The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 79

Sunday, Sept. 20, 1987 The Philadelphia Inquirer 5-E A church-led peace drive gains force in E. Germany i i i i I I Ni frill OlffiSHEEIGIPIinHi of the strong leaders Gordon cited told the West German news magazine Dcr Spiegel in May. "Although all young people are educated in Marxist-Leninism in the school, we are finding an especially broad interest in the church among the young," Forck said. The Lutheran Church also has provided a haven for environmental activists, artists and other intellectuals who may not be religious, but, said Forck, "are able to call the society into question, quite radically, and also to ask radical questions about Christianity.

That's not so bad." The church, in keeping with its strong anti-war position, ajs'o has sought to assist conscientious objectors, pressing the state to permit them to work in hospitals or other non-military institutions. Now, the government permits East Germans who refuse to bear arms about 1,000 each year, by its figures to work only on military construction jobs. "For those who refuse that, there is only jail," said a church worker who chose to serve a tour in the military. About 50 face jail each year, according to church estimates. East Berlin march organizer Eppelmann, who bears a striking resemblance to Lenin, has been at the forefront of the church's peace movement, sometimes pushing harder and faster than the bishops would like.

"He is something of a lone wolf, and is more politically oriented," Gordon said. In an incident that attracted attention earlier this year, he commissioned a poster that pictured Soviet and U.S. soldiers linking up at the end of World War II. Beneath the picture was printed, "Liberate Us" a pointed reference to the prevalent fear of the superpowers' making Germany a battlefield and also the hope that in the era of Soviet glasnost, or openness, East Germany's tightly regulated society might be loosened. "The bishops don't want to be a political force." Gordon said, "they want to preach the Gospel.

They also know that the government is very sophisticated. It knows when to give in and it knows when to slam the brakes on." At Eppelmann's red-brick Samaritan Church last Sunday, services were low-key, with no political con-lent, except for a general call for peace in the sermon. Eppelmann didn't deliver it; he was out of town. About 100 congregants, including many young couples with small children, attended. The children starting school were handed new notebooks.

And then the congregation, moving together and locking hands, sang: "Lord, bless us, do not let us scutter You have given us peace before. There must be peace again, as you promised it, for the good of the world." By Mike Leury Inquirer Muff Hnd-r EAST BERLIN Softly singing such hymns as "We Shall Overcome" and hoisting placards calling for disarmament and "free" Fast-West encounters, they walked, 1,000 for four hours through the streets of East Germany's capital. The police did nothing but re-route traffic as the mainly youthful marchers stopped for prayers and seminars at four Lutheran churches. The police stood by, a few hundred yards from the Berlin Wall, us the marchers sang a peace hymn whose words rang ironic: "The soft water breaks the stone. The Sept.

5 peace demonstration, organized by the increasingly independent Lutheran Church, marked the first time that a peace march was permitted to proceed in East Germany without prior government approval. That the authorities did not intervene was viewed as a hopeful sign by peace activists and others seeking change in one of the East bloc's most rigidly orthodox states. "Now, a line has been crossed, and we are suddenly very hopeful," said a peace activist who studies theology, incongruously, at Karl Marx University in Leipzig. "This march could be a prelude to people pressing lor other changes, including the cleanup of our environment, and easier travel to the West," the theology student said. But he also stressed that the marchers were primarily concerned with peace and human rights, not political gain.

"We are inner-directed," he said. But the Rev. Rainer Eppelmann, pastor of East Berlin's Samaritan Church and one of the march organizers, described the march the next day to reporters as a "a political lesson" for the authorities. Before the march, authorities hud only permitted peace marches by groups affiliated with the ruling Socialist Unity Party, such as the Eree German Youth, once headed by East German leader Erich lloncckcr after World War II. Such groups hew close-" ly to the party line that Western weapons are menacing while East-bloc weapons are for defensive purposes.

Church peace protests had been tolerated only at private events organized lor church members, and never were allowed to spill into the streets. Public display of the biblically derived mbol adopted by church peace activists of a sword being beaten into a ploughshare was forbidden. The serious-minded marchers were a different group than the young rock-music fans who clashed with East German police for three nights in early June. After the police prevented them from crowding near the Berlin Wall to hear rock concerts on the western side, they shouted repeatedly, "Down with the wall." The East Berlin peace march gained impetus from an officially sanctioned peace march. Dozens of the East Merlin peace marchers had spent the previous three days on an "Olol Palme peace march." hiking 50 miles from the former Nazi concentration camp at Ruvensbruck to the site of another former camp, Sachsenhausen, just north of Berlin.

While the three-day march, dedicated to the memory of the slain Swedish premier who advocated a nuclear-free zone in Cenlral Europe, was approved by the state, it also differed from other official marches. Many of the murchers were from church groups, and many of them made their own signs signs that went beyond traditional party propaganda. "We weren't sure what the reaction would be when we first hoisted our signs, but the authorities did nothing," said one marcher who has been active in church groups in Sax- When you need a I've worked hard to have everything in life 1 want and I've been so busy, I haven't even taken the time to find a doctor. I mean, what do I do if I get sick? Well, I found out The Graduate Hospital has a Physician Referral Service. Just give them a call and they'll put you in touch with a doctor who's right for you.

