The Monday demonstrations (German : Montagsdemonstrationen in der DDR) were a series of peaceful political protests against the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that took place in towns and cities around the country on various days of the week from 1989 to 1991. The Leipzig demonstrations, which are the best known, took place on Mondays. [1] The protests are conventionally separated into five cycles.
Despite the policy of state atheism in East Germany, Christian pastor Christian Führer regularly met his congregation at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig for prayer from 1982 onward. [2] [3] In Leipzig the demonstrations began on 4 September 1989 after the weekly Friedensgebet (prayer for peace) in the St. Nicholas Church with parson Christian Führer and eventually filled the nearby Karl Marx Square (today known again as Augustusplatz). Safe in the knowledge that the Lutheran Church supported their resistance, many dissatisfied East German citizens gathered in front of the church, and non-violent demonstrations began in order to demand rights such as the freedom to travel to foreign countries and to elect a democratic government. The location of the demonstration contributed to the success of the protests. Over the next seven years the Church grew, despite authorities barricading the streets leading to it, and after church services peaceful candlelit marches took place. [2] The secret police issued death threats and even attacked some of the marchers, but the crowd still continued to gather. [2]
Informed by West German television and friends about the events, people in other East German cities began replicating the Leipzig demonstrations, meeting at city squares in the evenings. A major turning point was precipitated by the events in the West German Embassy of Prague at the time. Thousands of East Germans had fled there in September, living in conditions reminiscent of the Third World. Hans-Dietrich Genscher had negotiated an agreement that allowed them to travel to the West, using trains that had to first pass through the GDR. Genscher's speech from the balcony was interrupted by a very emotional reaction to his announcement. When the trains passed Dresden's central station in early October, police had to stop people from trying to jump on.
Protests around the 40th anniversary celebrations of the GDR on 7 October were met with a forceful response by the state. Despite the increased foreign attention around this date, there were around 500 arrests throughout East Germany.
Following the events of the weekend attention turned to Leipzig on Monday 9 October. Seeing it as decision day, the State amassed 8000 police and armed military units with the intent of preventing any demonstrations. Fears of a "Chinese Solution" grew as rumours about hospitals stocking extra blood transfusions circulated. A message recorded by six prominent citizens was broadcast throughout the city, urging both sides to remain calm and strive for peaceful dialogue. Initiated by the respected conductor Kurt Masur the group also included local members of the communist party. [4] [5]
Expectations and preparations of the state were greatly exceeded as more than 40,000 protesters (out of the city's population of 500,000) assembled. The most famous chant became "Wir sind das Volk!" (lit. 'We are the people!'), reminding the leaders of the GDR that a democratic republic has to be ruled by the people, not by an undemocratic party claiming to represent them. [6] Protesters remained completely peaceful as they reached the Stasi Headquarters, avoiding any escalation of the delicate situation.
Although some demonstrators were arrested, the threat of large-scale intervention by security forces never materialised as local leaders (SED party leader Helmut Hackenberg and Generalmajor Gerhard Straßenburg of the armed police), without precise orders from East Berlin and surprised by the unexpectedly high number of citizens, shied away from causing a possible massacre, ordering the retreat of their forces. Later, Egon Krenz claimed it was he who gave the order not to intervene. [6]
October 9 is often seen as the "beginning of the end" of the GDR and one of the early signs of the state bowing to pressure. Since 2009 the date is commemorated and celebrated with the Festival of Lights drawing up to 200,000 people tracing the steps of the protest. Attendees include dignitaries like Kurt Masur, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Joachim Gauck as well as Hungarian, Polish, Slovakian, Czech heads of state. [7] [8]
On 9 October 1989, the police and army units were given permission to use force against those assembled, but this did not deter the church service and march from taking place along the inner city ring road, which gathered 70,000 people. [2] [3]
The next week, in Leipzig on 16 October 1989, 120,000 demonstrators turned up, with military units again being held on stand-by in the vicinity. (Two days after the rally, Erich Honecker, the leader of the SED, was forced to resign.) The week after, the number more than doubled to 320,000. Many of those people started to cross into East Berlin, without a shot being fired. [2] This pressure and other key events eventually led to the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, marking the imminent end of the socialist GDR regime.
The demonstrations eventually ended in March 1990, around the time of the first free multi-party elections for the Volkskammer parliament across the entire GDR. This paved the way to German reunification.
During the rule of the GDR, the Church tried to retain its own autonomy and continue organizing, though the practice of religion was generally suppressed in keeping with the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of state atheism. [10] During this period, the Church acted on their ideology of "work against injustice and oppression." As a result, the church offered sanctuary to alternative political groups, the victims of the GDR rule. The church also offered them financial aid, support from the congregation and a place to communicate. [11]
Initially, the church did not make statements about the GDR or anything politically related. However, by the middle of 1989 there was a "politicization of the church." Politics started to appear in the sermon of the preachers. More and more people started to gather in the churches. This helped spread information about the injustices that were occurring in the state. The gathering of people after the peace prayers, and the spread of information, spurred the formation of spontaneous demonstrations. [11] [12]
East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic, was a country in Central Europe from its formation on 7 October 1949 until its reunification with West Germany on 3 October 1990. Until 1989, it was generally viewed as a communist state and described itself as a socialist "workers' and peasants' state". The economy of this country was centrally planned and state-owned. Although the GDR had to pay substantial war reparations to the Soviets, it became the most successful economy in the Eastern Bloc.
