Pan-European Picnic

The Pan-European Picnic was a peace demonstration at the Austrian- Hungarian border near the town of Sopron ( Sopron ) on 19 August 1989., With the consent of both countries should be doing a border gate at the old Pressburger highway between Saint Margaret in Burgenland and Sopronkőhida ( Steinambrückl ) in Hungary are symbolically opened for three hours. Already on 27 June 1989 Austrian the then Foreign Minister Alois Mock and his Hungarian counterpart Gyula Horn had a few kilometers away symbolically cut through the border upstream signal fence to underline the May 2, begun in 1989, dismantling the surveillance equipment through Hungary.

The event on 19 August 1989

Organizers of the picnic were members of the opposition Hungarian Democratic Forum and the Pan-European Union. Patrons were the President, the CSU MEP Otto von Habsburg, and the Hungarian Minister of State and reformer Pozsgay. The symbolic cut through the barbed wire was made by the Secretary General of the International Pan-European Union, Walburga Habsburg Douglas.

Counter about 12.05 clock came unexpectedly the first 20-30 GDR citizens on the still guarded and armed border gate to. The door was flung open, and the mostly young East Germans ran on Austrian soil. On the Austrian side were some journalists and a camera crew from an Austrian station. " The first stone began to roll ." The news was quickly spread, so against 15 clock hundreds more East Germans took advantage of this opportunity to escape. An Austrian radio station used the breakthrough.

Between 600 and 700 East Germans took advantage of this brief opening of the Iron Curtain to escape to the West, after they had previously been made ​​aware of the Pan-European Picnic by leaflets the organizers. Unexpectedly stood again against 15 clock GDR citizens before the still guarded border gate. Short was 15 clock, the gate was pushed open again, and the mostly young people stormed the Austrian side, where journalists and a camera team on the occasion of the Pan-European Picnic had gathered. So the news spread in no time.

The Hungarian border guards reacted calmly to the impending mass exodus and did not intervene. Here, especially the then senior border official Árpád Bella did forth. The absence of clear instructions from his superiors, he instructed his border officials to ignore the passing right before their eyes illegal border crossers simply. He violated his duties and risked a prison sentence, but prevented an otherwise almost inevitable escalation of the situation. A later adventitious supervisor tried yet hectic, personally stop individual citizens of the GDR, but could do nothing in the face of mass of crossings.

In addition, thousands of East Germans waited a little further afield for their chance to cross the border because they did not believe in opening the border and the events did not trust. Therefore, on this day passed only a few hundred people in the frontier west. In the following days, guarding the western border of Hungary was reinforced at the behest of the Hungarian government, so that only relatively few managed to escape to Austria, Hungary before 11 September 1989 its borders to East Germans opened permanently.

Historical classification

The Pan-European Picnic regarded as a key milestone in the events that led to the demise of the GDR and the reunification of Germany. Every year on August 19 commemorations take place at the location of the border breakthrough.

For Pan-European Picnic Erich Honecker dictated to the Daily Mirror the following statement: " Habsburg distributed pamphlets until well into Poland, where the East German tourists were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, to eat and German Mark, you have persuaded her to come to the West. "

Memorial

At the point where at the time the border gate was breached by the refugees, and a memorial art work of Hungarian artist, which is an opening door.

1996, a ten -meter-high steel sculpture of the sculptor Gabriela von Habsburg was built in Fertőrákos near Sopron. It symbolizes one erected barbed wire, which from a distance has the form of a cross.

In 2004, the monument of the shot was taken in the garden of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service in Zugliget, a part of the 12th district of Budapest Municipality Hegyvidék built. In the period from 14 August to 14 November 1989, there were built here in the camp, the GDR refugees.