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Few expect things to get better under Honecker. And though in failing health, he shows no signs of turning power over to the next generation. While their neighbors in Poland and Hungary rush to embrace the reforms of perestroika and glasnost, East Germany's aged chieftains have stoutly withstood all blandishments, even from Gorbachev, to abandon the strict orthodoxies of conventional Communism. The result: a country so calcified that its citizens find a hopeful future only in flight.
So far this year, more than 110,000 East Germans have left, far and away the most since the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. Slightly more than half have departed with official permission, a sign that the Honecker regime has been forced to relax its policy of limiting emigration to the elderly and a few political dissidents. According to West German officials, some 1.8 million East Germans -- more than 10% of the population -- have applied to leave, despite the risk of job and educational discrimination.
But growing numbers refuse to wait for permission. In August and September, more than 30,000 vacationers took advantage of the newly opened border between Hungary and Austria to cross into West Germany. East Berlin tightened controls on travel to Hungary, yet new refugees continue to slip over at the rate of 200 to 500 a day. Hungary has rejected any suggestion that it close its borders.
Last week it was Prague's turn to play host to the refugee hordes. As East Germany's closest ally within the bloc, Czechoslovakia had long been deemed a safe foreign destination. Last year some 4 million East Germans, a quarter of the entire population, crossed into Czechoslovakia on vacation trips. Prague's hard-line regime demonstrated its reliability on the refugee issue by discouraging East German travel to neighboring Hungary at the height of the exodus there.
As the easy exit through Hungary all but closed, a sense of desperation spurred more departures. East German visitors to Prague began moving onto the grounds of the former Lobkowitz palace, a baroque edifice that serves as West Germany's embassy. There they joined several hundred other East Germans who had been living at the embassy for as long as two months waiting for permission to leave for West Germany. The ranks of the occupiers swelled steadily to 5,000. Their tents and blankets covered virtually every square inch of a football-field-size garden in back of the embassy, and hundreds more slept on floors inside. The plots of ground not covered were churned to mud by constant foot traffic, and bathroom facilities were hopelessly overrun.
Still they came, and as more and more East Germans clogged the streets around the embassy, overwhelmed officials sought a diplomatic solution. On Sept. 30, West German Foreign Minister Genscher arrived in Prague with word that the two Germanys had agreed to transport the emigres to the West. They left the next day.