Good-bye, Charlie! The Fall of the Berlin Wall
3 May 1989 – The government of Hungary starts to dismantle its border fortifications with Austria – this is the first breach of the Iron Curtain.
18 October 1989 – The internal opposition within the communist party forces, Erich Honecker, the long-time leader, to step down.
9 November 1989 – The fall of the Berlin Wall.
In 1989. the Berlin Wall was still a very dangerous place: until the fall of the Wall, as many as 28 people died while trying to flee. Like the Wall, the dictatorship of the communist party and its leader Erich Honecker seemed impenetrable. Of all the socialist states, the GDR possessed perhaps the most complete security organisation – Stasi – which employed up to 2.5 % of the population. Including the informers, Stasi's network may well have included 2 million people, thus surpassing the Gestapo and the KGB for its might. When Lennart Meri visited the GDR as a writer in 1978, Stasi kept an eye on and documented Meri’s each and every step. He even had a codename “Kern”.
Although by the autumn of 1989 Communism had begun to falter in Poland and Hungary, the leadership of the GDR continued in the old way. Dictator Erich Honecker (just like Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania) welcomed the blood bath at Tiananmen Square, China.
For decades the GDR had been the most servile ally of the USSR, but now Gorbachev turned his back to the incurably conservative Honecker. When Gorbachev visited Berlin in the beginning of October, he noted: “Life punishes those, who come late”. Despite the reprimand, Honecker had no intention to loosen up his regime.
Hungary became the catalyst for the collapse of the GDR. The Berlin Wall had stopped the “voting with the feet” for decades. But already in May the Hungarian government opened its border with Austria – this was the first breach in the Iron Curtain – offering East-Germans an exit into the West. By September, there were 13 000 refugees per month taking advantage of this route. Honecker was enraged, but Gorbachev refused to issue reprimands to the Hungarians. Despite this Honecker tried to stop the flow of escapees but these attempts only triggered a sequence of events, which first swept Honecker from power but ended up destroying the entire communist system.
On 18 October 1989, the internal opposition within the Party forced Honecker to leave. The people who took his place tried to move towards compromises, ruling out violence against the people. On 4 November, there was a mass demonstration in Berlin with million people attending. This brought along another change in the leadership - and new concessions. On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall was opened, as the authorities decided to allow East-Germans to travel freely to the West. But the fall of the Wall was also a death sentence to the GDR. On 3 October 1990, a united Germany was officially restored.
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