor Gysi, who heads the Communists who now call themselves Democratic Socialists, both attended the service.

East Germans wasted little time in taking to the streets to lobby their new leaders. There were widespread protests Thursday against a proposal by the West German Bundesbank to give East Germans only one West German mark for every two East German marks under a proposed currency union.

Campaign rhetoric by leading West German politicians, including Chancellor Helmut Kohl, had led East Germans to believe that the exchange rate would be 1 for 1.

After the Bundesbank’s 1-for-2 plan was leaked to the West German press last week, there was strong public reaction in East Germany, and politicians in both countries have since made it clear that no final decision has been made on this question.

East Germany’s new lawmakers also encountered protesters demanding protection for East German homeowners against West Germans seeking to reclaim property in the East that was seized at the time of the Communist takeover.

Juergen Rambusch, head of an East German property-protection group, told an American reporter, “It’s as if an Indian came to you and said you were on his land.”