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An undivided country?
Part 3 of a very personal story
In the first two parts of this series, I have written about my childhood and youth in East Germany.
At the end of the summer of 1989, everyone was feeling electricity in the air: something was about to happen. But nobody knew what it would be. It was an extraordinary mixture of hope and anxiety. The last attempts at changes in the communist system had failed spectacularly and were still on everyone’s mind.
On October 7th of 1989, the regime celebrated the 40th anniversary of East Germany. Not many people were truly celebrating with them. Especially not those thousands that demonstrated near the “Palast of the Republic” in East Berlin, where the official ceremonies were happening.
They weren’t cheering Erich Honecker, the 77-year-old leader of the SED, the ruling communist party of East Germany. Instead, they were calling Michail Gorbatchev, the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, who was attending the celebrations. His ideas of “Perestroika” (change) and “Glasnost” (transparency) had become very popular throughout the eastern block. The German communists had even banned a Soviet Journal out of fear that this paper would disseminate unwanted ideas.
The East German police acted as expected and arrested more than 1.000 protestors. But another wound was cut into…
