The E 55 highway from this spa town to Germany, once a little-traveled road to a heavily guarded cold-war frontier, has become a route of garish prostitutes, greedy pimps, free-spending German clients in smart cars and a tragic consequence: babies dumped as orphans.

In the Teplice Children's Home not far from the German border, brightly dressed and cheerful children romped with blocks and hoops and stuffed animals during an afternoon playtime organized by Czech nurses.

The fancy toys and modish clothes were given by German charities moved by the plight of children believed to be fathered by Germans taking advantage of the post-Communist open borders and then abandoned by local prostitutes.

Many of the E 55 babies, as they are known, are left by their mothers in the hospital immediately after birth and then moved to institutions where they languish in a legal limbo caused by the division of Czechoslovakia into two countries in 1993.

Most of the orphans carry Slovak citizenship from their mothers. Despite long lists of Czech and Slovak families seeking to adopt children, few have been adopted because of the refusal of officials in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia to grant permission, social workers say.

Now, with human rights and children's advocacy groups campaigning to allow the children to be released for adoption, the orphans have become a painful hangover from the surprisingly unruffled divorce of Czechoslovakia.

"You know how nationalistic the Slovaks are," a spokesman for the Czech Ministry of Social Affairs said. "The Slovaks don't want the children themselves but they don't want them in Czech families either. They don't want their children Czechified."

In all, about 1,200 children with Slovak citizenship live in Czech institutions. At the time of the split, Czech officials announced that Slovak children could not be adopted by Czech families. Social workers say the Slovak authorities have shown little interest in taking the Slovak children or of arranging adoptive homes for them in Slovakia.

"We have two big girls, over 3 years old, who would have been adopted by now but they were blocked by the rule that Czech families were not allowed to take Slovak children, and the girls are Slovak," said Yarmila Gatscherova, a nurse at the institute here. "The longer they stay here and the older they get, the more difficult it gets to find adoptive homes."

Czech law forbids foreigners, including Germans who have shown interest in the children, from adopting, she said.

A recent effort by the Czech Government to send some of the Slovak children to Slovak institutions met sharp criticism from children's advocacy groups.

"These children have been abandoned by their parents and now they are being abandoned by their country," said Marie Vodickova, director of the Prague-based Fund for Children in Danger. Since the children were born in the Czech Republic they should be given Czech citizenship, thus enhancing the possibility of their finding a real home, Mrs. Vodickova said.

The chances of adoption are further diminished for many of the children because their mothers are often of Gypsy origin. The young mothers came as youngsters from Slovakia in the 1970's to northern Bohemia, where their parents were employed in the coal and uranium mines. With the mines closing and families out of work, the young Gypsy women have been pushed onto the highway to earn money.

Many Czech and Slovak couples interested in adopting children are deterred by even the hint of Gypsy characteristics -- say an olive complexion, Mrs. Gatscherova said.

A few of the highway mothers occasionally visit their children, although this is not always helpful. A curly-haired 3-year-old named Sara, who talks, laughs and frolicks more than most, is visited by her mother every second month, the nurse said.

Sara is blind, making her adoption difficult under the best of circumstances. Her mother's visits further complicate Sara's chances since under Czech law, if a parent visits an abandoned child within a six-month period the child cannot leave the institution.

"Sara was looked after by her mother until she was a year old, when her mother went back to prostitution," Mrs. Gatshcerova said. "She says she loves Sara and is going to take her back. But it is a strange kind of love, and I don't believe her."

For many of the prostitutes, like 21-year-old Yba, who stood in a brisk wind with five other young women outside an E 55 roadstop in a skimpy skirt, a slash of vermilion lipstick and an ash-blond wig, working the highway is good money in a troubled economy.

"I couldn't get work -- here I get 100 Deutsche marks for an hour with a German man," she said. She said that she had heard that some of the women had become pregnant, but that she wasn't worried because she insisted that her customers use condoms.

But in fact, few of the women insist on condoms because they can fetch a better price without them, social workers said.