Refugee trains from Prague

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The refugee trains from Prague were 14 special trains that were used to evacuate the GDR citizens who had fled to the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Prague in the course of the wave of refugees in the summer and autumn of 1989 . The journey of the trains was a highly public symbol of the dissolution of SED rule and the beginning of the 1989 revolution in the GDR.

Garden side of the German Embassy in Prague in the Lobkowitz Palace. In the center of the semicircular balcony on the first floor, from which Hans-Dietrich Genscher gave the speech.
Memorial plaque at Dresden Central Station
Hof Hauptbahnhof

Starting position

Before the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, the SED dictatorship came under increasing pressure in the summer of 1989: when the willingness of the “ socialist brother states ” to consistently prevent GDR citizens from fleeing and to hand them over to the GDR state organs, an increasing one succeeded Number of frustrated GDR citizens trying to move to the Federal Republic via third countries. One of the main goals of this emigration movement was the Federal German Embassy in Czechoslovakia (ČSSR) in Prague, because initially the ČSSR was accessible to holders of a GDR passport without a visa .

The German Embassy in Prague is housed in the baroque Lobkowitz Palace. Increasingly, refugees came there who had to be housed in the palace and, ultimately, its adjoining garden. On August 19, 1989 there were around 120 refugees, with 20 to 50 more arriving every day. On August 23, Ambassador Hermann Huber closed the embassy to the public on instructions from the Foreign Office . But that didn't help, more refugees forced entry, sometimes past the increasingly careless Czechoslovak police through the gate, or by climbing over the fence on the back of the property. Tents and sanitary facilities were set up in the embassy park, but the sanitary conditions in the embassy became precarious in the course of September, at times 4,000 refugees were at the same time on the rain-soaked area.

The Federal Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher negotiated the problem with the Foreign Ministers of the Soviet Union ( Eduard Shevardnadze ), the GDR ( Oskar Fischer ) and the ČSSR ( Jaromír Johanes ) on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. In the negotiations it was agreed that the exit to the Federal Republic should take place by train - via the territory of the GDR. In doing so, the GDR regime wanted to preserve the appearance of sovereign action and to demonstrate its unbroken political ability to act by expatriating the refugees during the train ride through the GDR. In order to ensure that the GDR organs did not take anyone off the train, two employees from the Foreign Office were to ride in each car. The GDR gave in here because the support of its allies broke away and it wanted the problem to be resolved for the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the founding of the state on October 7, 1989. Hans-Dietrich Genscher arrived in Prague on the evening of September 30, 1989. At 6:58 p.m. he announced from the balcony facing the garden:

"Dear compatriots,
we have come
to you to inform you
that your departure
[outcry and cheers]
... is possible today."

The end of the sentence was drowned in the furious jubilation of the refugees camping in the courtyard after the keyword “departure” was mentioned.

First moves

The trains for the exit were provided by the Deutsche Reichsbahn . Days before the agreement between the two German states on the procedure, z. B. the Zwickau railroad car works instructions to put together a special train. Lists of particularly trustworthy locomotive drivers and train drivers who were supposed to drive the trains had also already been compiled. Initially, six of these trains ran with ten passenger cars each . The locomotives in Germany were provided by the Reichenbach depot : from Bad Schandau to Reichenbach (Vogtl) ob Bf there was an electric locomotive and a diesel locomotive from there to Hof . In Dresden-Reick, a change of the engine driver was also planned.

The route chosen for the trains was Prague ( Praha-Libeň station ) - Bad Schandau - Dresden - Karl-Marx-Stadt - Plauen - Gutenfürst - Hof border crossing . The trains traveled 254 km through GDR territory. At the Reichsbahndirektion Dresden an “operational staff” was set up to direct the trains. There it was also stipulated that, in addition to the locomotive driver, a pilot with special knowledge of the route - preferably from the district of the respective management through - should ride on all locomotives to ensure that the trains did not have to stop anywhere.

journey

On the evening of September 30th, the first refugees from the German embassy were taken by bus to the Praha-Libeň station, where the trains were made available. At around 8:50 p.m. the first started as Sr 23360.

Word quickly got around along the route that the trains were going through the GDR. This led to crowds of people along the route, especially in the area of Dresden Hauptbahnhof . The first and second trains had to stop here. Three people managed to jump on the second train there. As a result, this stop was canceled for the following trains and the order was issued that all trains had to pass through stations quickly. Further security measures were taken: All signal boxes along the line were manned by the transport police. The dispatchers had to give priority to the trains. Level crossings were also guarded by the police so that a car driver would not bring a train to a stop with his vehicle . The police, the National People's Army and industrial combat groups secured the entire route, especially bridges. From the second train onwards, there were always "incidents" because the refugees from the train chanted freedom slogans, waved flags of the Federal Republic of Germany with federal eagles or threw objects, GDR coins or rubbish bags at uniformed men.

The GDR leadership expatriated the refugees during the journey. This was done by employees of the Stasi collecting the identity cards of the passengers and not returning them. This action happened during a stay of about 45 minutes in Reichenbach , which also served to change locomotives. On the basis of these collected papers, the GDR subsequently confiscated the assets of the GDR refugees.

