Word: egon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...East Germany new party leader Egon Krenz mounted a campaign to live down his long association with his discredited predecessor, Erich Honecker, who is under investigation for suspected abuses of power. Struggling to hang on to his job as the party prepares for a seminal congress on Dec. 15, Krenz announced that he favored rescinding the country's constitutional guarantee of a "leading role" for the Communist Party, opening the possibility of multiparty rule...
Wendehals literally means turn neck, the name of a rare bird that can twist its head 180 degrees; the word has been adopted by East Germans to refer to the thousands of Communist Party officials, from Egon Krenz, the current party leader, down to district secretaries, who overnight began to sound as if they had joined the pro-democracy movement. A favorite target is Gunter Mittag, the recently sacked Politburo member in charge of the economy. Described by the newly outspoken East German press as arrogant and autocratic, Mittag is being held responsible for wrecking the economy and cooking...
Under the pressure of a public demanding an endto 40 years of authoritarian one-party rule, EastGermany has undergone dizzying changes sincehard-line Communist Erich Honecker was ousted Oct.18 and replaced by Egon Krenz...
...that "they reached a full identity of views." It has long been the accepted wisdom among Western and Czechoslovak experts that if the legitimacy of the 1968 invasion were ever officially questioned, it would be the Jakes regime's death warrant. This week East Germany's Communist Party chief Egon Krenz will be in Prague for a visit with Jakes. Sources in Berlin intimate that Krenz will try to persuade the Czechoslovak leader to drop his hard line. The trip, said East German Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer, may just have a "stimulating effect...
...barrier dropped from power last week. Both East Germany's Cabinet and the Communist Party Politburo resigned en masse, to be replaced by bodies in which reformers mingled with hard-liners. And that, supposedly, was only the start. On the same day that East Germany threw open its borders, Egon Krenz, 52, President and party leader, promised "free, general, democratic and secret elections," though there was no official word as to when. Could the Socialist Unity Party, as the Communists call themselves in East Germany, lose in such balloting? "Theoretically," replied Gunter Schabowski, the East Berlin party boss...