70,000 East Germans Rally for Democracy

BERLIN--Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched and shouted "We Need Freedom!" in Leipzig yesterday during the largest prodemocracy rally in East Germany since a 1953 workers' uprising, witnesses said.

Protesters also held a vigil in East Berlin to demand democratic reforms after a weekend of demonstrations across this hard-line Communist nation.

On Saturday and Sunday, clashes broke out between police and demonstrators with hundreds arrested, several injuries and one death reported by news organizations and witnesses. The government has issued no official toll.

Christoph Wonneberger, pastor for the Lukas Lutheran Church in Leipzig, said "at least" 70,000 demonstrators marched in Leipzig last night.

Wonneberger said he was surprised by the restraint of police and paramilitary troops who were deployed nearby.

"Even though this demonstration is the largest [since 1953], to our knowledge it went off completely without violence," he said in a telephone interview with West Germany's ZDF television network.

In 1953, Soviet forces crushed a workers' uprising.

Some Leipzig demonstrators even "began conversations with paramilitary troops" after the crowd started dispersing by mid-evening, Wonneberger said.

He said, "I consider this [police restraint] a very hopeful sign following the violence" in earlier demonstrations.

Before the march, officials of the Leipzig Communist Party promised publicly they would push for an open dialogue between citizens and the government, Lutheran church sources said.

In a public statement, the Leipzig party officials said, "We all need a free exchange of ideas about how we should continue Socialism in our nation," according to the church sources.

A larger number of police officers did not stop the march but cordoned off the downtown area, the witnesses said. ZDF said armored personnel carriers also were seen in the area.

In East Berlin, several thousand demonstrators gathered in front of the Lutheran Gethsemane Church for the pro-democracy vigil, West German media reported. "Police have shown restraint so far," radio and television said.

Some witnesses said there were more than 10,000 marchers, while others said the number could be as high as 50,000. The witnesses said protesters marched after attending a traditional Monday evening prayer service at St. Nicholas church.

Throngs of people joined them along the way, they said.

It was unknown how many police were deployed.

Earlier yesterday, 18 Lutheran Church leaders issued an appeal in East Berlin calling on East Germany's communist government to approve broad democratic reforms and urging all sides to refrain from violence.

The Rev. Rainer Eppelmann, a Lutheran pastor in East Berlin, said the doctrinaire regime must "talk with the people about their wishes and needs."

West Germany's ARD television said many of the hundreds arrested during the weekend protests already had been sentenced to jail terms of up to six months.

The demonstrations coincided with the visit of Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the reform-minded Soviet president, for East Germany's 40th anniversary.

Church sources said a participant in a demonstration last week was run over by a train and lost both his legs.

Saechsische Zeitung, a government daily in Dresden, said a person was "seriously injured" when thousands of people tried to board freedom trains that passed through Dresden carrying East German refugees from Czechoslovakia to the West.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl denounced the East German government yesterday as "rigidly authoritarian."

Junge Welt, the Communist Party youth newspaper, said the "gang of Western news reporters" stirred up the protests.

Eppelmann, speaking in an interview with RIAS radio of West Berlin, said yesterday: "If the state does not send a clear signal soon and talk with the people about their wishes and needs, an escalation is possible. There is fear in the GDR [East Germany] that violence could soon reign."

Eppelmann, a leader of Demokratische Aufbruch [Democratic Awakening], is among those urging the country's increasingly restless young people to be clam.

Officials in West Berlin said Western tourists were allowed into East Berlin yesterday. They had been kept out since Thursday because of the anniversary celebrations.

Extra police patrols were visible throughout the divided city's eastern sector.

Including legal emigrants, more than 100,000 East Germans have gone to the West this year.

One of East Germany's star athletes, two-time Olympic skating champion Katarina Witt, said in Munich yesterday that her government must think about the causes for the exodus and that changes must be considered.

Witt, a member of the Communist Party, called the exodus "sad."

Der Standard, a respected Austrian daily, said yesterday the East German leadership would like to hire 80,000 Chinese to fill positions left vacant by the departure of young skilled workers. It quoted a "leading member" of the government's Free German Trade Union, who was not identified further.

East Germany has not made official reports of arrests or injuries. State-run newspapers carried a dispatch from the official news agency ADN calling the demonstrators "troublemakers."