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They were momentous days. Even Radio 1's Steve Wright show was providing a commentary that afternoon and quickly produced some lyrics about it to the tune of Bernard Cribbins' Right Said Fred.
The process which led up to it started with East Germans who had visas to take holidays in Hungary escaping to the West, via Austria. Movements of people was strictly controlled in the east during that time and vacations to specific destinations were allowed only with the correct documentation. The Hungarian authorities had relaxed their border controls and replaced the border with simple barbed wire, apparently with the connivance of the west. Throughout the summer, news reports were full of stories of East German holiday makers walking to the Hungarian/Austrian border unchallenged and nipping across. There were even claims that the Hungarian border guards were giving out directions. A popular saying at the time was 'will the last person to leave East Germany please switch off the lights'.
The Hungarians took a great risk in doing this as a relaxation of the border controls in Czechoslovakia in 1967 had been one cause of the Russian invasion. Whilst the Berlin wall divided a city, the Iron Curtain ran from the Baltic to the Adriatic. The soviet system relied on this heavily controlled, patrolled and mined border, to prevent their citizens being 'seduced by the bright lights of the west.'
The next exodus started in the autumn when about 8000 East Germans climbed over the walls of the West German embassy in Prague. After negotiations, they were allowed to depart to West Germany. They were taken in sealed trains which actually had to pass through East German territory. No one could be sure whether the East German authorities would stop the trains and make the people disembark.
In East Germany itself there were huge demonstrations in places like Leipzig, organised by the Church with people walking quietly holding candles.
With the communist party's authority deteriorating in East Germany, the Soviet President Gorbachev summoned a meeting with the East German political leadership. He was amazed to hear the East German leader Erich Honecker report about the country's progress in producing a 4Mb computer memory chip and not address the problem that the rest of the world was reporting. According to Gorbachev, he shrugged his shoulders looking at the rest of the Politburo to indicate, what are you going to do about this man?
Honecker was forced to resign and Egon Krenz took his place, promising democratic reforms. The East German system had relied on fear, neighbour spying against neighbour, in some cases husband against wife. Wanting to leave the country could get you a term in prison, trying to leave could get you shot. Honecker had been a hard liner and was the only world leader to have praised the Chinese clampdown in Tiananmen Square. Krenz's weaker 'I'm just like you' public approach caused much of the state apparatus to become nervous and the population to become emboldened. Authority declined and on the 9th Nov. many East Berliners had started to collect at the checkpoints along the wall in East Berlin.
The guards were very nervous. Normally they would have dispersed them with gunfire and mass arrests, but no one seemed to be in charge or willing to give orders. On the 10th, with the crows numbers increasing, a report came through to open the checkpoints and thousands poured through.
This didn't solve the problem however and people started to pull sections of the actual wall down. With the East German leadership stunned by events, the West Germans authorised small payments of pocket money to the East Germans, the Ostmark having no value in the west, in order that those crossing over could buy some food and drink. The British Foreign Minister, Douglas Hurd quickly flew to Berlin and actually crossed through one of the holes in the wall into East Germany to show western support to the east german people. He was quickly ushered back to the west by the East German guards. Had that been a year earlier, he would have been a political prize. They simply didn't know what to do.
The UK news reports seemed only to report events in Berlin that weekend and the Sunday morning programming was changed with live footage. The East german government had lost control and there was no going back. Along the entire length of the East/West German border, checkpoints were opened that weekend. So many people were passing through the border near Travemünde on the Baltic coast, that West German police brought in to manage the traffic, were overcome with the fumes of the smoky Trabbant cars driven by the east germans.
Unlike those in August, September and October, the people passing through the border after November the 10th had now no fear of returning to their homes. Things had changed forever. East Germany ceased to exist as a sovereign nation after about a year.
best
Harry A
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