Private cars and at least two tour buses carrying East German refugees left the West German Embassy in Prague for the West late Friday, an hour after authorities said they could go.
The estimated 5,000 refugees who had jammed the mission since Wednesday shouted "Freedom! Freedom!" and flashed V-for-victory signs when West German diplomats said they could legally leave for the West by any means they like.West German officials said many of the East Germans in the embassy would depart on special trains that would begin leaving Prague's Liben station Saturday morning.
West Germany said the agreement was reached with East Germany, permitting the third such exodus from the West German mission in Prague in six weeks.
The first private cars and two West German tour buses with about 100 people on board headed toward the West German border at midnight Friday, about an hour after the announcement.
Scores of East Germans arriving fresh from their Communist homeland turned up at the embassy astonished and happy to discover they could already leave.
More than 12,000 East Germans had swarmed across the border into Czechoslovakia in the three days since their government lifted a month-old ban on travel to the country, the only land East Germans may visit without prior permission.
More than 2,000 East Germans flooded into the Prague mission on Friday alone, many voicing bitter disappointment with promises of reform from a new Communist leader at home.
Harried diplomats tried to process the refugees. Thirty tents were erected and staircases filled with people to try to accommodate the influx.
The overcrowding apparently forced the latest East German agreement to an exodus. Last month, two waves of East German emigres left on special trains from Prague through East Germany to West Germany.
The arrangement announced Friday apparently allows the East Germans to go West without waiting for the cumbersome bureaucratic procedure of renouncing their East German citizenship through the East German Embassy in Prague.
This would avoid clashes that ensued in October when thousands of East Germans tried to board the rail cars going west as they passed through their communist nation.
East Germany's new leader Egon Krenz, who announced sweeping reforms and the resignation of five aging Politburo members in a national television address Friday night, apparently was anxious to avoid more clashes.
Krenz also appealed to his citizens to stay in their communist homeland, which has lost more than 70,000 citizens fleeing through Eastern Europe since August. Another 101,000 East Germans have emigrated legally to West Germany this year.
Krenz's predecessor, Erich Honecker, had banned travel to Czechoslovakia to stop an earlier exodus of mostly young, skilled workers from the communist country.
Honecker's ouster and indications Krenz might be open to some reforms did not sway some of the refugees.
"It's just the same hard-headed idiots as before," said a bricklayer from Karl-Marx-Stadt. "What's going to change? The corrupted socialism in our country is just getting new clothes, that's all."
"You've just got to use an open barn door to the West while you can," said a 25-year-old from Leipzig.
Some blamed Krenz himself for their decision to leave, citing his comments during a visit to Moscow this week that it is "not possible" to reunite East and West Germany.
"When he buried any hope of reunification, I knew I've got to get out," said a young father from Dresden.