On the Ways

Among casual observers of Eastern Europe's people's republics, East Germany retains a mistaken reputation for being an economic sad sack. Yet almost unnoticed, the country has risen to tenth place among the world's industrial powers--and the resurgence is due in no small part to the busy shipyards on East Germany's Baltic coast.

Last year these yards turned out no fewer than 175 ships, totaling about 250,000 tons. In the final week of 1966, Warnemuende's Warnow yards -- East Germany's largest--delivered a 12,300-ton freighter to the U.S.S.R., along with the 150th of a series of 10,000-ton freighters to East Germany's own state-controlled shipping company, VEB (for Volkseigener Betrieb) Deutsche Seereederei (The People's Own German Shipping Enterprise). The Wismar yards launched a 20,000-ton Russian passenger ship, the Shota Rustaveli, and Rostock's Neptune yards sent another 4,000-ton freighter, the 112th during the past eleven years, down the ways. And 1967 looks to be another banner year.

Over the postwar years, more than 2,700 East German-built ships have been sold to Russia, often at prices 30% below the world market. But East Germany has also built up its own fleet. Today, its black, red and yellow flag flies over 155 ships. VEB vessels last year carried 6,200,000 tons of cargo to 340 ports, ranging from nearby Hamburg to faraway Haiphong, while two 600-passenger cruise ships carried vacationers to Scandinavia, Scotland and Iceland.

Casting Shibboleths Aside. As recently as 1951, East Germany, drained by postwar Russian reparations, had only one ship in its merchant marine. Then, in the early '50s, it produced a few of its own ships, purchased some from the Russians, raised and repaired sunken vessels, even bought the Swedish American Line's Stockholm after she rammed and sank the Andrea Doria in 1956. Many of the VEB's early routes were propaganda-oriented, and often East German ships returned home ideologically full but physically empty. Not until 1962 did the company turn all that enterprise toward pure profitmaking. In that year, Rumanian-born Eduard Zimmermann, now 38, who rose from a nondescript post as a translator for a Russian-East German shipping control board, was named VEB's general director. Zimmermann cast aside a good many Communist shibboleths. Under him, East Germany has modernized shipyards and ports, built mechanized ships, gained an expanding share of East-bloc shipping.

VEB still is well behind West Germany's ninth-ranking 2,609-ship merchant marine. But for a sector of Germany that before World War II had one significant port, it is doing rather well.

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