Peaceful Revolution

In 1989 mass protests and mass emigration forced the East German state to open the Berlin Wall and then to dissolve itself within a year.

Overview

Fraud in the May 1989 local elections and the exodus of citizens through newly opened Hungary radicalized the opposition. Monday demonstrations after prayers at the Leipzig Nikolai Church grew from hundreds in September to hundreds of thousands in October, and the precedent of Tiananmen made the stakes plain. The 9 October Leipzig march passed without shooting, breaking the nerve of the regime. On 9 November a botched press conference opened the Berlin Wall, and crowds dismantled it as the state collapsed. Free elections in March 1990 gave a landslide to parties favoring rapid unification, completed on 3 October 1990. The revolution remains a European model of civic courage defeating a surveillance state without bloodshed.