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The Peace Movement and Internal Resistance in GDR
The GDR leadership welcomed protests against weapons and war as long
as they occurred in the FRG. However, when a small group of East German
pacifists advocating the conversion of "swords into plowshares" demonstrated
in 1981 against the presence of Soviet missiles on GDR soil, as well as
against the destruction of the environment by the dumping of industrial
waste and the use of nuclear power generally, they were arrested, prosecuted,
and in some cases expelled from the GDR. Church organizations in the GDR--considered
subversive by their mere existence--and individual pastors who protected
and defended demonstrators at risk to their own safety became targets
of increased surveillance by the Stasi, as did individual churchgoers,
who by 1988 were frequently arrested and interrogated.
The mounting nervousness of the GDR leadership became evident in June
1987 when large crowds of East Berlin youth gathered on their side of
the Wall, along with young people from all over the GDR, to hear two rock
concerts being held in West Berlin near the Reichstag building. When the
crowd broke into frenzied cries for freedom and unification, police cleared
the area, arresting and forcibly removing Western news reporters filming
the incident.
In the local elections of May 17, 1989, the "united list" led by the
SED received 98.9 percent of the vote, obviously the result of massive
manipulation, which enraged large segments of the population who had previously
remained silent. In the next months, persistent public complaints against
the prevailing living conditions and lack of basic freedoms, voiced by
church groups and by opposition groups, inspired the population to take
to the streets in large numbers. The largest of the new opposition groups
was the New Forum, founded in September 1989 by Bärbel Bohley, Jens
Reich, and others.
During the fall of 1989, mass demonstrations of several hundred thousand
people were taking place, first in what soon became traditional Monday
demonstrations in Leipzig and later in Berlin and other large cities.
For the first time, GDR rulers realized that they were losing control:
the demonstrations were too massive to be quelled by intimidation or even
mass arrests; and shooting at the demonstrators was out of the question
because of the sheer size of the crowds and the absence of Soviet support
for draconian measures.
Beginning in the summer of 1989, the regime was threatened by another
development. Among the thousands of GDR citizens that traveled by car
on "vacation" to the socialist "brother country" Hungary, some 600 were
successful in crossing illegally into Austria, where they were enthusiastically
welcomed before traveling on to the FRG. Others wanting to escape the
GDR took refuge in the embassies of the FRG in Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw.
On September 11, Hungary legalized travel over the border to Austria for
GDR citizens heading for the FRG, enabling 15,000 to take this route within
a few days. Eventually, the GDR leadership was forced to allow special
trains to carry thousands of GDR refugees who had received permission
to emigrate to the West after taking sanctuary in the FRG's embassies
in Prague and Warsaw. As the trains traveled through the GDR, many more
refugees tried to climb aboard, so the government refused to further allow
such transports.
- The Honecker Era, 1971-1989
- The
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
- The New East
German Constitution and the Question of Identity
- Relations Between
the Two Germanys
- The Peace Movement
and Internal Resistance
- The Last Days of East Germany
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