East German Escape Picnic Memories

East Germans remember escaping to the West 20 years ago. Let’s hear their stories.

August 1989 – hundreds of East German refugees were desperate to escape to the West.

The Pan-European Picnic, held on the Hungarian-Austrian border on 19th August, gave many the chance to turn a dream into reality.

Dietmar Poguntke, who was 26 at the time, was one of many East Germans who traveled to the friendly communist countries of Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Poguntke and around 700 others managed to cross over when the border gates dividing East and West were opened for a few hours during the Picnic.

[Dietmar Poguntke, Former East German Refugee]:
„I crossed through a hole and there was this Austrian who said: ‚Welcome to freedom‘, holding a piece of barbed wire like a rose. I couldn’t believe it. In my mind I was expecting a first wall, then a second wall, a third one – like here. But he said: ‚You are already in Austria!‘ I told him: ‚No way‘.“

The refugees hadn’t expected crossing the border to be this easy.

And the Hungarian border guards stationed there didn’t shoot.

The picnic was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration, highlighting the division of Europe.

But then guards began sporadically opening and closing the border.

Gerd Vehres experienced the Pan-European Picnic in a very different way.

Twenty years ago, he was the East German Ambassador to Hungary.

At the time, no one expected the Berlin Wall to fall just three months later.

[Gerd Vehres, Former East German Ambassador to Hungary]:
„I knew that an era at home in Germany would come to an end. But I didn’t know it would come to an end like that. I thought that it was necessary too.“

In the weeks after the Picnic, more and more East Germans poured into the West German embassies in Prague and here in Budapest.

These refugees crossing the border to the West from neighboring countries put increasing pressure on the East German government, until the wall fell on 9th November.

This memorial now marks where the Picnic took place in Sophron.

And senior European politicians will be attending celebrations marking the twentieth anniversary of the Picnic, and a united Europe.

(NTDTV)