Pan-European picnic

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Today's border crossing at the memorial (June 2009)

The Pan-European Picnic was a peace demonstration by Hungarian oppositionists on the Austro-Hungarian border near the city of Sopron (Ödenburg) on ​​August 19, 1989. It was subsequently stylized in the culture of remembrance as a milestone in those events that led to the end of the GDR , German reunification and Breakup of the Eastern Bloc .

With the consent of the Hungarian and Austrian authorities, a symbolic border gate was to be opened for three hours at the event. Between 600 and 700 GDR citizens then used this brief opening of the Iron Curtain to flee to the West . It was the largest movement of refugees from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built . On the northeast corner of the Reichstag building in Berlin, a plaque commemorates the Pan-European Picnic.

On the Reichstag building the plaque commemorating the opening of the Hungarian border on September 10, 1989

August 19, 1989

So-called "Hungarian visa", with which it was possible in the summer of 1989 to travel from the GDR to Hungary

On June 27, 1989, a few kilometers away, the then Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock and his Hungarian counterpart Gyula Horn symbolically cut through the signal fence in front of the border to underline the dismantling of the surveillance systems by Hungary, which began on May 2, 1989. The signaling system, the fences and the surveillance systems were dismantled with the knowledge of the leadership of the Soviet Union around Mikhail Gorbachev , because Hungary could no longer afford the operation, there were already more modern methods of border security and because with regard to the Austro-Hungarian application for the World exhibition Expo 95 feared damage to the company's image. However, Hungary stepped up the guard to prevent uncontrolled border crossings on its western border.

The picnic took place at the border gate on the old Pressburger Landstrasse between Sankt Margarethen in Burgenland and Sopronkőhida (Steinambrückl) in Hungary. The idea came from Otto Habsburg and the MDF organization in the eastern Hungarian city of Debrecen . There were also official permits that there would be an improvised border crossing on the afternoon of August 19, 1989 from 3 to 6 p.m. The organizers were members of the opposition Hungarian Democratic Forum and the Pan-European Union . The patrons were its president, the CSU MEP Otto von Habsburg, and the Hungarian minister of state and reformer Imre Pozsgay . They saw the planned picnic as an opportunity to test Gorbachev's reaction to the opening of the border and agreed that the picnic should be advertised among the GDR citizens. The Paneuropean Union distributed thousands of leaflets inviting people to a picnic near the border near Sopron. Many of the GDR citizens understood the message and came here. With the initiated picnic, Habsburg and Pozsgay wanted to check in particular whether Moscow would order the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary to intervene if the Iron Curtain was opened . At that time it was still completely unclear whether the Soviet Union or individual Eastern Bloc states would intervene militarily if there were an inconvenient anti-communist and anti-Soviet development.

The symbolic cutting of the barbed wire was made by Mária Filep. Shortly before 3 p.m., completely unexpectedly, the first 20 to 30 GDR citizens arrived at the border gate, which was still guarded and secured by armed forces. The gate was torn open and the mostly young GDR citizens ran to the Austrian side, where some journalists and a camera team from an Austrian broadcaster were waiting.

Between 600 and 700 GDR citizens used this brief opening of the Iron Curtain to flee to the West, after they had been made aware of the Pan-European Picnic through leaflets from the organizers. Around 3 p.m., around 150 GDR citizens came to the border gate, which was guarded by five soldiers. They pushed the gate open again, and what happened at noon was repeated. During the picnic and the “symbolic” opening of the border, the refugees overcame the iron curtain in three waves. It was the largest refugee movement from East Germany since the building of the Berlin Wall . News of the mass exodus spread very quickly.

The Hungarian border guards reacted calmly to the emerging mass exodus and did not intervene. The then chief border officer Árpád Bella contributed significantly to this . In the absence of clear instructions from his superiors, he instructed the border staff to simply ignore the illegal border crossers hurrying by right in front of their eyes. In doing so, he violated his official duties and risked a prison sentence, but prevented an almost inevitable escalation of the situation. A superior who came later tried frantically to stop individual GDR citizens, but could not do anything in view of their number. The chief of the local Austrian border guards also initially intended to intervene; as he later confessed, he was convinced by Bella that intervening would only bring bad luck.

According to its files, the Hungarian State Security Service had known since July 10, 1989 that an event was planned at the border on the basis of a suggestion from Otto Habsburg. On July 31, 1989, he informed the Hungarian domestic intelligence service about preparations for this event. The operational group of the Ministry for State Security of the GDR (- the presence of the Stasi in Hungary) had information about the Pan-European Picnic, but their officers did not react either and the Stasi had no choice but to organize the return transport of the abandoned vehicles.

