A SEPARATE PEACE

...Ronald Reagan and [Communist Party chief] Erich Honecker are alike," a pastor told me...

...church bells would call Christians to pray for peace...

...East Germans have developed a pacifism that is quieter than its Western counterpart, one that carries far more risk and often runs deeper...

...People may even start to believe the party billboards...

...Other voices follow: "I'll leave politics to the leaders, they know better than me anyhow...

...And while the maverick pastors will never be welcomed into the Church's upper echelons, they do receive the protection of powerful Church leaders...

...Church groups across the country have established Peace Instruction, courses designed to counteract the schools' militaristic fare...

...Will the movement succeed...

...Some listeners curse and leave the room, others wince at the hopeless sound of their own voices...

...Frommherz nodded...

...asking people to gather for a silent outdoor demonstration at the Frauenkirche, the remains of a church left unrestored to commemorate the bombing...

...This movement"—he used the word despite himself, and became suddenly serious—"did not just appear out of the air...

...They decided not to strain the fragile detente during their Friedensdekade or Ten Days for Peace, the wave of peace seminars and forums conducted by Church youth groups last November...

...Pacifists, sensing the indecision in high places and inspired by the success of the Appeal, have staged religious peace rallies under the wing of the Church...

...If, as seems far more likely, no substantive proposal is made by the Reagan Administration, it will become much more difficult for East European pacifists to maintain their rational opposition against all nuclear weapons...

...When the words are played back, Berliners react strongly, as if these voices were from 1939...

...Eventually the Church backed down, and parishes r^ng their bells at various hours...

...The petition is circulating through the Friedenskreise, but Church elders have not been among the signers...

...for now, we must work softly...

...Pacifists' apartments were searched, their travel visas were revoked, and cloth patches showing the movement's banned symbol—a man hammering a sword into a plowshare—were torn from their clothes...

...Both perceive a bipolar, black-and-white world, and both hate pacifism at home...

...rebuilding Germany after the last one required too much sweat and blood to let it all be blown to pieces again...

...Though signing the Appeal jeopardizes one's career, some 3,000 East Germans have affixed their names...

...The state says it's working for peace with missiles and air raid sirens, and then comes the Church, with ringing bells and prayer, saying 'make peace without weapons.' " Worried that the ringing would be a secret signal for a general strike and haunted by visions of inheriting Poland's unrest, party leaders halted printing of newsletters announcing the prayer...

...Most peace activists believe that such tactics, which help individuals persuade themselves to get involved, must precede grand attempts to challenge policy...

...But commuters en route to the University of Rostock paid close attention the morning our transport rattled past a billboard that had fallen prey to paintbrush protesters...

...It's not enough to show up for a demonstration...

...So peace becomes rooted in their lives, there to stay—no matter what the politicians decide...

...In these programs, fourth-graders learn to march and give commands, and sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade boys perform uniformed maneuvers led by National People's Army officers—complete with miniature tanks for the older children to drive...

...clergymen in Hungary have been suspended for supporting conscientious objectors...

...We've got to unite all the einsame Gruppen, the lonely groups...

...Unsigned leaflets had circulated for months before the rally...

...During the 1982 Friedensdekade, Church peace groups avoided a highly charged public spectacle that could undermine the uneasy truce between pacifists and party...

...Holter was slated to teach high school physics...

...But soon the Modepuppen, the fashion-puppets, will become discouraged...

...Combined with a quote from the Bible, the image is politically "correct" and seems to support the party's own peace rhetoric...

...We all waited to see what the Stasi would do," recalled Thomas...

...More than 6,000 signatures have been collected in support of the establishment of "social peace service," a civilian alternative to military duty...

...In fact, the party leadership panicked and announced that such an unsanctioned mass action would be regarded as antiso-cialist agitation—and might end in arrests...

...Holter joined the conversation: "The key is identity...

...The party flipped when it heard our plan," said one man in Holter's group...

...Unfortunately, the failure to delineate long-range plans seems to be weakening the movement: The strategy remains essentially reactive, relying on future Western arms-reduction proposals to increase the movement's legitimacy in the public's eye...

...If the movement is ever to pose a serious challenge to the State, some radical pacifists believe, it must reject the sugar-coated sedative of Church support and create its own strong medicine—strikes for peace, worker slowdowns, direct-action protests...

