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Pagan Rites. The last remaining links to West Germany are the Protestant and Catholic churches, which still operate as single organizations in both halves of Germany. More than 85% of East Germany's population is nominally Protestant. For years, Ulbricht harassed the church by withholding funds for repairs (2,000 churches in East Germany are still in ruins), jailing ministers, and setting up what amounted to a Communist equivalent of religion that has its own Ten Commandments ("Thou shalt perform good deeds for Socialism") and pagan rites that correspond to baptism, confirmation and marriage. Practicing Christians often found that they could not get into universities or earn better jobs. The pressures, plus East Germany's all-pervading apathy, have caused church attendance to drop as much as 75% in most towns. Two years ago, in return for the Protestant churchmen's agreement to recognize East Germany as their sole fatherland, Ulbricht somewhat eased the harassment of the clergy and stopped the automatic exclusion of Christian youths from universities.
Now, Ulbricht is out to sever all links that still unite the churches of East and West Germany. Obediently, "progressive" East German Protestant ministers and theologians last week issued a statement denouncing the unity of the Protestant Church because the two German states are "separated by different economic and social orders." As the Protestant Church prepared to hold this week's annual synod, which is usually held in the two parts of Berlin so that delegates from West Germany can go into East Berlin and mingle with their Eastern brethren, Ulbricht ordered the East German clerics to convene their own separate meeting in East Germany, 20 miles out of Berlin. The meeting could produce a breakaway movement for a separate Protestant Church in East Germany. Similarly, the government has started a campaign to try and force the Catholics to reorganize their dioceses so that East and West Germany will be served by different bishops.
Cold & Humorless. Though he is still surprisingly robust at 73, Ulbricht obviously cannot last forever as East Germany's leader. His heir apparent is a pretty good copy of the original. He is Erich Honecker, 54, a Communist since his youth, whose philosophy is more or less summed up in two of his more famous statements: "The party has never erred," and "The only book worth reading is Stalin's History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.'" Cold and humorless, Honecker spent the war in a Berlin prison, was tapped in 1945 by Ulbricht to organize the East German youth movement. With time off for a two-year leadership course in Moscow, Honecker has risen to No. 2 man in the Politburo, with special responsibility for the armed forces and the secret police.