West Germany: Rifts Among the Pacifists

(2 of 2)

Two of Western Europe's most peace organizations will take no part Thursday's demonstration. One is Action for Reconciliation, a group with strong ties to the Lutheran Church. Said Spokesman Wolfgang Brinkel: "We cannot on one hand do nothing during [Soviet President Leonid] Brezhnev's visit [last November] and then suddenly stage a demonstration during Reagan's visit." The Dutch-based Inter-Church Peace Council, a highly effective grass-roots organization that has served as a model for peace groups throughout the Continent, also will not take part in the rally. Said Spokesman Mient-Jan Faber: "We do find the demonstration meaningful."

Erhard Eppler, a member of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's Social Democratic Party who gave a major speech at the October demonstration, is also refusing to attend this week's rally, explaining that he "did not intend to participate in a purely anti-Reagan demonstration." Another speaker at the earlier event, Nobel Prize-winning West German Novelist Heninrich Böll, will not be present on Thursday. In recent interview Böll said: "Inasmuch as the Communists are controlled from Moscow, their orders are to destroy what is meaningful in these movements by taking part in them and indeed by forcing their way into them."

Another group that will not be represented is the growing peace that has already held several unauthorized protests in East Germany. Like some of the middleclass, middle-of-the-road West Germans who participated in October's rally, many of East Germany's unofficial peace protesters blame both the U.S. and the Soviet Union for fueling the arms race.

—By Patricia Blake.

Reported by D.L. Coutu/Bonn