Suicide in East Germany

...the two events were closely inter-related...

...But the West Germans need not have worried...

...Ulbricht, who knows when not to pick an argument, departed on a prolonged tour of Siberia and Eastern Russia, leaving Apel to sort out his problems alone...

...He returned home in 1952, a man in his mid-30s, converted to Communism though not yet a Party member...

...Chemical plants, chemical products, engineering goods, machine tools and ships, 300 of them to swell the Russian freighter fleet-all were to be bought by the Soviets at prices they would fix themselves, 30 per cent below world levels...

...his field had originally been radio and radar technology...

...At first the looting came under the heading of reparations, then trade relations...

...Shortly after 9 a.m...

...One theory developed since his death, and to some extent supported by the evidence, is that Apel was the leader of an attempt to form an East German "second front"-that is, to establish closer economic and political relations with West Germany to offset the pressure exerted from Moscow...

...The decision to reverse the liberalization of East Germany's economy coincided with Khrushchev's ouster...

...The Russians, as usual, proved to be more concerned with immediate, material gains than with a long-term plan that promised to generate valuable hard currency...

...Heinrich Rau, head of the Commission from 1950-52, died mysteriously in March 1961 and is believed to have taken his own life...

...It is arguable whether there actually is any practical course open to the West German authorities in this field...

...Karl Mewis was removed in disgrace in 1963...

...Soviet Trade Minister Nikolai Patolitchev and Prime Minister Kosygin not only insisted on a step-up of deliveries but let it be known that they expected a greatly increased German contribution to the ailing Soviet economy...

...Again Apel protested that the Russians' demands were impossible if he was to maintain DDR planning targets...

...Every attempt, or almost every attempt, at kleine Schritte-at increasing contacts, step by step, as West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt has proposed-appears doomed to failure...

...He also pointed out the inequity of Moscow's purchasing industrial capital goods, chemical plants, shipping and machine tools from Germany at 25-40 per cent below world prices while selling their raw materials to Germany at pegged prices...

...All that, however, was before East German officials learned of Apel's diaries...

...In practice, however, this theory faces several problems...

...Stoph also eulogized Apel as one of the great heroes of the "Deutsche Demokratische Republik...

...And being a latecomer to the party ranks (he joined the SED only in 1957, after he had already held two posts with the rank of minister) he was always regarded with suspicion by the party theoreticians...

...They objected, also, that the Germans were using raw materials bought from the Soviet Union-petroleum, coal, lumber and cotton-to manufacture finished products sold in the West for hard currency and "to make political capital and improve relations with the capitalist countries...

...Though Apel and Ulbricht disagreed on few if any other issues, this divergence was sufficient to produce a running feud between them...

...At the end of November, First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev made a hurried, unplanned visit to East Berlin to underscore the importance the Russians attached to the new five-year trade treaty (which was to include provisions for making good what was not delivered under the expiring agreement...

...It was about this time that Apel began keeping the detailed notes which later found their way to West Germany...

...the next morning, he telephoned Willi Stoph and was told that the treaty was initialled and would be signed that day...

...The timing may or may not have been a coincidence...

...Finally, late on the night of December 2, Apel stormed out of a meeting, refusing to have anything further to do with the negotiations...

...Although Apel kept contacts in West Germany informed of the new Russian line, his overtures failed to elicit any help from Bonn either for himself or his collaborators...

...Apel insisted that a firm stand would cause the Russians to modify their demands, or back off, as they had in Rumania...

...Apel, in fact, had been a protege of Ulbricht's...

...His primary task was to make the economy thrive despite its exploitation by the Soviet Union...

...When pragmatists tangle with dogmatists in any East European Communist state, the pragmatistsnormally fewer in number, younger, less experienced than the advocates of Party dogma-often find themselves out-manned and out-maneuvered...

...Popular writers and poets like Stefan Heym, Wolf Bierman and Werner Braeunig became targets for bitter onslaughts of distinctly Stalinist tone, and university students, cabaret and theater people, and even scientists were also attacked...

...Gerhart Ziller shot himself in 1957...

...As soon as forced deliveries to the Soviet Union ceased, the DDR economy began to show a marked improvement...

...Even the experiment at alleviating hardship in divided Berlin with the Christmas passes has been exploited politically by East Germany and has become a travesty of its original humanitarian purposes...

...and Bruno Leuschner collapsed and died from nervous exhaustion in February 1965...

...Apel must have realized that he would not get any support from his chief...

...Over my dead body," he replied bitterly, and then promptly shot himself...

...He simply passed on his expert analysis of the situation existing between East Germany and the Soviet Union in the hope that readers outside that heavily guarded ghetto of 17 million Germans might gain an accurate picture of the difficulties confronting them...

...He was now continually at odds with Ulbricht, Premier Willi Stoph and his most intimate enemy, Alfred Neumann, chairman of the economic council...

