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Scene at the Helmstedt–Marienborn border crossing into East Germany in November 1989, after the freeing of travel restrictions.. The fall of inner German border, also known as the opening of the inner German border (German: Öffnung der innerdeutschen Grenze), rapidly and unexpectedly occurred in November 1989, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Pan-European Picnic at the Austro-Hungarian border followed on 19 August 1989. This was a celebration of more open relationships between east and west, near Sopron, but on the Austrian side of the border. The opening of the border gate then set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, at the end of which there was no longer a GDR or an Iron ...
The official emblem of the Pan-European Picnic in Hungarian The border crossing where the Pan-European picnic took place. The Pan-European Picnic (German: Paneuropäisches Picknick; Hungarian: Páneurópai piknik; Slovak: Paneurópsky piknik; Czech: Panevropský piknik) was a peace demonstration held on the Austrian-Hungarian border near Sopron, Hungary on 19 August 1989.
The fall of the Berlin Wall (German: Mauerfall, pronounced [ˈmaʊ̯ɐˌfal] ⓘ) on 9 November 1989, during the Peaceful Revolution, marked the beginning of the destruction of the Berlin Wall and the figurative Iron Curtain, as East Berlin transit restrictions were overwhelmed and discarded.
The initially inconspicuous opening of a border gate of the Iron Curtain between Austria and Hungary in August 1989 then triggered a chain reaction, at the end of which the GDR no longer existed and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961.
The border was still closely guarded and the Hungarian security forces tried to hold back refugees. The dismantling of the electric fence along Hungary's 240 kilometres (149 mi) long border with Austria was the first fissure in the "Iron Curtain" that had divided Europe for more than 40 years, since the end of World War II.
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1989 was a turning point in political history with the "Revolutions of 1989" which ended communism in Eastern Bloc of Europe, starting in Poland and Hungary, with experiments in power-sharing coming to a head with the opening of the Berlin Wall in November, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the overthrow of the communist dictatorship ...