EAST GERMANY’S Minister of Nature Protection, Environmental Protection
and Water Management, Hans Reichelt, resigned unexpectedly last week, apparently
due to a lack of public confidence in his efforts to clean up the country’s
heavily polluted environment. His resignation came as a surprise to workers
in his ministry, who had expected him to stay in office as a caretaker until
after the forthcoming elections on 6 May.
According to one of his colleagues in the ministry, Reichelt ‘had always
tried to push environmental protection, but did not get sufficient cooperation
from on high’. Some of his colleagues see his resignation as the sacrifice
of a scapegoat to East Germany’s emergent ‘green’ movement.
Like the Socialist bloc generally, East Germany has for many years proclaimed
a strong formal commitment to environmental protection. Indeed, until what
is now termed the autumn revolution of 1989, it had two environmental ministries:
the Ministry of Agriculture and Forests (which was responsible for nature
protection in the narrow sense) and the Ministry of Environmental Protection
and Water Management (responsible for the impact of human activity on the
Under the Honecker regime, however, environmental considerations were
forced to give way to the fulfilment of centrally determined plans for industry.
Although the environmental ministries could – and did – urge the installation
of antipollution devices, they had neither the financial nor the political
clout to enforce their rulings.
After the fall of Honecker, the two environmental ministries were amalgamated,
and the new joint ministry was assigned to the Farmers’ Party (DBD), one
of the small parties which had survived at least in name during 40 years
of rule by the Socialist Unity Party (SED) and which now had taken on a
new lease of life.
Reichelt, the former minister for water and the environment, agreed
to stay on as caretaker of the combined ministry although he was already
65 years old. During last week’s session of parliament, however, he resigned,
on grounds of age.
According to his colleagues, however, Reichelt has not suffered any
sudden deterioration in health or mental capacity in the past three months,
and there is no obvious reason why he should not have continued in office
until May. But the reforms in East Germany have meant that the media have
been permitted, for the first time, to publish details of water and air
Since East Germany’s energy comes largely from obsolete lignite-fired
power stations, the atmosphere is heavily contaminated with sulphur dioxide,
while the ubiquitous Trabant automobiles add considerably to the problem.
Under Honecker, the long-term solution to both the energy and pollution
problems was nuclear power.
This at present produces some 10 per cent of the total electrical output,
planned to rise to 20 per cent in the mid-1990s. But public confidence in
nuclear energy declined sharply in 1986, when the government of the day
refused to admit that any pollution whatsoever from Chernobyl had fallen
on the country. Not surprisingly, the new ‘green’ movements in East Germany
have seized on this post-Chernobyl silence as an argument against nuclear
power in any form.