E. Germany’s Communists Try Hip Campaign

KARL-MARX-STADT, East Germany —  Gregor Gysi--bespectacled lawyer, respected reformist, underdog candidate--was ready to entertain voters by parachuting into a meadow recently when the unthinkable happened.

A virtual hurricane.

Even Mother Nature, it seemed, was unwilling to cut the Communists a little slack.

With East Germany’s first free elections just three days away, the reincarnated party is striving to overcome a corrupt past, forge a credible future and prove to a skeptical public that it’s never too late to be hip.

The startling make-over includes not only a new name, the Party of Democratic Socialism, but also campaign slogans in English slang, rock ‘n’ roll rallies, longhaired volunteers in Volkswagen buses and guest appearances by Lulu the Communist clown.

There was even talk at one point of making a television spot with Gysi, the party chairman, clad in black leather while racing a motorcycle into the future to the beat of “Born to Be Wild.” Although that idea was scotched, he did eventually make the parachute jump.

A campaign slogan sums up the new style: “Better Red than Colorless.”

“We didn’t sit down and plan this as a strategy or anything,” insists party spokeswoman Helga Adler. “It just happened. That’s just how we are now.

“We’re a young, fresh, new people. And now it’s OK to have fun, to be preposterous.”

But even on the calmest days of the new German spring, the Communists are still being blown away.

Since the arrest last fall of Erich Honecker, the former party chairman, and most of his top lieutenants on corruption charges, Communist membership has plummeted from 2.3 million East Germans to about 700,000.

Opinion polls give the Party of Democratic Socialism anywhere from 5% to 17% of the public’s support--enough to win only one or two seats in the 400-seat Volkskammer, or Parliament, being elected Sunday.

As a result, the Communists are now vigorously campaigning to become exactly what they silenced for the past 40 years: the opposition.

The irony is inescapable, especially in East Berlin, where the party’s slick posters are plastered across the still-unchipped eastern face of the Berlin Wall.

Films banned by the old regime as politically unacceptable are now shown for free in the old party’s Central Committee headquarters.

“Forbidden films in the forbidden house!” the party program announces, a not-so-subtle reminder of the days when even party members needed VIP invitations to visit the Central Committee chambers.

The main lobby is filled with campaign posters and literature, including the popular “Don’t Worry, Take Gysi” buttons. Receptionists still address each other as “comrade.”

The Democratic Socialists’ platform promises such benefits as more bicycle paths, cleaner water, zero unemployment and fewer spies.

“Did you dismantle the secret police here just so you can be watched over by West Germany’s intelligence agency?” demands one poster, underscoring the Democratic Socialists’ call for slower reunification.

On the ballot, the party finds itself alphabetically listed as the 19th of 24 parties and alliances. That’s eight unceremonious spots lower than a party called the German Beer Drinkers’ Union.

The idea of communism with razzmatazz is alienating some older party members, Adler admits. “There are some who are shocked and keep saying that’s not the way we do things.

“We try to be patient with them. A lot of them can’t stand seeing party leaders with long hair or headbands,” she said. “But what’s left of our membership is a lot of young, highly intelligent, creative people, many of them anti-fascists and feminists and environmentalists.

“We used to be the smallest, most critical voice in the old party,” Adler added, referring to the liberals. “No one ever listened, and no one ever dreamed these same people would one day have the leadership.”

Gysi is clearly the star of the Communists’ traveling medicine show. The 42-year-old, divorced Berliner won respect as a reformist when, as head of the Bar Assn., he fought to legalize the country’s first opposition group, New Forum.

Gysi went on to head the internal investigation of party wrongdoing and later became its youngest chairman in Eastern Europe.

His snappy style and quick humor belie the stereotype of grim party loyalists. On the campaign trail, he jokes with hecklers who accuse him of being amicrophone like a stand-up comic and to field questions.

When a questioner asked recenhe right to vote in district elections, Gysi explained that ited to improve the government’s image.

“But then, we could afford ty elections anyway,” he cracked.

Now, all the party can hope fe,” Gysi told supporters Tuesday on a campaign swing to Ks from East Berlin.

Over and over, Gysi stressed y hopes to participate in the country’s fledgling democracy, not to dominate it.

He draws good crowds. At a technical school, students in the packed auditorium sat at his feet on the stage, and some curious passers-by even climbed in open windows to listen.

But Gysi’s relatively warm reception stops short of spelling any remarkable Communist comeback, and it pales dramatically in contrast to the cheering crowds drawn by visiting West German politicians such as Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Kohl, campaigning the same day and an hour’s drive away from Gysi, attracted more than 20 times the people as he stumped for the East German alliance of his Christian Democrats.

En route to Karl-Marx-Stadt, the small Gysi caravan pulled off the autobahn at a rest stop only to find a Christian Democrat poster, with a picture of Kohl, glued to the picnic table.

Later, the lead van in the motorcade was pulled over at a speed trap and cited for going 113 kilometers per hour in a 100-k.p.h. zone, or about 8 miles per hour over the 62-m.p.h. limit. The same police agency that once would have grandly escorted the party chairman to his next appearance instead slapped his people with a small fine.

“I think the police were sympathetic to the PDS,” the van’s driver later confided. “Really, we got off cheap.”