In addition, thousands of GDR citizens waited a little further away for the chance to cross the border, because they did not believe in the opening of the border and did not trust the events. Therefore, only a few hundred people passed the border that day. In the following days, the guard on the Hungarian western border was increased on the instructions of the Hungarian government, so that only a relatively few managed to escape. With the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the hesitant behavior of the SED leadership and the failure of the Soviet Union to intervene, the dams then broke. Now tens of thousands of East Germans set out for Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely sealed. The leadership of the GDR in East Berlin did not dare to completely lock the borders of their own country. The Austrian radio reported - around August 26th - of over one hundred successful escape attempts on the day before Hungary finally opened its border to GDR citizens on September 11, 1989.

Historical classification

The Pan-European Picnic is an essential milestone in the processes that led to the end of the GDR and German reunification . Every year on August 19th, commemorations take place at the point where the border was breached.

For the Pan-European Picnic Erich Honecker dictated the following statement to the Daily Mirror :

“Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which East German vacationers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given presents, food and German marks, and then they were persuaded to come to the West. "

- Erich Honecker : the Daily Mirror on August 19, 1989
Pan-European picnic - 25th anniversary: ​​Frank Spengler, Hildigund Neubert and Gergely Gulyás (from left to right), Sopron 2014

In relation to the events in the summer and autumn of 1989 and their assessment, German Chancellor Kohl highlighted the events at the border. It was Hungary where "the first stone was knocked out of the wall", Helmut Kohl reminded his compatriots on October 4, 1990 in Berlin, the day after reunification.

In 2009, EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso paid tribute to the “peaceful picnic on the Austro-Hungarian border near Sopron”, which “helped to change the course of European history”. This event led to the “iron curtain being briefly opened” and thus contributed to its “final fall and the reunification of Germany”. This marks the beginning of the end of the division of Europe through the Cold War.

On August 19, 2009, German Chancellor Angela Merkel laid a wreath at the picnic memorial column on the Austrian-Hungarian border and met with contemporary witnesses of the Pan-European Picnic of August 1989. She said that the Pan-European Picnic was the gateway to freedom an irreversible one Has been opened a little. With this, Hungary gave the will of freedom of Germans from the former GDR something like wings, said Merkel.

It was only through the culture of remembrance that the pan-European picnic became a symbol for the entire escape movement of the summer of 1989. The important role of the Hungarian opposition movement was increasingly concealed, the role of the Habsburgs was emphasized. The place of memory was constructed by politics and the media for their own purposes, the importance of the collapse of the Eastern bloc and Austria's active role in it being exaggerated.

memorial

Monument to the reception
Imre Kozma - Hungarian Maltese Aid Service
Pan-European Picnic Monument "Upheaval" by Miklós Melocco

At the point where the border gate was breached by the refugees, a work of art by the Hungarian artist Miklós Melocco reminds of the events of that time. A piece of the Berlin Wall has been inserted into the limestone sculpture entitled "Áttörés - Umbruch". There are other smaller monuments on the site, including an opening stone gate (picture at the top). On the occasion of the thirty-year anniversary of the Pan-European Picnic, a visitor center is to be completed on the Hungarian side in August 2019, in which the events can be experienced interactively.

In 1996 a ten meter high stainless steel sculpture by the sculptor Gabriela von Habsburg was erected in Fertőrákos near Sopron . It symbolizes a set up piece of barbed wire, which from a distance has the shape of a cross.

In 2004 , the Memorial of the Admission was erected in the garden of the Hungarian Maltese Aid Service in Zugliget, part of the 12th Budapest district of Hegyvidék . From August 14 to November 14, 1989, the GDR refugees lived in the camp set up here.

literature

  • Gyula Kurucz (ed.): The gateway to German unity. Sopron border breakthrough August 19, 1989 . edition q in Quintessenz-Verlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-86124-529-9 .
  • Magdalena Roder, Mona Schenk, Sarah Schrempel, Anne-Kristin Stoye: The aftertaste of bacon and Pörkölt. The Pan-European Picnic - The Breakthrough into Freedom (August 19, 1989) / A pörkölt és szalonna utóíze. A Páneurópai Piknik - Áttörés a szabadságba (1989, augusztus 19th) . Brochure in German and Hungarian, 88 pages, A5 format. Coordination and editing: Herma Lautenschläger, St. Augustin High School in Grimma . Published with the support of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung , Grimma 2014, ISBN 978-963-89918-4-3 .
  • Stefan Karner / Philipp Lesiak (eds.): The first stone from the Berlin Wall. The Pan-European Picnic 1989 , Graz: Leykam 2019 (Research on the Consequences of War; 30), ISBN 978-3-7011-0414-7 .

