Page:CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7.pdf/13

 APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7

A sign of the times was the injection of some humor into the moribund satirical weekly, Eulenspiegel, and the addition of some bit into the skits at the East Berlin cabaret, Die Distel. East Germany is still leagues behind the other East European states in terms of rapport between leadership and masses, but for the first time the regime seems to be taking cautious steps to bring the extremes closer together.

Isolated incidents of active opposition to the regime continue to occur occasionally, but as in the past those opposed to the regime are more likely to resort to tactics of passive resistance such as a studied indifference to regime programs. Most East Germans, faced with the hard reality of their position—effectively isolated from other Germans in the Federal Republic and ruled by an authoritarian regime maintained in power by Soviet troops—cooperate with the regime only to the extent that they are obliged to do so and avoid political activity as much as possible.

C. Population

On 1 January 1973 the population was estimated to total 17,050,000 persons, including approximately 1,100,000 inhabitants of East Berlin, which technically is not a part of East Germany according to Four-Power agreements. This figure reflects a slow decline in population—about 0.19% or 32,000—since 1967 as a result of a top-heavy age profile and a continuing decline in specific fertility. The present situation, however, represents an improvement over that which existed in the years prior to 1961, when the flight of East Germans to the West reached major proportions and threatened to undermine the regime's economic and social policies. Despite the years of population decline, East Germany still has the fourth largest population in Eastern Europe, ranking behind Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania.

East Germany is one of the more densely populated countries in Europe, extending over an area of about 41,800 square miles (slightly smaller than Tennessee) and having a population density of 408 persons per square mile in 1972. In this respect it is surpassed in Europe only by the Netherlands, Belgium, West Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy. The northern two-thirds of the nation, which is predominantly agricultural, is the least densely settled (Figure 3). With the exception of areas in and around East Berlin and urban concentrations serving as transportation or administrative centers, the most thickly populated regions are to be found in the industrial south. The triangular area in the south comprising the districts of Halle, Leipzig, Dresden, and Karl-Marx-Stadt constitutes only 24% of East Germany's total area, but these districts contained 43% of the total population in 1971. Four of the nation's six cities with populations exceeding 250,000 are located in this area.

Official figures at the beginning of 1971 showed that 12,569,000 persons, or 73.7% of the total population of 17,041,000, resided in communities of 2,000 or more inhabitants. The urban proportion was larger than in other Eastern European countries, approaching that in Sweden and the United Kingdom, where over 75% of the population lives in urban areas. However, when a uniform cutoff of 20,000 inhabitants is applied to the GDR's urban population distribution, it is apparent that the East German countryside is characterized by the existence of numerous small towns and not the concentration of urban communities typical of the coastal areas of the United States or the Rhine-Ruhr region of West Germany. Figure 4 shows the distribution of population by Bezirk (district) and the proportion of urban population.

Since the end of the war, slightly more than 20% of all East Germans have resided in major cities (100,000 or more inhabitants), and slightly more than 50% have lived in smaller urban centers (2,000 to 100,000 inhabitants). The 10 larges sixties, according to population estimates of 1972, were:

The urban proportion is now slightly higher than it was in 1939 and well above the 1946 low when wartime destruction and dislocation had reduced the proportion of population living in communities larger than 2,000 to only 67.7%. The distribution of population 1970 by size of locality and its comparison with selected previous years is shown in Figure 5.

Losses of population during the postwar period have been heaviest in the rural areas and small towns. Most occurred in communities of less than 10,000 inhabitants, where the percentage of total population declined from 55.5% in 1940 to 46.6% in 1970. A majority of the larger cities have also lost residents, although their proportionate loss was less than that for the nation as a whole. Thus East Berlin's population

8

APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110024-7