The first train arrived at Hof Hauptbahnhof on October 1, 1989 at 6:14 am. A Stasi employee drove on the locomotive and then gave a report. Employees from the station mission , Bavarian Red Cross and Technical Relief Organization had been preparing the reception of the refugees on the platform in Hof Hauptbahnhof since midnight , especially food. The refugees were then placed in improvised reception centers in Hesse and Bavaria .

The figures for those who left with these first six trains vary from 5273 to 5490 people.

Second series

After the embassy was successfully evacuated, thousands of people wishing to leave the country streamed into the embassy. On October 4, there were again over 5,000 people on the premises, another 2,000 held out in the cold. Again an exit by train could be arranged. Again special trains, this time eight, were used to solve the "problem". In Germany, the Reichenbach depot provided the locomotives again and the procedure for the first six trains on October 1 was initially followed. The trains left the Praha-Libeň station on the evening of October 4th and on the night of October 5th, 1989 between 18:34 and 1:35 a.m. and crossed the inner-German border between 05:49 and 10:48 on the morning of October 5th 1989. However, compared to the first series of special trains, those who wanted to flee in the GDR tried to get to the trains so that they could be taken along. In Dresden alone there are said to have been 5,000 who were in the main train station and another 10,000 in front of it. The first three trains from Prague therefore had to wait in Bad Schandau until the police in Dresden could make sure that the tracks were free here too (there had been occupation of the tracks by people wanting to flee) so that the trains could pass without stopping. The locomotive drivers were instructed in writing to drive through slow speed areas faster than permitted. After these incidents, the route through the GDR was shortened for the next five trains by using the German / Czechoslovak border crossing at Bad Brambach station to enter Germany, which shortened the distance to be traveled in the GDR to 95 km. In this second series of refugee trains, ID cards were collected during the journey, directly from the respective German / Czechoslovak border station. In Plauen train station , two refugees managed to bypass the barriers around the train station and jump on a train.

There is different information about the total number of refugees on these eight refugee trains. They vary between 6242 and 8270.

After that

The GDR now introduced a visa requirement for travel to the ČSSR. It effectively closed its limit. As a result, the influx of refugees into the German embassy in Prague almost dried up. On November 1st, however, the GDR lifted the visa requirement, so on November 3rd there were again more than 5000 people on the embassy premises. On the same day at 9 p.m. the deputy foreign minister of the ČSSR announced in a short conversation with the deputy German ambassador that people could travel directly from Prague to the Federal Republic without a GDR permit.

Every day, thousands of GDR citizens boarded a train to Prague, where the embassy staff at the station provided assistance with direct onward travel to the Federal Republic . This led to the GDR leadership announcing on November 9th that they would allow the exit directly, which resulted in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the de facto freedom of travel that same evening .

In retrospect, this event is seen as an introduction to the end of the GDR.

literature

  • Günter Hofmann: Prague refugee trains 1989. Background, consequences, memories. Dresden 2014, ISBN 978-3-939025-46-7 .
  • Bernd Kuhlmann, Rainer Heinrich: History of the refugee trains - journey to freedom . In: Bahn Extra, 03/2009, p. 20. Quoted from Hofmann: Prager refugee trains , p. 42–50.

Movie

  • “Train to Freedom.” Documentary. Direction: Sebastian Dehnhardt , Matthias Schmidt. Germany 2014.

Web links

Remarks

  1. “Sr” stood for “special travel train”.

Individual evidence

  1. The right to freedom of travel. The Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the Former German Democratic Republic (BStU).
  2. R. Augstein, In: Der Spiegel , Volume 44, Issues 40-42. October 1, 1990.
  3. a b Herrmann Huber, quoted from The Embassy Refugees , Plate 3 and 4 = Hofmann: Prague refugee trains , p. 35.
  4. ^ NN: Hans-Dietrich Genscher on the Prague embassy refugees . In: deutschland.de v. 29th August 2014.
  5. a b c d Kuhlmann / Heinrich, p. 43.
  6. Gerd Appenzeller: 13 words that heralded the end of the GDR . In: Der Tagesspiegel . April 1, 2016. Retrieved October 4, 2019.
  7. a b c d Kuhlmann / Heinrich, p. 45.
  8. a b Kuhlmann / Heinrich, p. 44.
  9. a b c d Kuhlmann / Heinrich, p. 48.
  10. Kuhlmann / Heinrich, p. 44f.
  11. a b c d Kuhlmann / Heinrich, p. 47.
  12. a b Herrmann Huber, quoted from The Embassy Refugees , Plate 3 and 4 = Hofmann: Prague refugee trains , p. 38.
  13. Kuhlmann / Heinrich, pp. 46, 47.
  14. Kuhlmann / Heinrich, p. 46.
  15. Herrmann Huber, quoted from The Embassy Refugees , Plate 3 a. 4 = Hofmann: Prague refugee trains , p. 39.
  16. Herrmann Huber, quoted from The Embassy Refugees , Plate 3 a. 4 = Hofmann: Prager refugee trains , p. 40; Kuhlmann / Heinrich, p. 50.
  17. 13 words that heralded the end of the GDR. Der Tagesspiegel , April 1, 2016
  18. ARD website