Grumbles from the East

On and on they poured through the chinks in Berlin's ugly Wall--and on New Year's morning some of them had to be poured back out again. With beer and brandy, Scotch and vodka, but mostly with bubbly glasses of Sekt (German champagne), nearly 78,000 West Berliners toasted the turn of the year with Red sector relatives. Those fortunate enough to have passes for both New Year's Eve and the day itself were permitted to spend the night in the East, and thus sleep off the loudest, happiest spree the divided city had experienced since the Wall went up 28 months ago. Others, overcome with fatigue and celebration, dashed back to beat the 5 a.m. witching hour--some of them in East German ambulances.

Pet Phrases. But as the Jan. 5 expiration date of the holiday "protocol" drew closer, the farewells at the Wall grew tearful once again. Mayor Willy Brandt estimated that 1,300,000 of his West Berliners had passed through the Wall during the 18-day period, carrying with them $3,250,000 worth of food, clothing and Christmas presents. Nonetheless, even as Brandt's representatives worked cautiously with East German officials to renew the visiting agreement, many Westerners--both German and Allied--were having doubts. Brandt views the Wall arrangement as merely another item in the long list of "technical agreements" under which the two Germanys do more than $450 million in business each year. But the Bonn government, hypersensitive as ever on the matter of East German recognition, worried that another agreement with Walter Ulbricht's regime would only add one more fragment of legitimacy to his claim. Nor did it like the way East German newspapers and television were crowing about "three Germanys" and "the Free City of Berlin"--pet phrases of both Ulbricht and Nikita Khrushchev aimed at eroding Allied rights in Berlin. But whatever the Communists' motives, the holiday pass agreement clearly proved most erosive on their own side of the Wall. To East Berliners, who had been chafing in the gloom of empty shops and echoing streets, the sight of bright, gift-laden visitors seared like acid. West Berliners found their Eastern kin far more outspoken against the Ulbricht regime than they had been before the Wall went up. In fact, workers at East Berlin's municipal transport company, BVG, demanded that the pass agreement not only be extended but expanded to permit East Berliners to visit their relatives in the West.

Memories of 1953. Last week signs of even stronger worker protest came to light with the appearance of the latest issue of Das Karussell, plant newspaper of the big "Seventh of October" agricultural combine factory in the Eastern sector's Weissensee district. There, a deputation of workers had repeatedly told factory functionaries that East Germany was in the wrong on the Wall issue. "After all," the newspaper uneasily quoted them, "the Wall was erected by our government. Therefore it is up to our government to take the Wall down, and all discussions and negotiations about passes are superfluous." Karussell replied with a shopworn lecture laying the blame for the Wall on the West. There was a worried undertone to the editor's words, for this was the kind of worker muttering that finally led to East Germany's explosive, abortive revolt in June 1953.

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