It's fast, easy, and perfect for people like us who've taken care of everything except ourselves. WINNER NOUVEAU RICHE DESIGN EXPO INCLUDED ALL tfAjtSjJ Erich Honecker Was concerned about historic visit ony. The sign she held carried a seemingly simple message, "Teach Peace Instead of War." But such a message has political overtones in East Germany, where the state controls education. Youngsters, church activists say, are inculcated with Feindbilder, the attitude that Westerners, including West Germans, are enemies. Members of party youth groups carried counter signs that said, "Defense is Peace." Eor most of the march, the church-affiliated marchers, some 300 to 400, were more numerous than the party participants, but that changed as the marchers neared Berlin.

"Many strangers started arriving to march with us," the activist from Saxony said. The East Berlin peace march took place at a fortuitous time for participants just two days before Honecker was scheduled to become the first East German leader to visit West Germany since the two states were established in 1949, a trip that had taken years of careful diplomacy to arrange. As a result, East German officials were reluctant to do anything to disrupt the historic visit, according to Western diplomats. In previous days, Honecker had reportedly suspended the standing order that East German border guards shoot those fleeing to the West. So intent was Honecker on trip preparations that he missed opening the Leipzig trade fair on Sept.

6, something he had never done since taking power in 1971. But something else was at work, too, said Arvan Gordon, the head of the East German research department at Keston College, a religious studies institute outside London. "The state has come to recognize the independence of the church," said Gordon, and has now "given up the struggle" to bend it to its will. "It's not a case of the government allowing the church to do something," he continued, "it's recognizing reality." Claiming a membership of more than five million, or almost one-third of East Germany's 17 million residents, the Lutheran Church has developed into the second most powerful religious organization in the Eastern bloc. "The church hasn't got the same following in mass numbers as the Catholic Church in Poland, but it has strong and independent leaders," Gordon said.

But the official membership rolls may understate the church's authority in a country where church membership can disqualify a person from a good job. A full 40 percent of the participants in the church's June conference were not formal members. An additional million East Germans are members of the Catholic Church. "The Social Unity Party's orginal notion that the church would die out has not happened," Lutheran Bishop Gottfried Eorck of East Berlin one eign or economic policy. Hart's inability to explain why he changed his name and age hurt him in 1984.

His lies about his relationship with Donna Rice destroyed him in 1987. Eor Biden, the problem is that he has presented inconsistent images of himself at different times and places. At his news conference Thursday, for example, Biden said he refused to join the Democratic Party in Delaware in the 1960s because he was "not comfortable" with its racist ments. In a 1983 speech in New Jer- sov arcnrrlino tn thn NJnu' York Times, he said that as a young man, "my stomach turned upon hearing the voices of Faubus and Wallace," a reference to former Govs. Orval Faubus of Arkansas and George Wallace of Alabama.

But campaigning in Alabama in April, Biden talked of his sympathy for the South; bragged of an award he had received from George Wallace in 1973 and said "we IDelawar-eansl were on the South's side in the Civil War." In his campaign appearances dur ing the summer, Biden has repeat-. edly slated that he was the first one in his family to attend college as part of a peroration that he often borrows, sometimes with attribution and sometimes not, from British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. But he acknowledged Thursday that, while he is the first Biden to be a college graduate, members of his mother's family, the Einnegans, did go ttf college. Pin gin HOTEL MOTEL FURNITURE DISTRIBUTORS SOFA LOVESEAT CHAIR "AWARD '1987 EURO CHATEAU ALL 3 PIECES INCLUDED LI REDUCED FOR TOTAL SELLOUT DIRECT OFF TRAILER TRUCKS ALL BRANO NEW FURNITURE ONDISPLAY INSIDE WAREHOUSE LOADING DOCK, FOR TESTING AND SELECTION. EVERY PIECEl BRAND NEW FACTORY SEALED IN ORIGINAL HEAVY, CLEAR PLASTIC FOR YOUR IMMEDIATE INSPECTION AND NONE SOILED.

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Stiii, liie basic premise oi biden presidential campaign that he is the Democratic Party's most eloquent spokesman for the yearnings of a new generation has been undercut by the revelation that some of that eloquence was not his own. Tom Mathews, one-time press secretary to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, one of those whose words Biden used without attribution, said the affair "is symptomatic of what's been wrong all along and that is, he hasn't been completely his own man." In an analysis for the American Political Network, a political news service, Matthews said Biden's "candidacy is the invention of some very, very talented and clever people. When the candidate is invented by somebody else, the invention comes apart and eventually breaks down." In that sense, Biden's troubles have something in common with Hart's: The critical issue, for each, became his character, not his for FASsM dramCcNIB 'tsr 3T s'eTtSir MmgSm, luxurious x'M -Li nsmn ijjgsss' rarvr vv it -i vy I I CONTRACT FIRM posture classic firm BRASS HEADBOARDS tmWwll4 s-yh ltd.

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