...A physically rugged, barrelchested man, by early 1963 Apel was deputy prime minister, member of the Party central committee and occupant of East Germany's hottest hot-seat-Chairman of the State Planning Commission...

...The macabre Apel Affair, like the Prague defenestrations, has dramatically drawn attention to a new Machiavellian turn in Soviet policy in Central Europe...

...One of the more obvious results of the plundering was the departure of some three million people to the Federal Republic in the West between 1947-61...

...Neues Deutschland hailed the proposed gigantic swindle as "the biggest trade pact ever signed between two nations" and Ulbricht, with a wealth of ironic justification, said that the new pact would require greater efforts from every single man and woman in East Germany...

...Within a few days of his death, members of the SED central committee were openly saying, in speeches of unutterable tediousness, that the intellectuals were out of hand and "are not necessary for the welfare of our state...

...The Soviets' objective was maximum exploitation of their newly won and most western possession-which brought their empire to within 400 miles of London, something that had not been achieved in 200 years of Russian imperialist expansion...

...Ulbricht's objective was to placate and pacify his various masters in the Kremlin, and his economic planners, from Rau to Apel, found it impossible to reconcile these aims and still fulfill their inflated production targets...

...Some Germans argue that the ultimate revolution in Central and Eastern Europe, presumably a precondition for the longed-for German reunification, requires that the East German SED be shored up with aid from West Germany and made economically independent of Moscow...

...Until relatively recently, economic chaos reigned in East Germany...

...Like the majority of his contemporaries, he had visions of his country becoming an independent, if still Communist, state...

...Their position was that given the futility of arguing with the Russians, it was just as well to accede gracefully and make the sacrifice...

...Apel first encountered serious trouble in June 1964 when, visiting Moscow with a trade delegation, he was castigated for failing to deliver either the chemical plants or 350,000 tons of nitrogen fertilizer the Russians urgently needed to pep up their agriculture...

...The significance of his death is revealed in his diaries, which for a period of two years he passed page by page to contacts in the West before finally sending one last notebook containing a blow by blow account of the struggle over the five-year trade treaty...

...the Berlin Wall was built, halting the loss of valuable manpower to the West and making it possible to stabilize the currency...

...Experts estimate that between 1945-60 the Russians thus appropriated consumer goods, raw materials and capital equipment, both new and used, worth $ 18 billion...

...It was Apel's contention that by stressing quality and competing in world markets instead of restricting its trade to the Soviet Bloc, Germany could earn valuable currency and give its own economy the degree of independence enjoyed, for instance, by Rumania...

...The Russians had a point...

...On Friday December 3, a beat-up old streetcar trundled past it through the slush as it headed for the terminus near The Wall...

...It was on this issue of Soviet colonialism that the rift developed between Party co-founder and leader Ulbricht, the arch survivor of Communist history, (his record is paralleled only by that of Albania's Enver Hoxha), and his succession of economic planners...

...East Germany being an obvious source of chemical wealth, it tightened the thumbscrews to breaking point...

...For awhile West Germany was concerned about the possible emergence of a new competitor in world markets, particularly in the developing Afro-Asian countries...

...In earlier days he might have slipped surreptitiously to West Berlin, but that choice was closed to him...

...Indeed, the Germans, aware of the liberalization enjoyed by other East European satellites had become openly restive at their own continued subjugation...

...Consumer goods became available, rationing of almost everything was abolished, queues disappeared even for such exotic items as rabbits and oranges...

...Much has been written about this unusual man since his death, some of it fiction...

...For a sense of national identity in the DDR by definition can only lead to dreams of reunification...

...Kenneth Ames, a frequent contributor, reports for Newsweek from Bonn...

...Five hours later the treaty was signed and the Russian and German leaders were congratulating each other with Crimean champagne...

...A CASUALTY OF RUSSIAN COLONIALISM Suicide in East Germany By Kenneth Ames Bonn The East German State Planning Commission occupies an ugly building in Berlin's gray Leipzigerstrasse, just beyond The Wall...

...Two weeks later, at the meeting of the Party Central Committee, Erich Apel's name had been officially forgotten...

...In the final analysis, it seemed his fatal mistake was failing to appreciate that in the mind of Walter Ulbricht and his coterie, Party politics are sacrosancttaking priority over innovation, experimentation, and even material success...

...News of Apel's death, officially attributed to a "short circuit" resulting from nervous strain, appeared in the East German party newspaper Neues Deutschland beside reports of the new, $15 billion five-year trade pact signed that same day with Soviet representatives...

...The Kremlin turned back the clock in Germany partly for reasons of immediate material gain, and partly, perhaps, out of fear of a national economic success which could engender demands for greater personal liberty...

...And perhaps recognizing that Apel's fight against the treaty was motivated by the national interest, officials gave him a state funeral quite out of proportion to his status...

...Apel was not acting as an agent for a Western power, nor did he lack dedication to the system he had embraced...