...There's been a pacifist tradition here since the war, through opposition to rearmament, a rock-'n'-roll counterculture, and a democratic underground involved in the Prague Spring...

...Mass agitation proved futile in Poland," Holter explained...

...There were no arrests...

...Despite awkward government attempts to suppress it, the independent East German peace movement has become, second only to Solidarity, the most significant political force to emerge in East Europe...

...Although it is a minority position, pacifism is spreading in East Germany...

...It would demonstrate that the East Bloc is not monolithic in its support of Soviet policies, and it would help pacifists in East and West bring greater pressure to bear on both superpowers to seek genuine arms reduction...

...Despite the scare tactics, Weigel continues his work in Koenigswalde—and new peace seminars have been founded in four other East German cities...

...Weigel's sentence was reduced to two years' probation...

...We know how far we can go," said one man at the table...

...In an East Berlin parish hall, members of Holter's Friedenskreis—long-haired theology students with Biblical nicknames, prim daughters of party officials, Berlin toughs of both sexes who wear tight denim and leather—discussed how the announcement might affect their work...

...When I passed the billboard again that afternoon, the subversive paint had been removed...

...We saw our tanks roll across the Czechoslovak border in 1968...

...One Berlin peace group, for example, records community residents on tape while they speak of feeling isolated, indifferent, or powerless in the face of party dominance...

...For us, capitalism and communism have nothing to do with it...

...Frommherz—a pseudonym used here to protect his identity—seemed skeptical at first of the movement he helps lead, and joked about the heady, romantic self-image the pacifists have developed...

...instead, he became a journalist and a printer for a religious publishing house...

...pacifists in the Soviet Union, despite arrest and harassment, have added three new branches of their Group to Establish Trust Between the U.S.S.R...

...Holter told me about the Dresden Peace Forum, the German Democratic Republic's first unauthorized, grass-roots peace rally...

...Protestant Church officials, caught between implacable party functionaries and irrepressible young pacifists, staved off a confrontation by inviting the demonstrators into a nearby cathedral, the Kreuzkirche...

...So the government has vacillated between occasional repression and unconvincing conciliatory rhetoric...

...Members of the church peace groups do not necessarily hold religious convictions...

...The questions, answered by church leaders, met with resounding applause from the pacifists and silence from party members in attendance...

...The government also prohibited unauthorized public peace activity...

...Official harassment drove the pacifists behind the protective walls of the Protestant Church, where dozens of new Friedenskreise, or peace circles, have sprung to life...

...All of these small but promising developments, as well as the East German peace movement, would bloom if the United States took a first step toward disarmament...

...But the next day he was released, thanks in part to Church intervention...

...That same day, 2,000 gathered near Magdeburg and another 3,500 convened in Potsdam to demonstrate their opposition to U.S...

...peace must be armed to the teeth...

...If the State had just ignored us," one woman said, "the movement would be half the size it is today...

...We've been there before...

...istence of a grass-roots movement against militarism in East Germany would bolster efforts to turn back the arms race in Europe and the United States...

...This became clear when I met Pastor Martin Frommherz, the leader of a Berlin peace group...

...The pacifists are confident that Warsaw Pact leaders would respond to Western arms reduction initiatives if East Europeans were calling for disarmament— especially when their economies are severely strained by enormous weapons expenditures...

...If 300,000 demonstrate in Bonn so their rockets won't fall on our heads, shouldn't we begin to count our own rockets...

...it was taken from a statue presented by the Soviet Union to the United Nations...

...When an agent of the State security service—Stasi, in East German slang— appeared to admonish workshop organizers that distribution of the plowshares patch was illegal, the pacifists tensed for trouble...

...He said he was convinced that Church leaders in Berlin "certainly had something in mind" when they withheld their support...

...The Church tries to keep our criticism inside the system, and the State tries not to throw us all into jail...

...Recruiting new members to the movement is difficult because of the disdain most East Germans have for formal politics...

...The State, which insists Germany needs swords and plowshares, has rejected the peace service proposal, branding it "an enemy of socialism and the constitution...

