Bridge over an Infamous Wall

Despite the superpower chill, a Soviet satellite stays in touch with the West

If American missiles are deployed on West German soil the situation will change." When the late Soviet leader Yuri Andropov directed that warning at West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl last year, he left no doubt about what he meant. Ties between East and West Germany would inevitably deteriorate once the two countries had to view each other "through a thick palisade of missiles."

Relations between the two Germanys have changed, but not in the way that Andropov predicted. Only three days after the West German parliament voted last November to deploy the new NATO Pershing II missiles, East German Leader Erich Honecker spoke of the need to "minimize the damages" to East-West relations. Since then, he has welcomed Kohl to East Germany, conferred with opposition Social Democratic Leader Hans-Jochen Vogel and negotiated trade credits with Bavarian Leader Franz Josef Strauss, a staunch antiCommunist. Later this year, in his first official visit to West Germany, Honecker will make a nostalgic trip to his home town of Wiebelskirchen. Most auspiciously, perhaps, East Germany has allowed more than 19,000 of its citizens to emigrate to the West since the beginning of the year; in all of 1983, 11,343 East Germans crossed the border. Says Horst Ehmke, deputy leader of West Germany's Social Democratic Party: "Right now Honecker is doing more for detente than any other statesman."

Such a show of independence from Moscow is surprising in an East bloc nation known for marching in lockstep with the Kremlin. But while Honecker has eased travel restrictions he has added a new extension to the Berlin Wall just behind the Brandenburg Gate, as if to indicate that there are clear limits on how far the new togetherness can go. TIME Senior Correspondent Frederick Ungeheuer spent two weeks crisscrossing East Germany in an effort to understand the ambivalence of a country striving to be both Communist and German. His report:

Nearly four decades after the end of World War II, East Berlin still seems to be digging out from the rubble left by Allied bombardments and the advancing Red Army. The old German Cathedral, a stone's throw from Checkpoint Charlie and West Berlin, stands charred and roofless, awaiting renovation. On the once famous Unter den Linden promenade, the German State Library shows the pockmarks of bullets and shrapnel. But the war and subsequent dismemberment of the country have also left deep psychological wounds that have fostered the growing sense of unease in East Germany about the present stalemate in U.S.-Soviet relations.

Because of East Germany's close ties with the Soviet Union, public discussion of the arms race is carefully controlled. But there are occasional displays of candor that reveal what East Germans are really thinking. At the Pfeffermuhle, a noted satiric cabaret in Leipzig, an antiwar skit portrays the absurdity of the arms race better than hundreds of vituperative articles in the official press. Two soldiers, one American, the other Soviet, stand on opposite sides of a white border post. They compare missiles. The Soviet, who openly identifies his weapon as an SS-20, insists that it is necessary for peace. The American replies that the Pershing is for peace too. The soldiers finally admit that each side has the power to destroy the other 30 times and that there can be no winners in a nuclear holocaust.

Despite such appearances, the government has shown that it will not tolerate open protest. Last November police prevented antiwar groups from forming a human chain reaching from the U.S. embassy to the Soviet embassy on the Unter den Linden. Official propaganda posters make it clear that the U.S. is responsible for the arms race and depict President Reagan as the warhead of a NATO missile. East Germany's commitment to the Warsaw Pact is as unshakable as ever. Young men in trim, silver-buttoned coats from the People's Army seem to be everywhere in East Berlin. Soviet trucks, high-wheeled Jeeps and sometimes tanks freely roam country roads, singly or in convoys. Informers for the East German State Security Service riddle society. Says a young woman: "They know me better than I do."

The regime has also cracked down on the only unofficial peace movement, which was launched in 1981 by youth groups in the Lutheran Church under the slogan "Swords into Plowshares." At first the authorities allowed church leaders to distribute 100,000 patches with the group's distinctive emblem, depicting a man bending a sword with hammer blows. But when the badges began to attract international attention, the police hauled young people in to tear or cut the offending emblems from their clothing.