...The Kremlin was gravely concerned at the state of its chemical industry...

...and while nationalism is a luxury the Soviets may permit elsewhere it must be denied to the Germans...

...East German leaders, according to this argument, can never defy Moscow so long as they are politically and economically regarded as pariahs by Bonn and left economically dependent on the Soviet Union...

...He was not prepared to compromise on the issue of returning to total subservience, and decided that the world should recognize the significance of his personal sacrifice...

...The theory also ignores the fact that it is the Russians who are economically and industrially dependent on East Germany and not the other way around, with the DDR industrial capacity now to all intents and purposes merged into the Soviet economy...

...Starting his new life in East Germany as deputy minister for engineering, he climbed up the government and Party ladder at a pace that soon earned him a reputation as one of the new, young "technocrat-managers" -fresh blood which the calcified Stalinist-Marxist old guard of the Socialist Unity party (SED) sorely needed but did not necessarily welcome...

...The reformers, the antidogmatists, would then become a factor to be reckoned with by the Russians and a whole generation of Apels might emerge...

...and the new managers, including Apel, were instructed to adjust their plans accordingly...

...Believing he could talk sense with the Russians, Apel affronted them by insisting that their demands were outrageous and impossible to meet and East Germany was forced to buy the nitrogen fertilizer from West Germany at world prices as part of interzonal trade, then resell to the Russians at a 50 percent loss...

...and in an upper-floor office Erich Apel, at 48 not only Planning Commission Chairman but a rapidly rising member of the East German hierarchy, shot himself...

...Party Chief Walter Ulbricht himself acted as pallbearer, along with Premier Willi Stoph and two other acolytes of the Pankow regime...

...This is no trade treaty," Apel told his political friends at one point in the negotiations, "but an instrument of colonial exploitation...

...Apparently he spent the rest of the night completing the concluding section of his diary that later reached West Germany...

...But Apel was told to think again...

...Apel's last days must have been dominated by the specter of a return to food queues, empty stores and falling efficiency...

...A series of able men had failed in the effort before him...

...The Russians are clearly embarked on a harder line with their German satellite, and Apel may prove to be only its first victim...

...It had taken a long time, but Moscow and Pankow finally seemed to recognize that to earn the support of a whole nation requires more than pompous slogans, four-hour speeches, and police-state trappings...

...a few huddled figures hurried by, their coat collars turned up against the biting wind of a sunless morning...

...He had made the error of planning as a national Communist, a man who cared desperately about the fate of his country...

...Apel and his planning team of "second generation" Communists, given a free hand to adopt and adapt the concepts of the Russian economist Yevsey Liberman and Poland's Oskar Lange, introduced incentive schemes, bonuses, profit motives, and a drive for quality before quantity...

...A Communist fighting the Russians, he was not so much a martyr as a victim of circumstances...

...For several days, too, one might have thought from glancing at the front pages of Neues Deutschland that the Comrade Chairman himself had died...

...Five-year plans of breathtaking optimism were drafted and had to be fulfilled in the face of open looting by the Russians (who had never dreamed of such wealth until they marched into Germany in 1945...

...Moscow complained, for example, that the Germans were behind in deliveries under the then existing trade treaty, and since that provided for delivery of no fewer than 100 complete chemical plants, this was hardly surprising...

...For 20 years all efforts at rapprochement have been frustrated by the Russians, who almost invariably call the shots beyond the River Elbe...

...Apel came to Communism relatively late in life-by way of the Hitler Jugend, service at the Peenemunde wartime rocket research center, and seven years involuntary residence in Moscow as a technician...

...He translated into action the words of East Germany's favorite national poet, Bertold Brecht, who wrote: "Even after my death, there will be certain possibilities of embarrassing people...

...He has travelled extensively in Germany and Eastern Europe...

...Ulbricht began boasting that within a few years the DDR economy would overtake the Wirtschajtswunder of the Federal German Republic...

...The results were almost instantaneous...

...During the last days of his life, Apel argued bitterly against acceptance of these dictated terms and his feuds with Ulbricht and the Russians broke into the open...

...It was no coincidence...

...Apel was trapped in that vicious circle of seeing his sound plans destroyed to fulfill inflated Russian ones and, after openly protesting, had little choice of action...

...But in East Germany, still dominated by old-line Communists like Ulbricht, defeat is almost inevitable...

...Apel, as an economist-technocrat, was one of the leaders of what might be called the "Empiricist Movement" in the DDR...

...In 1961, several steps were taken almost simultaneously to help correct the situation: Khrushchev ordered the establishment of more equitable trade relations with East Germany...

...There is, after all, ample historic justification for the cold-war attitude toward East Germany in Bonn (which, for instance, requires that the area be referred to either as the "Soviet Zone of Occupation" or as "the socalled DDR...

...In September 1965, Apel returned to Moscow with Ulbricht to negotiate the terms of a new fiveyear trade pact...