...But the summer's most impressive peace event took place later that month, when 3,000 pacifists of all political stripes held a peace workshop at East Berlin's Redemption Church...

...I am not involved," he said, "I'm doing what I've always done...

...Some Church officials argued against the prayer, calling it "unnecessary provocation...

...So were the questions that had been asked in the Kreuzkirche: "Why are peace demonstrations forbidden in East Germany...

...As Holter noted, "The state will have a much easier time channeling public opinion against NATO rockets alone, and ignoring the Soviet arsenal...

...Government officials in Romania have already called for a Pershing-for-SS-20 tradeoff...

...Disarmament information and antiwar postcards were distributed, and the swords-into-plowshares symbol was stamped onto felt patches and sewn on clothes—in violation of party dictates...

...The most we can do is get people ready for an opportunity that may or may not come/ Most frightening of all is paramilitary instruction, established in 1978 despite a wave of protest...

...It depends on what you mean by success," he said...

...The most we can do is get people ready for an opportunity that may or may not come...

...People won't respond if we're too loud too soon...

...If Ronald Reagan were to offer an acceptable arms reduction proposal— cancellation of the Pershing II and cruise missiles in exchange for Soviet withdrawal of SS-20s, for example—the German pacifists believe that peace groups across Eastern Europe would be strengthened by a hopeful, emboldened populace...

...Peace has become stylish these days, that's the difference...

...the moment at which firebombs had begun to fall thirty-seven years earlier, thousands of protesters got up and marched silently and in open defiance of the party to the Frauenkirche, where they sang and placed flowers and candles in the rubble...

...Nobody believes that the government wants war...

...The bombing was long past," says Holter, "but our minds were focused on present and future...

...The statement was apparently an attempt to maintain the loyalty of Catholics attracted to Protestant peace work...

...Most mornings I was the only passenger who noticed the posters...

...Because the East German press has hailed the rise of peace movements in the West, the State finds it embarrassing to jail pacifists...

...The timing was shrewd, for the bells would peal right after a state air-raid drill...

...As it turned out, the government had announced a new policy of tolerance for peace work under Church auspices—part of "the common effort of Marxists, Christians, and pacifists...

...He doesn't hope for a swift reversal of Warsaw Pact policy—nobody expects that—but for the development of an opposition subculture that is tolerated and has the courage not to conform...

...In Berlin there were petitions and letters of protest, then arrests and disillusionment...

...Besides, Lenin was right when he said that the German people could never make revolution because then they'd have to walk on the grass...

...When this wave of fashion wears off, then we'll see what's what...

...People are finding ways to do that," he said, "and coming to work for peace is a part of that process...

...In May 1980, the Stasi forged letters telling prospective participants in a biennial peace seminar in the town of Koenigswalde that the event would not take place...

...When you talk to pacifists from all over the country," a woman in Holter's group said of the seminar, "it helps you to fight the climate of fear, the self-censorship that shuts you up when you know you should shout...

...The State's reply came the next day, when about eighty peace activists were detained, questioned, and ultimately released...

...Thousands more have chosen to fulfill their military obligation as Bausoldaten, or building soldiers, serving in army units dedicated to construction rather than combat...

...Jailed priests," as one pastor put it, "make bad press...

...After his Berlin Appeal was published in a West Berlin newspaper and beamed by West German television into East German living rooms, Eppelman was arrested...

...But because the State has given the Church a great degree of autonomy—it can run seminaries and hospitals, conduct religious services, and broadcast church-related programs—much of the religious es-tablishment prefers to avoid open confrontation with officialdom...

...But discover who you are and what you believe, not what the State means for you to believe, and you've undermined their system of control...

...Still others— many, in fact—say they want to attend a Friedenskreis meeting...

...Don't stand out, don't criticize, play along'—those are the unwritten rules here...

...We watch ourselves on West German television," he said, "and suddenly a confused, chaotic bunch of kids becomes a movement...

...Neither understands that pacifists in East and West are alike—people scared of annihilation, trying to preserve the species...

...to quote poet Rainer Maria Rilke, as these people often do, "You must change your life...

...Some of the other passengers pretended not to notice, but several nudged their neighbors into looking and even excitedly discussed the protest, oblivious to the glares of the party faithful...

...I can't risk my career for this...

