Coercive measures for the collection of tax and social insurance arrears dating back to economic activities during the period up to the end of the year 1951 are to be suspended in the entire economy in the case of small, medium, and big farmers, artisans, retail and wholesale traders, and private industrial, building, and transport enterprises.
Artisans, retail and wholesale traders, and private industrial building and transport enterprises are to have their businesses restored to them on application. Short-term credits are to be granted.
Fare reductions amounting to 50 percent on workers' return tickets are to be extended to all persons entitled to them, irrespective of their income, with effect from 1 July 1953. Furthermore, fare reductions granted until 1 April 1953 to invalids, schoolchildren, students, apprentices, and allotment gardeners are to be reintroduced. Similarly the fare reductions on Sunday return tickets, shift workers' return tickets, and collective tickets, are to be restored with effect from 1 July 1953.
Cases of hardship in social insurance and social welfare will be relieved and payments will be brought back to their original level.
Agricultural units whose owners were forbidden by a decree of 19 February 1953 to work them any longer will be given back.
Persons who fled the German Democratic Republic and who return to its territory or to the democratic sector of Berlin will be given back their property. Those returning persons will have their full civic rights restored to them and will be reintegrated into economic and social life, according to their qualifications.
Farmers who left their farms because of difficulties in continuing to run them and fled the Republic can return to their farms. Where, in exceptional cases, it is impossible to give them back their agricultural property, they will get a fully equivalent substitute for it.
The Ministry of Justice and the Director of Public Prosecutions are to review all arrests, criminal proceedings, and sentences at once in order to remove hardships which may have occurred.
The Council of Ministers were informed of the agreements arrived at by the Minister President with the representatives of the Church and approved them.
Source: Communiqué on the Meeting of the Council of Ministers of the German Democratic Republic (June 11, 1953), Neues Deutschland (June 12, 1953); in Beata Ruhm von Oppen, ed., Documents on Germany under Occupation, 1945-1954. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1955, pp. 588-90.
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