East Germany: Protest Beyond the Wall

When Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia last August, dissent erupted in a most unlikely place: Walter Ulbricht's rigidly controlled, Stalinist East Germany. The demonstration of protest was admittedly brief and feeble and went almost unnoticed by the out side world. Yet after years in which any kind of rebellion was virtually unknown among East Germans, a handful of students scarcely out of high school demonstrated solidarity with the Czechoslovaks and pleaded with their countrymen "not to remain silent."

Their protests were short-lived. Within hours, Ulbricht's efficient security agents hunted down and arrested the demonstrators. After eleven weeks in custody, at least seven of an estimated ten protesters were tried on "anti-state activities" charges last October and received prison sentences of up to 36 months. Two weeks later, however, they were paroled — apparently because the regime wanted to avoid making martyrs of them. But at least 200 similar cases are still reported pending before East German courts.

Pistols Drawn. In a series of rare interviews in recent weeks, TIME correspondents talked to some of the protesters, who told why and how they demonstrated. Shocked and distressed when they heard of the invasion on Aug. 21, they met that same afternoon —not, as in earlier meetings, to listen to rock music, but to discuss how they should react to events in Czechoslovakia.

No real plan emerged, but that night two of them hung a Czechoslovak flag out of an apartment window, then painted the word Dubcek on the walls of East Berlin's Staatsbibliothek. They were caught a few hours later.

In the meantime, other students typed out about 500 handbills calling for "Freedom for Red Prague" and began distributing them near the Friedrichstrasse station, one of East Berlin's busiest districts. They stuck the pamphlets on car windshields and stuffed them into apartment-house mailboxes, Two cops using a police dog finally caught up with two of the protesters, both girls, by following the trail of pamphlets stuck onto parked cars. Pistols drawn, the policemen called for their quarry to surrender. When they finally did, the cops mumbled in embarrassment over their guns: "We thought you were men." While the girls were led away, a stream of handbills that one had tried to hide in her trousers trickled onto the sidewalk. Police immediately collected all the pamphlets in sight. Early the next morning, security agents woke everyone in apartment houses in the area, made them open their mailboxes and confiscated all handbills inside.