Mass exodus from East Germany in 1989Learn how East German citizens seeking asylum at the West German embassy in Prague were granted transport to West Germany through the efforts of West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, 1989.(more)<\/p>\n
See all videos for this article<\/a><\/p>\n The swift and unexpected downfall of the German Democratic Republic was triggered by the decay of the other communist regimes in eastern Europe<\/a> and the Soviet Union. The liberalizing reforms of President Mikhail Gorbachev<\/a> in the Soviet Union appalled the Honecker regime, which in desperation was by 1988 forbidding the circulation within East Germany of Soviet publications that it viewed as dangerously subversive. The Berlin Wall<\/a> was in effect breached<\/a> in the summer of 1989 when a reformist Hungarian government began allowing East Germans to escape<\/a> to the West through Hungary\u2019s<\/a> newly opened border with Austria<\/a>. By the fall, thousands of East Germans had followed this route, while thousands of others sought asylum in the West German embassies in Prague and Warsaw, demanding that they be allowed to emigrate to West Germany<\/a>. At the end of September, Genscher, still West Germany\u2019s foreign minister, arranged for their passage to West Germany, but another wave of refugees from East Germany soon took their place. Mass demonstrations in the streets of Leipzig<\/a> and other East German cities defied<\/a> the authorities and demanded reforms.<\/p>\n In an effort to halt the deterioration of its position, the SED Politburo deposed Honecker in mid-October and replaced him with another hard-line communist, Egon Krenz. Under Krenz the Politburo sought to eliminate the embarrassment occasioned by the flow of refugees to the West through Hungary, Czechoslovakia<\/a>, and Poland<\/a>. On the evening of November 9, G\u00fcnter Schabowski, a communist functionary, mistakenly announced at a televised news conference that the government would allow East Germans unlimited passage to West Germany, effective \u201cimmediately.\u201d While the government had in fact meant to require East Germans to apply for exit visas during normal working hours<\/a>, this was widely interpreted as a decision to open the Berlin Wall that evening, so crowds gathered and demanded to pass into West Berlin<\/a>. Unprepared, the border guards let them go. In a night of revelry<\/a> tens of thousands of East Germans poured through the crossing points in the wall and celebrated their new freedom with rejoicing West Berliners.<\/p>\n The opening of the Berlin Wall proved fatal for the German Democratic Republic. Ever-larger demonstrations demanded a voice in government for the people, and in mid-November Krenz was replaced by a reform-minded communist<\/a>, Hans Modrow, who promised free, multiparty elections. When the balloting took place in March 1990 the SED<\/a>, now renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism<\/a> (PDS), suffered a crushing defeat. The eastern counterpart of Kohl\u2019s CDU<\/a>, which had pledged a speedy reunification of Germany, emerged as the largest political party<\/a> in East Germany\u2019s first democratically elected People\u2019s Chamber. A new East German government headed by Lothar de Maizi\u00e8re, a long-time member of the eastern Christian Democratic Union, and backed initially by a broad coalition<\/a>, including the eastern counterparts of the Social Democrats<\/a> and Free Democrats, began negotiations for a treaty of unification. A surging tide of refugees from East to West Germany that threatened to cripple East Germany<\/a> added urgency to those negotiations. In July that tide was somewhat stemmed by a monetary union<\/a> of the two Germanys that gave East Germans the hard currency of the Federal Republic.<\/p>\n The political journey of German Chancellor Helmut KohlLearn about Helmut Kohl’s political career, including his role in the reunification of Germany.(more)<\/p>\n See all videos for this article<\/a><\/p>\n The final barrier to reunification fell in July 1990 when Kohl prevailed upon Gorbachev to drop his objections to a unified Germany within the NATO<\/a> alliance in return for sizable (West) German financial aid to the Soviet Union<\/a>. A unification treaty was ratified by the Bundestag<\/a> and the People\u2019s Chamber in September and went into effect on October 3, 1990. The German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic as five additional L\u00e4nder, and the two parts of divided Berlin<\/a> became one Land. (The five new L\u00e4nder were Brandenburg<\/a>, Mecklenburg\u2013West Pomerania<\/a>, Saxony<\/a>, Saxony-Anhalt<\/a>, and Thuringia.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mass exodus from East Germany in 1989Learn how East German citizens seeking asylum at the West German embassy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[185,184,183,182,5],"class_list":{"0":"post-1982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-britannica","10":"tag-encyclopeadia","11":"tag-encyclopedia","12":"tag-germany"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}