The Berlin Wall was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the German Democratic Republic. Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government of the GDR on 13 August 1961. It included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, accompanied by a wide area that contained anti-vehicle trenches, beds of nails and other defenses. The primary intention for the Wall's construction was to prevent East German citizens from fleeing to the West.
The Sinatra Doctrine was a Soviet foreign policy under Mikhail Gorbachev for allowing member states of the Warsaw Pact to determine their own domestic affairs. The name humorously alluded to the song "My Way" popularized by Frank Sinatra—the Soviet Union was allowing these states to go their own way. Its implementation was part of Gorbachev's doctrine of new political thinking.
Burgenland is the easternmost and least populous state of Austria. It consists of two statutory cities and seven rural districts, with a total of 171 municipalities. It is 166 km (103 mi) long from north to south but much narrower from west to east. The region is part of the Centrope Project. The name of Burgenland was invented/coined in 1922, after its territories became part of Austria. The population of Burgenland as of 1 January 2024 is 301,951. Burgenland's capital is Eisenstadt.
Sopron is a city in Hungary on the Austrian border, near Lake Neusiedl/Lake Fertő.
A separation barrier or separation wall is a barrier, wall or fence, constructed to limit the movement of people across a certain line or border, or to separate peoples or cultures. A separation barrier that runs along an internationally recognized border is known as a border barrier.
The Gaza–Israel barrier is a border barrier located on the Israeli side of the Gaza–Israel border. Before the Israel–Hamas war, the Erez Crossing, in the north of the Gaza Strip, used to be the only crossing point for people and goods coming from Israel into the Gaza Strip. A second crossing point, the Kerem Shalom border crossing, is used exclusively for goods coming from Egypt as Israel did not allow goods to go directly from Egypt into Gaza through the Egypt–Gaza border, except for the Salah Al Din Gate, which opened in 2018.
The Peaceful Revolution – also, in German called Die Wende – was one of the peaceful revolutions of 1989 at the peak of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s. A process of sociopolitical change that led to, among other openings, the opening of their borders to the Western world.
The inner German border was the frontier between the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1990. De jure not including the similar but physically separate Berlin Wall, the border was 1,381 kilometres (858 mi) long and ran from the Baltic Sea to Czechoslovakia.
The German Green Belt is a project of Bund Naturschutz (BUND), one of Germany's largest environmental groups. The project began in 1989 facing the 870-mile (1,400 km) network of inner-German border fences and guard towers formerly separating East and West Germany. It is one of the world's most unusual nature reserves, lying along the old "Death Strip," turning a monument to repression into a symbol of renewal.
Hegyeshalom is a village of roughly 3750 inhabitants in Győr-Moson-Sopron County, Hungary, on the border with Austria and less than 15 km from the border with Slovakia.
The protection of borders between the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (CSSR) and several of the capitalist countries of Western Europe, namely with West Germany and Austria, in the Cold War era and especially after 1951, was provided by special troops of the Pohraniční Stráž (English: the Border Guard) and a system of engineer equipment which created the real "Iron Curtain". The purpose was to prevent citizens of the Eastern Bloc escaping to the West, although official reports stated it was to keep the enemy's spies and saboteurs out of Czechoslovakia. The border system of Czechoslovakia was not as elaborate and fortified as that of the Inner German border or the Berlin Wall, but it was considered difficult to cross the border undetected.
The Pan-European Picnic was a peace demonstration held on the Austrian-Hungarian border near Sopron, Hungary on 19 August 1989. The opening of the border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic was an event in the chain reaction, at the end of which Germany reunified, the Iron Curtain fell apart, and the Eastern Bloc disintegrated. The communist governments and the Warsaw Pact subsequently dissolved, ending the Cold War.
During the Cold War, the Iron Curtain was a political metaphor used to describe the political and later physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its satellite states from open contact with the West, its allies and neutral states. On the east side of the Iron Curtain were the countries that were connected to or influenced by the Soviet Union, while on the west side were the countries that were NATO members, or connected to or influenced by the United States; or nominally neutral. Separate international economic and military alliances were developed on each side of the Iron Curtain. It later became a term for the physical barriers of fences, walls, minefields, and watchtowers that were built up along some of its sections, with the Berlin Wall being the most significant of these.
Neighbourly relations exist between Austria and Hungary, two member states of the European Union. Both countries have a long common history since the ruling dynasty of Austria, the Habsburgs, inherited the Hungarian throne in the 16th century. Both were part of the now-defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire from 1867 to 1918. The two countries established diplomatic relations in 1921, after their separation.
After World War II, emigration restrictions were imposed by countries in the Eastern Bloc, which consisted of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Legal emigration was in most cases only possible in order to reunite families or to allow members of minority ethnic groups to return to their homelands.
Fall of inner German border, also known as Opening of inner German border, rapidly and unexpectedly occurred in November 1989, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The event paved the way for the ultimate reunification of Germany just short of a year later.
A border barrier, border fence or border wall is a separation barrier that runs along or near an international border. Such barriers are typically constructed for border control purposes such as curbing illegal immigration, human trafficking, and smuggling. Some such barriers are constructed for defence or security reasons. In cases of a disputed or unclear border, erecting a barrier can serve as a de facto unilateral consolidation of a territorial claim that can supersede formal delimitation. A border barrier does not usually indicate the location of the actual border, and is usually constructed unilaterally by a country, without the agreement or cooperation of the other country.
In 2015, Hungary built a border barrier on its border with Serbia and Croatia. The fence was constructed during the European migrant crisis, with the aim to ensure border security by preventing illegal immigrants from entering, and enabling the option to enter through official checkpoints and claim asylum in Hungary in accordance with international and European law. The number of illegal entries to Hungary declined greatly after the barrier was finished as it effectively abolished the entry to Hungary.
Austrian border barriers are border barriers and migration management facilities constructed by Austria between November 2015 and January 2016 on its border with Slovenia and in 2016 on its border with Italy, as a response to European migrant crisis. They are located on internal European Union borders, since Austria, Italy, and Slovenia are members of the EU and the free travel Schengen Area with a common visa policy. The barrier on the Slovenian border is several kilometres long, located near the busiest border crossing, Spielfeld-Šentilj, and includes police facilities for screening and processing migrants. Another migration management facility with barriers located on Austria's Italian border near Brenner, South Tyrol was constructed in 2016.
The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, marked the beginning of the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain, as East Berlin transit restrictions were overwhelmed and discarded. Sections of the wall were breached, and planned deconstruction began the following June. It was one of the series of events that started the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. The fall of the inner German border took place shortly afterward. An end to the Cold War was declared at the Malta Summit in early December, and German reunification took place in October the following year.
