East Germany Government Officials

Amid scenes of high drama, tears, shouts and a sit-in by an opposition party, the East German Parliament on Friday voted to reveal the names of members found to have had contact with the infamous secret police, known as the Stasi. After initially voting to make the names public, the deputies pulled back in the course of a prolonged, emotional debate and instead decided to circulate the names only among themselves.

In its strongest demand yet for the return of Erick Honecker, Germany charged Wednesday that the Soviet Union violated a key treaty by helping the ousted East German leader escape trial. Honecker was whisked away to the Soviet Union from a Red Army hospital near Berlin on March 13. Officials of the Russian Federation have said that Honecker will likely be sent back in the wake of the failed coup by Communist hard-liners in Moscow, but no official decision has been announced.

A Berlin court on Thursday convicted one of East Germany's most powerful officials on corruption charges in the first trial of members of the ousted Communist leadership. The former Politburo member, Harry Tisch, 64, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, but the chief judge said he was considering giving Tisch a suspended sentence, so Tisch remains free for now.

Erich Mielke, who headed the ministry of state security in East Germany--better known as Stasi--was charged Saturday with fraud and embezzlement, authorities said. The 250-page indictment accused Mielke of ordering illegal telephone tapping in at least 25 cases, embezzling foreign currency funds and involvement in election fraud, Berlin Justice Senator Jutta Limbach said.

Harry Tisch, once among the most powerful East German Communists, went on trial in Berlin over defense objections that he was too sick to take the stand. The 63-year-old former Politburo official of the Erich Honecker regime toppled in December, 1989, is accused of misappropriating about $1 million for a hunting lodge and vacation compound near the Baltic Sea.

The scandalized Communist Party elected a pro-democracy lawyer as its chairman Saturday and begged public forgiveness for leading East Germany into a crisis that "threatened our very existence." Gregor Gysi, a wry, 41-year-old Berliner, was the sole candidate in balloting that capped a marathon 17-hour emergency party congress. He won 95% of the vote from the 2,750 delegates.

Six former Politburo members were arrested Friday as East Germany's shattered Communist Party opened an emergency all-night Congress to determine its state after 40 years of iron-clad rule. The state prosecutor filed warrants charging corruption and misuse of office against former leader Erich Honecker, former Prime Minister Willi Stoph, former secret police chief Erich Mielke and three other members of the ousted Communist hierarchy.

In an unprecedented move, the Communist government of East Germany resigned Tuesday afternoon amid the deepening crisis over citizen demands for reform. A brief official announcement said that Prime Minister Willi Stoph and the entire Council of Ministers have stepped down in order to let the Volkskammer, or Parliament, select a new government. It said they will stay on in a caretaker capacity until the new government is formed, but it did not say when that might be.

For East German dissidents, Egon Krenz is the man they loved to hate. While Krenz's predecessor as national leader, Erich Honecker, was viewed as misguided but well-meaning, Krenz was seen as the rock-hard anti-reformer. After his first week in the nation's top three offices--head of state, Communist Party chief and chairman of the Defense Council--Krenz is being given a second look, not only by East Germans but by Western diplomatic observers.

The East German Parliament on Tuesday confirmed Egon Krenz as president, but by an unprecedented divided vote. Refusing to rubber-stamp Krenz's selection last week by the Communist Party Central Committee, 26 of the 500 members of Parliament voted against him; 26 others abstained. The no votes and abstentions came mainly from the Liberal Democratic and Christian Democratic parties, two small satellites of the Communist Party that in the past had been obedient to the wishes of the leadership.