EXPATRIATE CHESS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200830025-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Sequence Number: 25
• Content Type: MAGAZINE (OPEN SOURCE)

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23 "Illy 197iTATINTL
Communists are in duty bound not
to gloss over the shortcomings in
their movement, but to criticize them
openly so as to remedy them the
more speedily and radically.
V. 1. LENIN
Collected Works, Vol. 31
0 one dreams of East Germany
it was not the
any more, it was - not the
answer. Anyway, there is a
New Left now, with different dreams.
East Germany has become that place
behind the wall where bombed-out
buildings harbor dreary little fic-
tional spies. And the chief dreamer,
Gerhart Eisler, archetypal revolu-
tionary of the Old Left, prince of
bail jpmpers, mastermind of defec-
tions, is gone now, dead shortly
before the dawning of the Age of
Aquarius.
But East Germany Is real. Indus-
trial output increases; the wall grows
toward adolescence; Moscow, Bonn
and Berlin negotiate; the bombed-out
buildings are replaced by precast
concrete honeycombs; Socialist plan-
ning decrees wide, empty streets,
and a tiny group of editors and
writers from the West lives on in
East Berlin. They are growing old
now, these East Berliners who re-
member the West. There are widows
and widowers among them. They are
weary visionaries. Their hopes have
been scarred by purges, the non-
,aggression pact, Poland, Hungary,
'Czechoslovakia, the N.K.V.D., the
rX.G.B.; but they remain in East
Berlin-proof, perhaps, of the dura-
bllity of dreams.. -
# ' -The dream is vacant. Where is
everyone? At work. The empty
streets are the result of full employ-
ment. Gray is the color of full em-
ployment. The sound of Socialist
planning is quiet. A surly city behind
-a-wall. The -ordinary people -of East
Berlin may not cross that wall until
they are 60 years old. It was built She laughs. "We haven't got Com-
to contain the human resources of munism yet. Writers must sell their
the German Democratic Republic, a work. If it's popular, they get a lot
monument to the quality of life in of money. They must negotiate -with
the G.D.R. publishers. To make a living in the
G.D.R. a writer must work very hard.
, `' MONG those few who may For the free artist it is no different
cross the wall are the dreamers who here than in the West"
came from the West to build Social-
ism. Hilde Eisler, widow of Gerhart,
has just returned from Paris. In
1947, when she and Gerhart lived
in Queens and in court, Life maga-
zine called her "the beauteous Brun-
hilde." She was the romance in the
Eisler case: a Polish Jew, she had
worked in the underground for three
years before she and Eisler fled to
Mexico to escape the Gestapo. The
years in East Germany have been
like brine on her beauty. The editor
in chief of Das Magazin, the most
popular magazine in East Germany,
is a measuring woman; her steps are
precise, the degree of fashion in her
clpthes and the shape of her eye-
glasses have been planned. Coffee is
served; if one guest will not drink
coffee, -then no one will drink any-
thing.
"I was ? three years in the under-
ground," she says, as if to offer an
explanation. It is the only explana-
tion she offers to anyone. When her
husband died, people she had known
for years tried to comfort her, to be
close, but she rejected them, prefer-
ring to remain alone. Her reputation
Is for such toughness; it is in her
manner and in her eyes. There must
be limits to what one person can
know before the eyes refuse to see
any more.
That is an unfair judgment. There
are vulnerabilities yet. She asks about
those members of the Old Left who
stayed in America. They are published
-In Das Nagazin, paid in -hard cur-
rency. Life is difficult for them in
America. Couldn't they move to East
EARL SHORRIS wrote "The Death of Berlin? "Don't be naive," she an-
the Great Spirit, an Elegy for the Ameri- swers. "How would they live?"
.-can Indian"published last week. There is a writers' union.
fi- .:---
MORIXEW
Approved For Release 2006/06/19: CIA-RDP88-0135OR000200830025-6
age. We can't. print enough copies.
When the magazine comes out, yol.i
must have a friend at the newsstand
to get a'copy. He will hide it under-
neath for you. That's why you never
see it on the newsstands."
"This is one reason why the maga-
zine is so popular," she says, open-
ing a copy to a photograph of a
naked girl. "Every issue we publish
a picture of a naked girl. The people
open right at this page. The girls
are naked, but it is artful, not ob-
scene." She smiles. "These are the
only pictures of naked girls published
in the Socialist countries."
She thumbs through the rest of
the issue. There is a translation of a
story by Damon Runyon, a Qoem by
Oscar Wilde, a story, an art feature,
a music feature, a bit of propaganda,
a color spread of a pretty girl in a
white net bikini posing on rocks, a bit
of Egyptian archaeology, a cartoon
reprinted from The New Yorker, an-
other cheesecake photograph and a
page of classified ads. There are full-
page ads for perfume, cameras,
cosmetics and dairy products. The
stories are short and the paper is poor
except for the slick pages on which
the cheesecake is printed, but the
magazine strives toward an atmos-
phere of affluent liberalism. It is
sophisticated, in touch with the West;
the editor has just returned from
Paris. Outside the window of her
-office one can -see a park, the Brand-
enburg Gate and the wall. It is a wall
for them, not for her. She has been
a Communist for more than 30 years.
She was married for 26 years to V
\i