...The Appeal, written in December 1981 by Rainer Ep-pelman, an East Berlin pastor, calls for total withdrawal of Soviet and American weapons and "occupation troops" from both Germanies...

...Domsch was jeered and hissed when he told the pacifists gathered in Dresden that the Church did not believe the Appeal was "useful to the preservation of peace...

...The West German magazine Der Spiegel has reported that a dozen peace activists are still being arrested in East Berlin each day for wearing the swords-into-plowshares patch...

...Though people are discontented with the government's stodgy, centralized decision-making apparatus, their sense of political impotence—and post-Stalinist fear—prevents them from embracing alternatives...

...The movement's strategy is to influence policymakers indirectly by waging Church-legitimized public education campaigns...

...But at 10:15 p.m...

...The Catholic Church, too, is backing the movement...

...He added, "We can't hold big demonstrations , so we find other ways to work...

...pacifists who continued to organize in public could expect dismissal from university or job...

...He crafted and sold ceramic jewelry, wrote political poems he couldn't publish, and organized a Berlin peace group...

...Hundreds of young men sit in East German prisons for refusing to serve in the military...

...His articles have appeared in World-view, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and the Providence Journal-Bulletin...

...A SEPARATE East German pacifists call their own tune PEACE BY ERIC POOLEY It was one of the German Democratic Republic's official propaganda posters that first drew my attention to the independent peace movement there...

...most people stopped paying attention long ago...

...The whole thing was organized by youth," says Holter, "so we knew the party would not be pleased...

...These people forget," snapped the party newspaper Neues Deutschland, "that our entire republic is social peace service...

...Thomas, a young theology student, called the workshop "our Central Park rally...

...West German peace emissaries contact us, but there are peace circles two subway stops away that we've never talked with," one woman told me...

...Every weekday morning my streetcar passed giant Communist Party billboards that depicted star-spangled wolves menacing clean-cut socialist children, images enhanced by the slogan Down with the NATO Rocket Decision...

...The result, the state hopes, is a male population that will, if necessary, march into battle with its conscience and feet in step...

...The party discovered, to its dismay, that limited repression can go a long way to galvanize and even glamorize a movement...

...Alone, we can't change Warsaw Pact defense policy," one Peace Forum leader said...

...Alone, we cant change Warsaw Pact defense policy/ one Peace Forum leader said...

...If only other people would speak up, I would, too...

...The sign had read Against NATO Weapons—Make Peace, and represented the government's reply to the independent peace movement's slogan, Frieden Schaffen Ohne Waff en, Make Peace Without Weapons...

...Saxony Church official Kurt Domsch gave an example of these limits when he tried to explain to Forum participants why the Church establishment had not supported the Berlin Appeal disarmament petition...

...Church and State have long had an agreement," said one pacifist...

...The symbol is a shrewd one...

...The Church intervened...

...The emblem is part of a strategy to keep pacifists from being labeled "Western provocateurs," the East European equivalent of red-baiting the American freeze campaign...

...In February 1982, he recalled, "5,000 pacifists packed into a Dresden cathedral...

...So peace organizations in East Germany's major cities concentrated on quiet work during the Ten Days for Peace: building bridges between isolated peace groups...

...and the U.SA...

...I work inside the Church," Holter says, "because the Church is the only place one can work...

...Party loyalists in the streetcar turned stern and silent when they saw the change...

...Church officials distributed 20,000 swords-into-plowshares arm patches before the symbol was banned, and have continued to distribute them since...

...The party handpicks parliamentary candidates and requires all adults to vote for them...

...He was tried and convicted of "antistate agitation," and sentenced to eighteen months in prison...

...Training in hand grenades, marksmanship, and military theory leads to military summer camps and then to compulsory military service for men...

...Many gave up...

...But someone had painted over the word NATO, turning the party billboard into a message from the independent pacifists who oppose Soviet as well as American nuclear arms: Against Weapons— Make Peace...

...And it demands the abolition of military parades, civil defense drills, and paramilitary training in East German schools...

...Math books ask children to calculate mortar ranges, soldiers pay friendly visits to grade schools, and schoolchildren respond to air 4 raid sirens by taping shut classroom windows to keep out the radioactive dust...

