Friday, 1. December 1989

By an overwhelming majority, the People's Chamber decides to eliminate the SED's constitutionally-anchored monopoly of power. This means elimination of the first clause of Article 1, which states that East German socialism is led by »the working class and its Marxist-Leninist party.« The CDU loses its bid to also eliminate Article 1's statement that East Germany is a socialist country.

The chairman of the parliamentary committee investigating corruption and abuse of power, Heinrich Toeplitz (CDU), discusses the behavior of the police and security forces, asking who had rained them to mistreat and torment suspects in custody. He insists it cannot be coincidental that police units in places as far apart as Dresden, Bautzen and Berlin had harassed arrested suspects »using the same methods.« Such methods, he said, should have ceased with the end of the Nazi period.

The head of the newly-created Office of National Security, General Wolfgang Schwanitz, informs the visibly affected deputies that he can say little about these actions, since he has inherited only two empty safes from his predecessor, State Security Minister Erich Mielke.

Singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, whose East German citizenship was revoked in 1976, is allowed to appear in East Germany again for the first time. He sings for an audience of 6,000 in Leipzig. »The Federal Republic is not the solution to the problems of humanity that we all face,« he says, referring to the demand for reunification that has been heard of late in Leipzig. »I am not happy about this >Germany, Germany über alles< mood. We would be pretty silly - you would be pretty silly - to go backwards to the old Reich à la Kohl. Thank you very much!« he calls to the audience, which applauds his words.

For the first time in East Germany, a smog alarm is issued in Leipzig today. The air is so thick in this city, surrounded by chemical factories, that it calls for a level-two alarm and cancellation of an evening soccer game between teams from Leipzig and Dresden.