Alarm

EAST GERMANY

Ever since the flare-up in Hungary, trim-whiskered Walter Ulbricht, Communist boss of East Germany, has been like a cat on the hot tin roof of satellite unrest. Two weeks ago the jumpy Ulbricht, unable to stand the heat any longer, alerted the Communist fire department. In a speech before the East German Socialist Unity (Communist) Party Central Committee, he detailed a nefarious plot to overthrow the regime, and named as the chief incendiary a youthful (34) professor and editor named Wolfgang Harich. It was the first time that Ulbricht has acknowledged renewed trouble in East Germany.

Since the revolt of East Berlin workers in June 1953, the tendency of the practical Germans has been to avoid open clashes with authority but to press for legal concessions, e.g., shorter working hours, lower prices in the state stores. East Germany's 88,000 students, however, have shown open irritation with the fact that almost one-third of their study time is taken up with Communist indoctrination, Russian language lessons, and "sport and technology," i.e., guerrilla training. At East Berlin's Humboldt University last November, as students gathered on the campus to discuss the Hungarian situation, clandestine leaflets came floating down from the rooftops. WE DEMAND MORE THOROUGH TRAINING WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE SOCIETY FOR SPORT AND TECHNOLOGY, proclaimed a big black headline. Underneath in small type was a tag line calculated to chill the nervous Ulbricht: Because the example of Hungary has shown us that we can use it!

Ulbricht dared not crack down too hard on the students. Instead, he pinned the rap on Wolfgang Harich, charging that the young teacher had acted under the influence of "reactionaries" in Hungary and Poland. A handsome, soft-looking youngster in Berlin's World War II "high society," Harich had studied philosophy, turned Buddhist under the influence of Japanese embassy friends, and later, when the draft caught up with him, deserted the German army. A friendly general saved him from being shot, and he turned Roman Catholic. After the Russians came, he switched to Marxism, was made lecturer in historical materialism at Humboldt.

Arrested last November, he has nothing apparent in his record to justify Ulbricht's charge. In the calculated Communist view, however, Harich's record probably enhanced his merit as a scapegoat: there is nothing about it that would make him a martyr in student eyes, or even a symbol of resistance for the West.

While the regime stalled on a trial for Harich, the uncoordinated student discontent showed signs of quieting down. There were no real indications that Boss Ulbricht's house was on fire, but his reaction to a few whiffs of smoke betrayed the frightened uncertainty with which he rules his people.

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