The cutting of the border fence between Hungary and Austria in June 1989 showed the division of post-war Europe was coming to an end, and heralded the region’s evolution

On 27 June 1989, the then foreign ministers of Hungary, Gyula Horn, and Austria, Alois Mock, cut through a section of the barbed wire that had divided their countries for decades. This symbolic act marked the beginning of the end for communist governments in central and eastern Europe.

Hungary had started dismantling border fortifications with Austria in early May 1989, but when pictures of the cutting were published around the world thousands of East Germans were inspired to leave their country and head to Hungary in the hope of travelling to the west. After allowing some to leave for West Germany via Austria in August, Hungary finally decided to let all East Germans out from 11 September 1989. Within two months, the Berlin Wall had fallen (9 November) and Germany’s reunification was formalised in October 1990.

Neal Ascherson on the fall of the eastern European regimes in 1989 Read more

Eyewitness: Hungary turns the Iron Curtain into scrap

by Ian Traynor

3 May 1989

Hegyeshalom

Ankle-deep in mud, and exposed to the biting wind and rain, the seven Hungarian soldiers did not seem to mind. Grinning from ear to ear, they were relishing yesterday’s assignment, not even halting for a smoke.

Their boss, Colonel Balazs Novaki, had one explanation for the grins: ‘It makes Hungarians feel better that we have no old-fashioned borders with the West.’

The soldiers worked on, like suburban gardeners with their secateurs, tree-loppers and protective gloves. As they progressed along three miles of the Austro-Hungarian frontier, they left behind them the detritus of 40 years of Cold War.

The Iron Curtain lay in shreds in the mud on the flat, windswept plain just outside this small border town on the main road to Vienna from Budapest. Onlookers swiped discarded segments of rusting barbed wire as a memento of the way the world used to be.

This part of the world used to be a minefield. The Hungarians got rid of that in 1972, but until Monday the 165 miles of fencing along the border with Austria had 16 volts of electricity running through it. ‘Not enough to kill, but enough to shock,’ said Colonel Videus of the border guards.

Not any longer. The Hungarians yesterday switched off the power and started dismantling the entire stretch. The fortified fencing cost some £10,000 a mile to erect. It is now costing around £300,000 to pull down the whole lot over the next 18 months. Money well spent, the top brass clearly thinks.

‘This is the beginning of a new process which we hope will help our international links a lot,’ said Col Novaki, head of the border guards.

However symbolic of political change in Hungary, it is hardly surprising that the only border fortifications to speak of around the country is being scrapped. The other frontiers - with the Soviet Union, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia - are porous, while relations with Austria are now much better than with many of the Warsaw Pact allies. With friends like Romania and Czechoslovakia, who needs enemies?

But how had the Austrians reacted?

They were not asked for their views. ‘As far as I know, the building of this system was not mentioned to them either,’ said Col Novaki by way of justification. And was there not now a risk that many would seek to head off West? After all, more than 13,000 tried between 1966 and last year.

‘The introduction of the world passport means that Hungarians do not have to try to cross in such a way,’ retorted Col Videus. But then Hungarians are hardly the problem. What about disgruntled Romanians, Czechs, and East Germans with easy access to Hungary? ‘You will have to ask those other countries if they will keep tourists from visiting Hungary,’ said the colonel. ‘We do not want to deal with this.’

The Hungarians reckon this entire stretch of the Iron Curtain will be scrap iron by the end of next year.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Guardian, 8 May 1989.

Hungary relaxes policy on illegal border crossings

by Susan Viets in Budapest

11 August 1989

Hungarian government officials announced yesterday that they will be taking a soft line with first time East German border offenders.

While officials at the Ministry of Interior say they do not want Hungary to become a transit route for East European emigres to the West, they have announced a more relaxed policy on the practice of stamping the passports of people trying to cross the border illegally.

Mr Karoly Nagy, head of the ministry’s refugee department, said those caught for the first time would now receive a police warning. ‘Repeated offenders will continue to have their passports stamped,’ he said.

Hungary is caught in a web of conflicting legislation. Now a signatory of the Geneva Convention which came into effect in June, it is committed to safeguarding human rights.

But in 1969, the Hungarian Government signed an accord with East Germany, obliging it to pass on information about border offenders. East Germans in Hungary live in fear of the border stamp, which can be entered in their passports by Hungarian border officials.

Although no forcible action is taken by Hungarian authorities, this stamp says East Germans must leave the country within 24 hours and are not allowed to return to Hungary for a year.

Many East Germans now in Budapest believe that if they return home with the stamp in their passports, they will lose their jobs, be unable to complete their studies and, in many cases, end up in jail.

