peace activists The first mass public demonstration for disarmament in the history of East Germany took place on February 13 About five thousand people demonstrated in Dresden.
This demonstration grew out of a petition drawn up a few months earlier by a Lutheran minister, Reinhard Eppelman. The statement raised demands such as abolition of compulsory military training for school children and military parades. It called for a nuclear-free Europe from the Urals to the Atlantic.
In recent months, the badges bearing the symbol of the peace movement have started being worn by thousands of East German youth. The emblem is a Soviet monument showing swords being beaten into plowshares. The wearing of these badges is looked on with very jaundiced eyes by the East German authorities, but banning it outright, for obvious reasons, would be embarrassing.
In a recent issue, the Stockholm weekly ETC did an interview with Eppelman, who said:
"The police have beaten up people wearing our peace symbol."
The reporter noted: "That's absurd, to say the least. The badge shows a Soviet statute that... was a gift from Stalin to the U.N. headquarters in New York,"
Eppelman replied: "That doesn't keep the authorities from attacking us.
of being antiCommunist."
The pastor went on to say: "Our peace work depends entirely on the antinuclear armament groups in the West, mainly in West Germany. If the government attacks us, then doubt will grow among people in the West. They will ask if it is meaningful to work for peace when the GDR does not permit such a movement. the Western movement, which our rulers do not want."
The reporter talked with another activist in the peace movement, who said:
"We have to reform socialism from within. We have to have open debate.
Work for disarmament is a step in the right direction."
"Reagan's policy threatens the entire world....Both East and West Germany should demilitarize. Our goal is a neutral, disarmed, and reunited Germany....
"We can get Western TV. Their propaganda is as idiotic as ours. We are fighting for peace. The bourgeois press in the West wants to use us for their propaganda. What they say is false. No one is talking about introducing a capitalist system in East Germany."
The funeral of the well-known dissident, Dr. Robert Havemann, was the occasion of a gathering of peace activists. Eppelman gave the final speech:
"Havemann's faith in socialism and peace never faltered. His attitude to people who talked in the name of socialism but were interested in nothing but power was a different matter....
"He started what led to today's peace movement. His ideas will never