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New Premier Willi Stoph, in contrast, is a tough, up-from-the-ranks native German Communist with a puritanically proletarian private life and a good chance at 71-year-old Ulbricht's job as boss. Starting as an economic aide to Ulbricht after the war, Stoph displayed such administrative talents that he was given the job of organizing the Communist security apparatus, later commanded the People's Army.
Saddled with the monolithic image of hard-necked old Ulbricht, East German propagandists for months have worked overtime to build up Stoph as a man who, though dedicated, is not hidebound, and though tough, can be accessible and pragmatic. True or not, the reasons for the seeming effort to give East Germany a new look through Stoph and the pass agreement are not hard to find: Moscow has never given up trying to make the division of Germany more palatable to the West; and with the rest of the Communist European satellites in motion, the East German corpse by contrast has looked seedier than ever. In particular, Khrushchev sorely needs to build up East Germany's image for the visit to glittering West Germany that he expects to make this winter.