East Germany: The democratic “Wende” (= turnabout) and the role of the Protestant Church
Chronology
1949: The constitution of the German Democratic Republic recognized
the status of the Protestant Church as a public corporation, with the right of self-determination
and the inviolability of its property.
1968: The new constitution restricted the rights of the churches.
Protection of church activities was restricted to worship and charitable services.
From 1973 on, in the wake of the policy of detente and under pressure
of the Soviet Union, the East German government extended offers of cooperation to the Protestant Church.
1978: Top-level talks between Erich Honecker, Chief of State,
and Bishop Schönherr, Chairman of the Protestant Church Federation.
Honecker acknowledged the “autonomous influence of the Church as an important
factor of social life now and in the future”.
1980's: Opposition groups met under church protection
and began to organize resistance. The Church became the forum of system critics.
19 January 1989: Honecker proclaimed that the Berlin Wall would
continue to stand in the next fifty or hundred years, should the grounds for its erection
not be eliminated.
May 1989: Hungary opened its borders to Austria and began to dismantle
the barriers along its borders. Hungary became an escape vent for citizens of the
Eastern Block fleeing to Western Europe.
Electoral fraud in the local elections called forth widespread protest.
Summer 1989: Tens of thousands of East Germans fled to the West via
Hungary and Austria or sought refuge in West German embassies in other East European countries.
7/8 July 1989: The Soviet chief of state Mikhail Gorbachev called for
an “autonomous solution to national problems”, thus signifying that
the Soviet Union would not intervene in the process.
7 October 1989: During his visit to East Germany, Gorbachev called for fundamental reforms.
9 October 1989: In Leipzig, some 100,000 people demonstrated
publicly at the end of a worship service for peace in the Nikolai Church.
23 October 1989: At the Monday Demonstration in Leipzig, some 300,000 people
joined together under the slogan “We are the people!”
4 November 1989: In East Berlin, over a million people took part in a demonstration.
9 November 1989: Symbolically the Berlin Wall fell with the opening of
the border checkpoints into West Berlin.
3 October 1990: East and West Germany were reunited when the Treaty of Reunion came into effect.