Still, it is hard to keep East German youth from being influenced by the peace movement on the other side of the border. While the Soviet Union and other East bloc countries continue to jam radio broadcasts from the West, more than two-thirds of East Germany's 16.8 million people live within range of West Germany's three television networks. Every day an undistorted picture of life in the West is beamed into their living rooms. Only the area around Dresden, which forms a huge basin, is out of touch and universally pitied as "the Valley of the Unknowing."

Television and the picture that it gives of the West have come to play a dominant role in East German life. Children grow up knowing West German commercials by heart, without getting a taste of the real thing. Their parents view live parliamentary debates from Bonn, Western news reports from around the world and Dallas with the same fascination as their neighbors across the border. West German politicians are so familiar that they are instantly recognized during visits to East Germany. Says Lutheran Minister

Manfred Domroes: "On television the West looks like a beautifully decorated shop window."

The Communist regime tries to counter Western broadcasts with special programs and press commentaries "correcting the wrong impressions." But it cannot compete and has little choice but to let in more Western entertainment. The Weimar State Theater is negotiating for the rights to produce Leonard Bernstein's Candide, and the Leipzig State Opera finds nothing wrong with staging West Side Story with its ringing chorus, "I want to be in America." Meanwhile, On Golden Pond is charming audiences in East German moviehouses.

Living next to West Germany also has distinct economic advantages. Because of special trade agreements between the two countries, East Germany is often referred to, only half jokingly, as the "eleventh member of the European Community." West Germany also offers interest-free trade credits to East Germany to keep exports and imports between the two countries in balance. East German workers, on average, take home $360 a month, in contrast with $250 in Czechoslovakia and $230 in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet bloc, only Hungarians enjoy a higher standard of living.

But the good life in East Germany is still a pale shadow of what can be seen daily on West German television. Lines in East Berlin are as common as they are in most Soviet bloc capitals. At the few remaining private bakeries and butchers, East Germans queue up in hopes of getting better rolls or a steak "under the table." Produce markets are crowded whenever bananas arrive, usually once every three weeks. Women scramble at the hosiery counter when the runless brand, "softy hose," is available. A family usually has to wait from eight to ten years to buy a Trabant, the tiny, uncomfortable car built in East Germany.

The fact that East Germans can constantly compare their own economic backwardness and restricted personal freedom to a more bountiful life enjoyed by people who speak the same language, learn the same nursery rhymes and eat the same food has fostered a national inferiority complex. Sipping soda in a cafe off East Berlin's Alexanderplatz, a vast square of monolithic buildings under a huge television tower, Katie Markert, 19, a dress designer, laments the fact that she cannot walk the Paris boulevards that she knows so well from books, films and television. "What have we done to be forbidden to go wherever we like?" she asks. "We are not criminals."

A desire to travel, especially to the West, has replaced the obsession with better quality food, clothes and housing that preoccupied the postwar generation. But until recently, only elderly East Germans could travel abroad with relative ease. Now as many as 500,000 East Germans, the majority of them between 20 and 40, are believed to have filed applications for exit visas. West German diplomats say that many are marginal types who would be difficult to employ in any society. Others are drawn by the glitter of capitalism. Complains an East Berlin engineer: "Too many of our young people believe they can glimpse a paradise through the fence." But many are genuinely disaffected. Says a Potsdam pastor: "They cannot be put down as mere slaves of consumerism. They want to make a fresh start somewhere. Many feel they simply cannot realize their personal goals here."

Fear of an explosion of discontent may have persuaded Honecker to open the gates a little. "A few months ago, you could have cut the mood here with a knife," says a Western diplomat in East Berlin. "The whole thing smacks of crisis management." But the exodus also enhances Honecker's image across the border as a more benign, if not exactly popular, patriarch who is willing to take risks for the sake of detente. Explains a West German official: "Honecker knows the road to other West European capitals goes through Bonn."