The Peaceful Revolution, as a part of the Revolutions of 1989, was the process of sociopolitical change that led to the opening of East Germany's borders with the West, the end of the ruling of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in the German Democratic Republic in 1989 and the transition to a parliamentary democracy, which later enabled the reunification of Germany in October 1990. This happened through non-violent initiatives and demonstrations. This period of change is referred to in German as Die Wende.
Plauen is, with around 65,000 inhabitants, the fifth-largest city of Saxony, Germany after Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz and Zwickau, the second-largest city of the Vogtland after Gera, as well as the largest city in the Saxon Vogtland. The city lies on the river White Elster, in the Central Vogtlandian Hill Country. Plauen is the southwesternmost city of a string of cities sitting in the densely populated foreland of the Elster and Ore Mountains, stretching from Plauen in the southwest via Zwickau, Chemnitz and Freiberg to Dresden in the northeast. It is the capital of the Vogtland District. Plauen borders Thuringia to the north, and it is also situated near the Saxon border with Bavaria (Franconia) and the Czech Republic (Bohemia).
Christian was a Protestant pastor and one of the leading figures and organisers of the 1989 Monday demonstrations in East Germany which finally led to German reunification and the end of the GDR in 1990.
Deutscher Fernsehfunk was the state television broadcaster in the German Democratic Republic from 1952 to 1991.
Martin Jankowski is a German writer and poet.
The Augustusplatz is a square located at the east end of the city centre of Leipzig, borough Leipzig-Mitte. It is the city's largest square and one of the largest squares in Europe. It is also part of the city's inner-city ring-road and a central hub for its tram network.
Central Stadium was a stadium with a capacity of 120,000 in Leipzig which was initially used for matches of SC Rotation Leipzig.
Gethsemane Church is one of four church buildings of the Lutheran Northern Prenzlauer Berg Evangelical Congregation, within the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia, an umbrella organisation which includes Lutheran, Reformed, and United Protestant Calvinist congregations.
The Alexanderplatz demonstration was a demonstration for political reforms and against the government of the German Democratic Republic on Alexanderplatz in East Berlin on Saturday 4 November 1989. With between half a million and a million protesters it was one of the largest demonstrations in East German history and a milestone of the peaceful revolution that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. The demonstration was organized by actors and employees of theaters in East Berlin. It was the first demonstration in East German history that was organized by private individuals and was permitted to take place by the authorities. The speakers during the demonstration were members of the opposition, representatives of the regime and artists, and included the dissidents Marianne Birthler and Jens Reich, the writer Stefan Heym, the actor Ulrich Mühe, the former head of the East German foreign intelligence service Markus Wolf and Politburo member Günter Schabowski.
Aufbau Verlag is a German publisher. It was founded in Berlin in 1945 and became the biggest publisher in East Germany (GDR). During that time it specialised in socialist and Russian literature.
The Modrow government refers to the final socialist government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), which was led by Socialist Unity Party (SED) official Hans Modrow from November 1989 until East Germany's first democratically elected government took power on 18 March 1990.
Petra Lux is a German civil rights activist, journalist, novelist, tai chi and qigong teacher.
Katrin Hattenhauer is a German painter and civil rights activist. In the late 1980s she was a member of the GDR-opposition movement. On 4 September 1989 she demonstrated "For an Open Country with Free People", marking the beginning of the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig. Her paintings and social sculptures have been exhibited in Europe.
The Memorial and Education Centre Andreasstraße, is a museum in Erfurt, Germany, which is housed in a former prison used by the East German Ministry for State Security (Stasi). It is informally known as the Stasi Museum.
The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, marked the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain. It was one of the series of events that started the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, preceded by the Solidarity Movement in Poland. The fall of the inner German border took place shortly afterward. An end to the Cold War was declared at the Malta Summit three weeks later and the German reunification took place in October the following year.
Doris Ziegler is a German painter whose work responded to and engaged with the Wende and the peaceful revolution in the GDR during the late 1980s.
Inner German relations, also known as the FRG-GDR relations, East Germany-West Germanyrelations or German-German relations, were the political, diplomatic, economic, cultural and personal contacts between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, at the period of the West-East division in German history from the founding of East Germany on 7 October 1949 to Germany's reunification on 3 October 1990.
The Leipzig Beat Revolt, in German also called Leipziger Beatdemo, Beatkrawalle or Beataufstand, took place on 31 October 1965 in Leipzig-Mitte. The demonstration was an expression of youth emancipation in the GDR, directed against the state ban on beat music and numerous beat groups. The main reason for the demonstration was the ban imposed ten days earlier on 54 of the 58 registered Leipzig bands, including the popular band Butlers. The demonstration was violently broken up by the Volkspolizei and the Stasi immediately after the start. Of the 264 demonstrators arrested, 97 were deployed for up to six weeks on “supervised work” in the Kitzscher and United Schleenhain coal mine. The Leipzig Beat Demo was the largest non-approved demonstration in the GDR after the events of 17 June 1953 and, along with the events of 7 October 1977 on Berlin's Alexanderplatz, remained unique in this form until autumn 1989.
The St. Nicholas Church Square is a square in the city center of Leipzig, Germany. The St. Nicholas Church stands on it. The church and square have particular significance for the Peaceful Revolution of 1989.
This passerby refers to the era of communist German Democratic Republic (GDR), which was characterized by state atheism.