...A segment of the movement is content, for now, to educate through forums and exhibits, to raise an alternative to militarism...

...A thousand signatures were collected in support of a proposed social-service alternative to compulsory military duty...

...Militarism is a way of controlling the population, and a reflection of the Politburo's notion of how peace can best be maintained...

...The plowshares symbol was suppressed despite its Soviet origin, and the Church retaliated by declaring, "He who attacks the swords-into-plowshares symbol attacks the Church itself...

...The party's perspective can sound a bit like reverse Reaganism: American imperialism must be thwarted...

...some have come back...

...Neither State nor Church had called the pacifists to Dresden on the anniversary of the British-American bombing raid that leveled the city in 1945...

...The seminar took place despite the Sta-si's best efforts, but ten days later Weigel was arrested and his apartment was ransacked...

...I asked him how long he had been involved in peace work, but Frommherz waved a hand...

...In a letter to Catholics in January, the ten East German bishops condemned the arms race as "immoral" and called for bilateral disarmament...

...The Koenigswalde Peace Seminar is East Germany's foremost peace information exchange, with more than 400 organizers meeting in spring and fall...

...and Soviet nuclear stockpiling...

...As part of the East German peace movement's first Friedensdekade in 1980, the Church declared November 19 "Disarmament Day...

...On Youth Sunday last June, 10,000 people packed the town of Eisenach for a peace festival...

...At the Dresden Peace Forum, Bishop Johannes Hempel told pacifists to follow the dictates of conscience, but warned them to be aware of the Church's "limits...

...We lack the support for such tactics," says Giinter Hol-ter, "and besides, the fact is that for all its caution the Church is much bolder than the population at large...

...Even that task is a formidable one in a country "where our children are taught to fight at the same time they are taught to read," said one German...

...Not just Christians and pacifists," he said, "but artists, musicians, workers, anyone who doesn't want to give in to the leveling of socialist personality...

...A war in defense of the socialist fatherland is beautiful," teaches a military textbook...

...I'm nobody, what am I supposed to do ?" asks a tired voice at the start of a tightly edited tape...

...In four weeks of discussions with activists, I learned that this movement—which has received surprisingly little attention in the Western media—has achieved a resonance in East German society comparable to that of the freeze movement in the United States...

...But the Stasi did nothing...

...Pacifists who value the Church's role are also quick to point out the difference between cautious Church elders and the outspoken young pastors, such as Rainer Ep-pelman, who are responsible for East Germany's most dynamic peace work...

...Everybody wore homemade headbands that said Make Peace Without Weapons, and nobody knew what to expect...

...No one really expected answers that night," one demonstrator told me, but the fact that "such questions could even be asked was enough of a start...

...One of the activists involved in the unofficial peace campaign is Giinter Holter, an East Berliner who left the university and quit the government-sponsored Free German Youth organization in 1970 because he didn't like the future the government had planned for him...

...Exhibitions of photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been used with less conventional tactics to shake people out of their political paralysis...

...The pacifists want to harness the public's discontent, but to do so they must build Germans' confidence without resorting to confrontational tactics, which can arouse political anxieties...

...But the significance of the incident could not be erased so easily: The exEric Pooley, a free-lance journalist, visited the German Democratic Republic last summer...

...We need the Church...

...East German kindergartens are armed with so-called patriotic toys—plastic machine guns, tanks, and artillery...

...roadside propaganda simply bores most East Germans...

...At 1 p.m...

...He then told the disgruntled audience not to ask any more questions about the Appeal...

...Though much of the clergy is uncomfortable with the role of mediating between pacifists and party, it continues to throw its considerable weight behind the pacifists...

...The Church continues to throw its considerable weight behind the pacifists, distributing 20,000 swords-into-plowshares arm patches, the symbol of the peace movement Most pacifists reject these militant views—"Those people have been watching too much Western television," says one— and point out that such aggressive tactics would ensure a government crackdown and alienate most of the population as well as the establishment Church...

...The Synod of Protestant Churches in Saxony went so far as to call for unilateral, partial withdrawal of Soviet tanks and SS-20 missiles from Eastern Europe...

...When seminar organizer Hans-Jorg Weigel tried to telephone the participants to tell them the letters had been forged, his calls were blocked...