In addition, East Germany was struggling to meet loan payments on foreign borrowings Egon Krenz sent Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski to unsuccessfully ask West Germany for a short-term loan to make interest payments. However, this movement of people grew so large it caused difficulties for both countries. The emigration was initially tolerated because of long-standing agreements with the communist Czechoslovak government, allowing free travel across their common border. įollowing the summer of 1989, by early November refugees were finding their way to Hungary via Czechoslovakia or via the West German embassy in Prague.

Thus the bracket of the Eastern Bloc was broken. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West.' The leadership of the GDR in East Berlin did not dare to completely block the borders of their own country and the USSR did not respond at all. Erich Honecker dictated to the Daily Mirror for the Paneuropa Picnic: 'Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. After the picnic, which was based on an idea by Otto von Habsburg to test the reaction of the USSR and Mikhail Gorbachev to an opening of the border, tens of thousands of media-informed East Germans set off for Hungary. It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary.

The opening of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August 1989 set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, at the end of which there was no longer an East Germany and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. Further information: Pan-European Picnic and Removal of Hungary's border fence with Austria

Berlin wall map