The Wall can keep East Germans from moving West, but it cannot prevent them from looking in that direction. Last week Communist Boss Walter Ulbricht felt obliged to order a turnabout during the party's Central Committee meeting in East Berlin.
His speech lasted six hours, but the lines that the party faithful had been waiting for came in a brief, embarrassed critique of a prominent party aide who, according to Ulbricht, was caught between "the general interests of society" and "illusionary, unbalanced demands."
That was old Spitzbart's way of referring to his late brilliant planningcommission chieftain, Dr. Erich Apel, 48. Apel shot himself in his office three weeks ago, the same day that East Germany signed a $15 billion five-year trade pact with the Soviet Union —over Apel's bitter protests.
Under the pact, East Germany agreed to continue to reserve 50% of its ex ports, including machinery and other specialized manufactures, for the Soviet Union. Apel and his young technocrats wanted to boost hard-currency earnings with increased exports to the West. Their "illusionary, unbalanced demand" was to use these earnings to buy technically advanced Western plants and equipment. Instead, the trade pact committed East Germany to deliver some 300 merchant ships to the Soviet Union, at prices 30% below what Western buyers would have paid. The Soviet Union promised to supply oil, iron ore and other raw materials—at prices well above the world market.
Apel is believed to have lei a diary detailing the Soviets' methods of shortchanging the East Germans and giving the inside story of negotiations for the pact. The Communists say that the diary is a forgery. Ulbricht was conspicuously present at Apel's state funeral, and the official explanation for his death remains "overburdened nerves."
The party meeting also signaled stricter literary and cultural censorship, largely as a result of the deplorable East German fondness for Western modes. "These monotonous Western hits and dances, the eternal 'yeah, yeah, yeah,' is simply nerve-killing and ridiculous," barked Ulbricht. The East German Min istry of Culture, the state movie monopoly and a popular radio station were under fire for encouraging—or failing to discourage—"American sex propaganda" and "beat music." Worst offender of all was one of East Germany's few youthful talents, Balladier Wolf Biermann, 29. Biermann's slangy, sardonic songs describe life in the shadow of the Wall as something less than idyllic. They were pronounced guilty of "ill-concealed bourgeois anarchistic socialism," and, worse still, skepticism.