austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil

130 THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
of East Germans who wanted to leave their country indicated that 42%
desired to emigrate because of the shortage of consumption goods in
their country, while 27% stated that they wanted to leave primarily to
attain greater freedom to travel (Falck, 1998).
Details and statistics on emigration attempts are provided by Eisenfe
ld ( 1996). Thousands of East Germans applied to their government
fo r permission to emigrate each year, with the numbers rising to tens
ofthousands by the late 1980s. Only a fraction of the applications were
granted, and there was generally a fa irly long waiting period (of several
months to years) even for the emigration visas eventually obtained. For
instance, there were 284,700 new applications for emigration between
1980 and June 1989, but only 158,800 were allowed to leave, while
87, I 00 withdrew their applications "voluntarily" during this time. On
June 30, 1989, there were a total of 125,400 unfilled applications (up
from 113,500 on December 31, 1988).
Applicants for emigration visas were generally subjected to considerable
pressure to cancel their requests to leave the country. While gentler
means of persuasion were often used, the applicants were also subjected
to a thorough Stasi investigation that sometimes proved to be harassing.
Several hundred of the applicants each year were arrested and found
guilty of various crimes as a result of such investigations, and thousands
more were subjected to warnings. Jn addition, the applicants were generally
informed of the risk of possibly never being allowed to reenter
East Germany and the resulting difficulties of seeing their friends and
family again. Many responded negatively to this pressure (with tens of
thousands complaining each year to the head of the East German government
about their treatment), thousands quit their jobs, and some even
began voicing vocal opposition to East Germany in an attempt to pressure
the government into seeing their continued stay as not only useless
but even counterproductive fo r the country. Those actually allowed to
leave were subsequently denounced publicly as agents offoreign powers
and even traitors, and although East Germany made some modest (and
somewhat inconsistent) efforts to encourage the emigrants to return,
only a few hundred decided to do so each year.
To avoid this uncertain and often undesirable application procedure
for emigration (or to circumvent it when months or years passed without
the application being granted), some chose to try to emigrate ille-
CHAPTER 3
gaily. However, because of the Wall and other barriers between the two
Gerrnanies, only a few people succeeded each year. There were hun­
dreds of illegal plans or attempts at "escape" each year, but most were
foiled by the Stasi even before the border area had been reached.
131
Besides trying to break through the armed border, there were other
ways to emigrate illegally. For instance, a handful of those who visited
West Germany each year (less than six thousand in 1988) decided to
stay there and not return to East Germany. More might have done so,
except such emigration without permission was a violation of East
German law and meant not being able to visit East Germany again. In
addition, the East German authorities made it clear prior to each visit
that it would be unlikely that the friends or families of an illegal emigrant
would ever be allowed to visit West Germany. As a result, an
emigration made it difficult to be able to see one's East German relatives
and friends again (Hertle, 1996). Although meetings between emigrants
to West Germany and their East German families and friends
often occurred while on vacation in other communist Eastern European
countries such as Hungary, the Stasi sometimes used their own network
of informants to disrupt such contacts (Eisenfeld, 1996). These tactics
helped successfully inhibit well over 99% of East German visitors from
staying in West Germany, although the percentage remaining in West
Germany had been trending upward at 0.22% in 1987, 0.35% in 1988,
and 0.6 1% in the first half of 1989 (and reaching the 1% mark in August
1989), with most of those staying being vital skilled workers like doctors
(Krenz, 1990).
Another way of illegally emigrating was to seek refuge in the West
German consulate office in East Berlin. West Germany did not have an
actual embassy because it did not officially recognize the legal existence
of a separate East Germany), or to seek political asylum in the USA
embassy there (Keithly, 1992). Once inside, diplomatic immunity laws
P� vented . the East German police from entry, and papers were gener­
a
u � � ��gohated for the refugees to emigrate legally (to avoid adverse
P . •ctty and other hassles). The problem here was that East German
�hce stood outside the West German consulate office (as well as out­
st
e the various
. foreign embassies) and normally did not allow anyone
th
Wt out pe · ·
ofEas
rmtsston to enter. Only an unexpected rush by a large group
t Germans had ever succeeded in emigrating this way.