Mr Istvan Csurka, a leader of one of Hungary’s larger opposition groups, the Democratic Forum, said: ‘There is pressure on Hungary from two sides, the GDR and the FRG. We understand that the government faces an extremely difficult situation, but the theoretical stand which we take is that border stamps should be done away with.’ The government’s decision yesterday was clearly a compromise.

This year the government has already initiated criminal proceedings against 453 East Germans caught trying to cross the Austro-Hungarian border illegally.

Officials at the Ministry of the Interior said an amendment has been proposed for the criminal code which would downgrade an illegal border crossing from a crime to a misdemeanour. If this amendment is ratified by parliament, it will take effect in January 1990.

For now, Hungary has told East Germans they can have one safe shot at crossing the border. Physical obstacles like alarms and fences have been removed along much of the border. Guards have been instructed only to shoot in self-defence. However, the border, remains heavily guarded.

East Germans are still queuing to take refuge in the West German embassy in Budapest. The West Germans have said the embassy will not be closed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest East Germans surprise Hungarian border guards and rush through a gate into Moerbisch, Austria, 19 August 1989. Photograph: VOTAVA/AP

A picnic helped unite Europe in 1989. Time for another one | Eric Jozsef Read more

West Germany ‘tipped off picnic refugees’

by Susan Viets in Bonn

21 August 1989

More than 700 East Germans who used a well-orchestrated ‘Pan-European picnic‘ on the Austro-Hungarian border at the weekend for the biggest mass escape to the West since the Berlin Wall was built, yesterday arrived at overcrowded refugee centres in West Germany.

They travelled from Vienna on trains and coaches laid on by the West German authorities, as it became clear that the Bonn Government had been prepared for their escape.

One refugee arriving at the reception centre in Giessen, near Frankfurt, said the West German embassy in Budapest last Friday tipped him off about the picnic, organised by the ultra-rightwing Pan-European Union.

‘They told me to be at Sopron, a small town on the Hungarian side of the border, at 3 pm on Saturday,’ the man reported.

Altogether 900 East Germans, waiting in Hungary to cross the border into Austria took advantage of the festival on the Western side which enabled them to walk across the border through the forest without being stopped. Many of those who came were young families with children. Some collapsed with exhaustion, joy and tension after reaching the other side.

‘We still can’t believe it,’ a young woman said. ‘It was our last chance,’ a young couple, whose previous escape attempt had failed, reported.

As souvenirs, they brought back bits of barbed wire cut from the border fence, and climbed a former watchtower in the West to look back behind the Iron Curtain. Once across the border, they were given goulash and beer before being driven to Vienna.

Their moment came when the organisers of the picnic opened a wooden gate on the border, which is usually closed, in a ‘symbolic gesture’ of frontiers being abolished in central Europe. The refugees went unnoticed among the thousands who took part in the festival, walking to and fro. Hungarian border guards did not intervene.

Most of the refugees were perhaps unaware that a good deal of stage managing contributed to their luck. The festival had been organised weeks ago by the Pan-European Union’s president, Mr Otto von Habsburg, the last son of the Austrian Emperor and European MEP of the rightwing Bavarian Christian Social Union, the CSU.

The West German embassy in Vienna said it was well prepared for the mass escape, and for channelling the refugees through to West Germany. The official West German involvement, and the role played by Mr von Habsburg, is not going to make any easier the negotiations now under way between Bonn and East Berlin to resolve the refugee crisis.

By all accounts these talks remained deadlocked over the weekend, with East Germany adopting a hard line on the 1,100 refugees now sheltering in and outside West German embassies in Budapest, Prague and East Berlin.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The picnic that changed history. Source: YouTube.

Hungary on horns of own dilemma

by Ian Traynor

7 September 1989

Hungary, caught as piggy in the middle between the two Germanies, continues to insist that the refugee issue is a German problem that should be resolved between Bonn and East Berlin.

While it is hard to argue that the issue is anything but primarily a German problem, the Hungarians are sitting uneasily on the horns of a dilemma of their own making.

In May, the Hungarians were delighted to ferry the world media to the Austrian border to highlight the great symbol of the country’s opening to the West - the snipping away of the Iron Curtain. If the scale of the exodus from East Germany could not be foreseen then, the potential problem was apparent.

Likewise, some weeks later, when Hungary became the first Warsaw Pact country to sign the Geneva Convention on refugees, Budapest was happy to take the Western compliments, preferring not to dwell on the inconsistencies entailed in seeking to observe both the convention and repatriation agreements with fellow Pact members.

Now, in the current impasse, the country is caught between the reality of Warsaw Pact and Comecon membership, on the one hand, and aspiration for closer ties with the West and integration into what its reformist leaders view as the more civilised world, on the other.

