December 13, 1981

Erich Honecker, the East German leader, told Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany today that the future of inter-German relations was linked to West Germany's position on its planned deployment of new American nuclear weapons. In a statement clearly aimed at influencing West German public opinion, Mr. Honecker said, ''Good neighborliness cannnot flourish in the shadow of U.S. atomic missiles.'' Both Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Honecker, speaking at the first full-scale meeting of German leaders in more than 11 years, said their countries had a particular role to play inside their alliances in improving the East-West climate. East German Accuses U.S. But Mr. Honecker's remarks, coupled with accusations that the United States was the cause of the world's tensions, placed conditions on further progress on inter-German cooperation. Mr. Honecker clearly seemed to be attempting to establish a choice for West Germans between contacts with East Germany and the NATO weapon program. Relations between the two Germanys have been largely dormant since the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the development of the Solidarity labor movement in Poland.

Through two years of trials on corruption charges, Nassau County Republican chairman Joseph M. Margiotta's line of defense was, essentially, not guilty by reason of politics. Last week a jury decided that what Mr. Margiotta called routine patronage was actually fraud and extortion.

AMONG oil rich Texans, almost none have a lower profile than the Bass family of Fort Worth, itself a quiet, folksy city of 385,000 some 30 miles west of Dallas. The Basses themselves are unknown even to most Texans, although they are probably among the five or 10 wealthiest families in the United States. Several prominent Texas businessmen interviewed said that they doubted that the Basses were as big as the Hunts of Dallas. But both are so big - with each clan's total worth easily more than $1 billion - that neither family really knows how wealthy it is. But a former executive with Morgan Stanley, the investment banking firm, offered one indication of the Basses' wealth: ''We looked at their operations a while back,'' he said, ''and they were so well-heeled it was hard to find anything we could do for them.'' ''They are very, very quiet, and very, very powerful,'' added the former Morgan officer, who asked not to be identified. The extremely private clan, which shuns the press and refuses all interviews, came to national attention last month, when it was disclosed that the family was the second-largest shareholder of Marathon Oil with 5.1 percent of the stock, after another Texas investor, Sedco Inc., which has 7.7 percent.

''I SOMETIMES enjoy saying that anybody's life can be encompassed in about 10 wonderful jokes. One of my favorites is about an American singer who makes his debut at La Scala. He sings his first aria to great applause. And the crowd calls 'Ancora, vita, vita.' He sings it a second time, and again they call for an encore. Then a third time and a fourth ... Finally, panting and exhausted, he asks, 'How many times must I sing this aria?' Then someone tells him, 'Until you get it right.' That's how it is with me - I always feel I haven't gotten it quite right, and so I go on singing.'' Saul Bellow tells this story with great relish. Sitting down in a black leather easy chair, he gazes out through the window of his high-rise apartment to the dark waters of Lake Michigan beyond, and throws his head back and laughs. His conversation, like his books, is at once colloquial and lofty, intellectual and passionate, filled with jokes heard on the Chicago streets and the high seriousness of Academe. The author himself bears a certain resemblance to his own heroes: earnest, elegantly dressed and deeply thoughtful, he too is ''a hungry observer'' of everything around him.

RYE IN the last three years, the Cross Cultural Center at Wainwright House here has grown from a one-person tutoring project into an active international gathering place where a variety of programs are provided for foreign-born adults who live in the county and in neighboring areas. Its Cross Cultural Conversations program has 80 volunteers teaching English on a one-to-one basis to foreign-born adults. About 85 percent of the women in the program are Japanese; the others come from Peru, France, Uruguay, West Germany, Argentina, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Austria and the People's Republic of China. Because of the large numbers of Japanese wives living in the area, a special women's forum has been organized to present monthly programs on subjects of particular interest to them. Called Tsudoi, or gathering, the forum has explored such topics as Japanese women and ''culture shock,'' homemaking skills in the United States, breast cancer, adolescent sexuality and bilingualism for Japanese children. The speakers are experts in their fields, and Masako Esaki, a Japanese writer living in the county, generally serves as interpreter.