European leaders gathered yesterday in Budapest to mark the 20th anniversary of the symbolic fall of the Iron Curtain, often described as the first crack in the Berlin Wall and one of the key episodes leading to the end of communism in Eastern Europe.
The presidents of Germany, Austria, Finland, Slovenia and Switzerland, as well as high-ranking officials from Poland, Britain and more than 20 other countries were to participate in a commemorative session at the Hungarian parliament and a gala event at the Hungarian State Opera House.
On June 27, 1989, the then-foreign ministers of Hungary, Gyula Horn, and Austria, Alois Mock, cut through some barbed wire on the border between the two countries, putting a symbolic end to a physical and psychological boundary of which by then there was little left.
PHOTO: AP
Hungary had begun to dismantle the Iron Curtain nearly two months earlier — partly because border guards said it was in such poor condition that even small animals were setting off false alarms along the electrified fence.
With most of it already gone, officials had trouble finding even a small section of the Iron Curtain for Horn and Mock’s staged photo opportunity with wire cutters.
“What happened at the end of June was a nice symbolic gesture ... but the border continued to be strictly controlled,” Swiss-Hungarian journalist and historian Andreas Oplatka said on state radio.
Pictures of the event were published around the world and inspired thousands of East Germans to leave their country, find temporary refuge in Hungary, Poland or Czechoslovakia and wait for an opportunity to travel to West Germany.
By the end of the summer, thousands of East German “tourists” were living in tents on the grounds of the West German embassy in Budapest and in several other locations around the city, including church yards and the site of a communist youth camp.
After allowing some of the “Ossies” to leave for West Germany via Austria in August and then some more a few weeks later, Hungary finally decided to let all East Germans out from Sept. 11, 1989.
Within two months, on Nov. 9, the Berlin Wall fell and Germany’s reunification was formalized in October 1990.
“The peaceful turn of events of the year 1989 was the great triumph of the citizens of the former Eastern Bloc states,” Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said on Friday during a memorial event near the border with Hungary. “Today, watchtowers and barbed wire are a part of the past. The ‘peace project Europe’ has prevailed with much success.”
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