And as the still-ruling Communist Party bickers among itself in the run-up to next month’s key emergency party congress, the clash between fundamentalists and reformers over the party’s future direction is another reason for the stalemate surrounding the refugees.

If the hardliners are wary of offending East Berlin over the issue, the reformers, with one eye on the Deutsche Bank and West German industrial muscle, are keen to please Bonn.

The numbers of East Germans crossing illegally from Hungary to Austria was expected to escalate last night as their hopes of obtaining safe passage from the refugee camps set up around Budapest and Lake Balaton appeared dashed, at least for the moment.

The uncertainty surrounding the refugees’ fate and Budapest’s equivocation over what to do about the migrants looks as though it could trigger further attempts to find a way across the porous border.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest East Germans displaying West German passports while crossing from Hungary into Austria, September 1989. Photograph: Chris Niedenthal/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

East Germans flood into West: Hungary opens border to biggest legal exodus

by Susan Viets in Budapest, Ian Traynor in Vienna and Anna Tomforde in Bonn

11 September 1989

Thousands of East Germans were crossing the Austro-Hungarian frontier early this morning after Hungary decided to waive border restrictions temporarily to facilitate what may be the largest legal exodus from Eastern Europe since 1945.

Hungary‘s Foreign Minister, Mr Gyula Horn, said that up to 60,000 East German tourists in the country would be allowed to leave for West Germany, via Austria.

‘More and more are coming, and among them there is a growing number of those who do not want to return home but want to settle primarily in West Germany,’ Mr Horn said. He said he could not say how long the border would remain open. ‘One thing is certain, it will be longer than 24 hours.’

At exactly midnight local time last night, the frontier barrier at Nickelsdorf in Austria was thrown open and a fleet of tiny, battered East German cars drove west amid cheers. Within 15 minutes, 300 cars had crossed. Each driver was given 700 schillings (about £32) by the Red Cross for petrol to make the journey to West Germany.

Continue reading.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Guardian, 11 September 1989.

Editorial: At the other end of the flood

12 September 1989

History, with its usual sense of irony, has ensured that the man who built the Berlin Wall, Erich Honecker, may have lost the will to live because thousands of his citizens found a way around it. Their cries of delight were slightly magnified by the midnight media reception on the West German border. (There can only be one answer to the question: ‘Does it feel fantastic to be in the West?’) The impulse which will bring 100,000 or so East German migrants to West Germany by the end of the year reflects both a massive negative vote against Mr Honecker and a genuine search for better life values in a more attractive part of the European landscape. Yet our own applause will be irresponsible if we do not realise that what is happening could and probably will have deeply disturbing effects on both sides of the Wall, and that this is becoming a European and not just a German problem.

Disillusion in East Germany appears to have peaked after the blatant rigging of the local elections in May, which coincided with free elections in Poland and free debate in the Supreme Soviet in Moscow. If East Germany were geographically self-contained and somewhere else, we would then have seen the rekindling of a national identity and the lift-off of an opposition movement against Honecker’s tired and aged Politburo. It happened in Poland and Hungary, it will happen in Czechoslovakia and even, one day, in Romania. But East Germany’s special relationship with West Germany precludes an autonomous political solution. Instead of taking to the streets, its people take to the family car and head for Hungary, leaving behind a government which simply cannot cope. Yesterday it was spluttering at the Hungarian government which, said East Berlin, ‘under the guise of humanitarianism is engaged in the organised smuggling of humans.’ Perhaps there is a conflict between Hungary‘s 20-year-old treaty obligation to prevent the citizens of its neighbours from migrating and the international human rights accords which Budapest has accepted. In that case it was entirely right to over-ride the treaty. East Berlin’s real problem is the near-total absence of anyone who can succeed Mr Honecker, with the desperate exception of the Dresden leader, Mr Hans Modrow, said hopefully to be a Gorbachevite. In the present sterile climate he does not have a chance.

Yet Chancellor Kohl’s dilemma is also much too real to be disposed of by cries that it is simply marvellous to see the Berlin Wall coming down. And it only adds to the tough electoral battle ahead of which he warned his party yesterday. He also urged that the arrivals from the East should not be treated merely as economic migrants, but as genuine seekers of freedom. But to much of the existing West German public (according to recent polls) jobs and benefits are exactly what these young healthy looking families in their jeans have come for. And they are only half the problem. Last year West Germany received more than 240,000 immigrants from the east European countries, of whom only 40,000 came from East Germany. Just as Britain is entitled to ask its European partners to help deal with the human consequences of Hong Kong, so West Germany should expect to receive assistance from the Community. It is much too easy to applaud - and to over-simplify - as post-cold war Europe evolves towards something new but very uncertain.