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One signer was Sarah Kirsch, a gifted poet who was subjected to anti-Semitic taunts. GET OUT, JEWISH PIG! was painted over the entrance of her East Berlin apartment, possibly by the secret police. Last month she was pressured by authorities to leave East Germany for good. Another well-known poet, Reiner Kunze, has also been obliged to leave because of what he called "frightening methods of intimidation." His daughter was forced to leave school before her final exams because she was the child of "an enemy of the state," and his wife was summarily refused promotion at the hospital where she works. Kunze's book of verse and prose poetry, sarcastically entitled The Wonderful Years, contains many poignant vignettes about life in East Germany, especially the stultifying omnipresence of the security forces.
Other artists who have lately joined the exodus include Gerulf Pannach and Christian Kunert, two of East Germany's top rock musicians, and a well-known composer, Tilo Medek. Writer Jürgen Fuchs, who had been imprisoned for sending to the West an account of his interrogation by the secret police, was released and dispatched to West Berlin.
Another distinguished dissenter who may well be one of the government's next targets is Robert Havemann, 67, a former university professor and a close friend of Biermann's. He is an ex-party member who was imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II with East German Party Boss Erich Honecker. Now under house arrest, Havemann appears slated for deportation despite his failing health.
The government's policy of forcibly exiling dissident intellectuals has given false hope to many East Germans who want to get out. About 200,000 people have applied to emigrate to the West. Fewer than 10% have been granted exit permits, while others have lost their jobs as a result of their applications.
At the same time, East Germany carries on a brisk traffic in political prisoners, who are regularly ransomed off to West Germany. Last week 180 prisoners—mostly men and women who had been caught trying to escape to the West—were driven in chartered buses to the border. Then they were handed over to West German authorities who had paid up to $28,000 a head for them, a trade in bodies that the embarrassed Federal Republic justified in the name of "inner German reconciliation." As about 1,000 prisoners are ransomed every year, East Germany turns a handsome profit by ridding itself of its dissidents.