Yet the majority of East Germans prefer to stay behind. Applying for permission to emigrate can lead to immediate dismissal from work, without compensation. Many also know from West German TV that finding a job on the other side, where the unemployment rate is 9.6%, is not easy. The pastor of an East Berlin church pleaded with his congregation to stay, arguing that "anyone who cannot be a Christian here will not be able to be one somewhere else." Many members of the East German artistic community fear that leaving would only be a step back for them and prefer to stay on as "internal emigres."

The Communist regime has responded to the growing sense of dislocation by appealing to German nationalism and the past glories of Prussia and Saxony. At least 80 local artists and 400 craftsmen have spent four years and $120 million meticulously restoring the Semper Opera in Dresden, which was destroyed in an Anglo-American fire bombing raid in 1945. The famous equestrian statue of Frederick the Great that graced the Unter den Linden until World War II has returned to its pedestal like an old piece of furniture reclaimed from the attic and restored to its proper place. The sudden fascination with Frederick is the subject of a comedy titled The Prussians Are Coming, which is playing, appropriately enough, in Potsdam, where the King once held court.

The Marxist regime has rehabilitated Protestant Reformer Martin Luther, but the Lutheran Church, to which 30% of East Germans belong (8% are Catholic), has not fared so well. No more than a tenth of those baptized are still active in congregations. Christian children are often barred from higher education, except when they are members of elite groups, such as the boys' choir at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where Bach once served as music director. State employees are expected to be atheists. Jobs in teaching, the courts, or the military are automatically out of bounds for believers. The historic Friedrichskirche, a squat brick church with pointed steeple that Frederick the Great built in Potsdam, seats 900 people, but no more than 150 parishioners attend Sunday services.

In an effort to adjust to the church's changing role in society, teachers at the Lutheran seminary in Wittenberg now train younger ministers to place less emphasis on church attendance. Instead, they are encouraged to be "innkeepers" who welcome guests to visit for beer, a snack--and open conversation. Generally, Lutheran clerics prefer to remain apolitical. Stephan Flade, a young minister with six generations of Lutheran clerics in his family, supported the "plow1 shares" movement, but he has reservations about the church's role. Says he: "I would not want to be pastor in a church as politically powerful as Poland's. Our church must remain powerless. Except when terror reigns."

East German artists have also had to adapt. The regimentation they have experienced has inspired images that speak powerfully to East Germans. In one painting by Leipzig Artist Wolfgang Mattheuer, a modern Icarus with gossamer wings struggles to fly above healthy, ordered garden plots, where most of his neighbors are too busy to notice. A statue by Mattheuer offers a more telling glimpse of the dilemma that East Germans face. A frightened man, his face creased with worry, is shown removing a mask shaped like a sheep's head. But, as the East German artist explains, "he is just as ready to put it back on."

East Germans have had it drummed into them that they are citizens of the German Democratic Republic, a nation as distinct from West Germany as are two other German-speaking nations, Austria and Switzerland. But after 40 years of division the yearning to transcend the ideological boundaries that divide East and West Germany is still strong. Ulrich Plenzdorf, an East German novelist and playwright whose works sell on both sides of the Wall, argues that "no matter how many adjectives the system may use to describe itself, the 'German' remains." When a West German border guard once asked Leipzig Painter Bernhard Heisig how long he intended to stay in "Germany," Heisig promptly replied, "I never left it."

In one sense that may be true. But such talk of a unified Germany, however vaguely expressed, still causes anxiety on a continent where the war sis all too clearly remembered. Says Bishop Albrecht Schoenherr, who was the leader of the East German Lutheran Church until he retired 2 1/2 years ago:

"We should not frighten people in the East and West again with a new quest for national unity, and finally accept the consequences of a war we instigated with all its horrors." The 800 miles of tank traps, minefields and barbed wire that still separate East from West are a constant reminder that in political terms there are, and for the foreseeable future there will be, two Germanys.