Basic HTML Version
PAGE 12
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, MAY 11, 1984
Without even trying, the daily broadcasts of West Germany's
autonomous state-supported television stations have made East
Germany the best informed society in the Communist world, and
subtly weaned its citizens away from their loyalty to the
Marxist-Leninist state...• About 90 percent of the population
[watch West German TV] •
Only in the northeastern and south
eastern extremities of the German Democratic Republic is recep
tion difficult.
East Germans mockingly call these "the dead
corners" or "the valley of those who know nothing." The state
has systematically recruited border guards from these regions,
regarding their locals as more naive and politically more
reliable--not likely to hop over the Wall.
In a drab, spartan society, West German television has become an
essential component of what in the West would be called "the
quality of life."... Ordinary East Germans have given themselves
enthusiastically to buying better sets, taller aerials and costly
devices that allow West German color to be received by East
German sets.
(Some new East German color sets receive both
systems.) The best East German color television receiver runs to
five times a worker's average monthly wages. In black and white,
or color, DALLAS, THE DENVER CLAN (as DYNASTY is called) and THE
STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO are big hits in the East. So, too, are
West German commercials, which feed the appetites of a budding
consumer society....
Lately, the regime has found that even high-ranking functionaries
are reluctant to accept jobs in the "dead corners." "People say
it's like being sent to Africa," jokes a teenager at a rock con
cert in East Berlin. This has produced by far the most extra
ordinary capitulation. Tentatively, East Germany has� started
to put cable-TV into "the valley of those who know nothing."...
In the last year, it has become clear that the East Germans are
determined to upgrade their own programming to make it more com
petitive. The amount of mind-numbing Communist propaganda has
been cut and, in prime time, the East Germans are running high
quality Western films and film festivals featuring a particular
actor or actress. "Ten Marilyn Monroe movies in sequence, then
10 with Romy Schneider, then 10 with Brigitte Bardot," explains a
producer in West Berlin. "All decadent capitalist stuff.".•.
Knowing that a majority of East Germans watch the two main West
German television news programs at 7 and 8 p.m., the East Germans
squeeze their own news show in at 7: 30, hoping to draw a few
people to their turgid reports on the comings and goings of
Eastern Bloc bigwigs and laudatory claims about productivity
gains in tractor factories. Obscure African revolutionaries loom
large in the imagination of those condemned to watch East German
news....
East Germans aren't about to revolt against a tough regime that
keeps them locked behind a wall. But many live in a state of
rebellion against their own TV. At a West German transit center
for East German refugees north of Frankfurt, a chunky truck
driver from Magdeburg recounts scornfully how an East German pro-