All Is Forgiven

Egged on by spade-bearded Party Boss Walter Ulbricht, East German Communists have recently been tightening the screws on intellectuals and the professions. In the universities, stooge students were assigned to classes and lectures to make certain that teachers spouted the party line. Doctors and dentists were exhorted to become "medical activists," warned that all private practice would be destroyed so that they could devote full time to serving "people's medical establishments." The result: in eight months 813 doctors, 2,393 teachers and about 200 professors--including the rector of the University of Jena (TIME, Sept. 1)--fled to the West. At Leipzig's biggest X-ray clinic, only seven radiologists remained out of an original staff of 27; at East Berlin's biggest hospital, only eleven gynecologists were left of a staff of 42.

Last week, dismayed by this mass exodus, East Germany's Red masters were in full retreat. On second thought, the East German Politburo decided that "the practice of the medical and teaching professions does not require an outlook based on dialectical materialism. Doctors and other intellectuals who have other beliefs can continue their work unhindered." Ulbricht himself, all but begging the intellectuals to stop running away, solemnly promised that henceforth doctors' and scientists' children would be admitted to high schools "even if they have worse school records than children from the working classes."

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