Web links

Commons : Pan-European Picnic  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Hildegard Schmoller: The Pan-European Picnic as an Austrian place of remembrance for the fall of the Iron Curtain. In: Elisabeth Fendl (Hrsg.): Yearbook for German and Eastern European Folklore. 25 years of memory of the divided Europe. Münster / New York 2015, pp. 34–54, here: p. 47 ff.
  2. ↑ Otmar Lahodynsky: Pan-European Picnic: The Dress Rehearsal for the Fall of the Wall. In: Profile , August 9, 2014.
  3. ↑ Ö1 evening journal. June 27, 1989 ( mediathek.at ).
  4. ↑ So much for the beginning of the end. In: The press. June 20, 2009.
  5. ↑ a b Miklós Németh in an interview with Peter Bognar: Border opening in 1989: “There was no protest from Moscow”. In: The press. August 19, 2014 ( online ).
  6. ^ A b László Nagy: The Pan-European Picnic and the Opening of the Border on September 11, 1989. In: Potsdamer Bulletin for Contemporary History Studies. No. 23-24 / 2001, pp. 24-40. Copy from chronik-der-mauer.de, accessed on June 11, 2019.
  7. ↑ A picnic as a test case for the opening of the wall. In: NZZ.ch June 26, 2014.
  8. ↑ Thomas Roser: GDR mass exodus: a picnic turns the world off its hinges. In: The press. August 16, 2014.
  9. ^ Hans Rauscher: The world historical picnic on the border. In: Der Standard August 16, 2009.
  10. ↑ Hilde Szabo: The Berlin Wall began to crumble in Burgenland. In: Wiener Zeitung . August 16, 1999;
    Otmar Lahodynsky: Pan-European picnic: The dress rehearsal for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Profil.at, August 9, 2014;
    Ludwig Greven: And then the gate opened . zeit.de , August 19, 2014.
  11. ↑ August 19, 1989 was a test by Gorbachev. In: FAZ.net, August 19, 2009.
  12. ↑ Andreas Rödder : Germany united fatherland - the history of reunification. 2009, p. 52.
  13. ^ History of the Paneuropa Union ( Memento from March 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ Europe - divided in 1989, united in 2009 ( BMeiA ): Pan-European picnic: Hungary opens borders
  15. ^ So the memories of Walter Sobel, in: Jens Bauszus: Paneuropäisches Picnick. The hole in the iron curtain. In: Focus-online, August 19, 2009.
  16. ↑ Bettina Hartmann: Once Hungary - and never back. stuttgarter-nachrichten.de August 19, 2014.
  17. ↑ See Otmar Lahodynsky: Pan-European Picnic: The Dress Rehearsal for the Fall of the Wall. In: Profile . August 9, 2014;
    Rainer Stepan: When Austria was still an “understanding” of Eastern Europe. In: The press . 18th June 2017.
  18. ↑ Torsten Hampel: The breakthrough. In: Der Tagesspiegel . 19th August 2014.
  19. ↑ Michael Frank: Pan-European Picnic: With the picnic basket into freedom. In: sueddeutsche.de. May 17, 2010, accessed June 11, 2019 .
  20. ↑ See György Gyarmati, Krisztina Slachta (ed.): The prelude for the opening of the border. Budapest 2014, p. 89 ff.
  21. ↑ Picnic in Freedom - The Pan-European Picnic in Sopron and the Stasi. BStU accessed on April 3, 2017 ( bstu.bund.de ).
  22. ↑ Ö1 lunch journal from August 26, 1989
  23. ↑ Michael Frank: Pan-European Picnic - With the picnic basket into freedom . sueddeutsche.de, May 19, 2010.
  24. ↑ a b Walter Mayr: The first stone . In: Der Spiegel . No. 22 , 2009 ( online ).
  25. ↑ August 19, 1989 was a test by Gorbachev. FAZ from August 19, 2009.
  26. ↑ Merkel thanks Hungary for opening the Iron Curtain. In: NZZ. August 19, 2009.
  27. ↑ "Picnic Area" becomes a museum. March 21, 2019, accessed August 20, 2019 .
  28. ↑ Hungary commemorates the reception of GDR refugees ( memento of May 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) by Father Imre Kozmar, accessed on May 10, 2009

Coordinates: 47 ° 45 ′ 25.6 ″  N , 16 ° 37 ′ 20.4 ″  E