Speech OB 07.10.2009

for the ceremony "20 Years of Peaceful Revolution" on 7 October 2009 in St Mark's Church

The spoken word counts!

7 October 1989, a Saturday, 7:00 pm. A country in the heart of Europe lies under a great burden. The mood is tense. It oscillates between

- fear and hope,
- despair and courage,
- wait and see or take action.

One thing is already certain on this day: the lethargy is over!

The official celebrations to mark the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR are reaching their climax in Berlin. An absurd, unrealistic staging.
The state and party leadership celebrates itself. One last time. Isolated from the people. Their signals are clear: there will be no "business as usual". The last is the most exciting birthday of the German Democratic Republic.

Dear people of Chemnitz,
honourable members of parliament,
honourable citizens,
honoured guests,
Honoured guests, dear festive assembly,

I would like to welcome you to our commemorative event. Together, we want to remember the autumn of 1989, an event that has gone down in German and European history as a peaceful revolution.

Address,
In the days of October 1989, a deep crack that had long before formed behind the façade of the state broke through the increasingly thin skin of the backdrop that Erich Honecker called "real socialism in the colours of the GDR".

The colours of socialism are grey. The rift now runs through the whole country. It runs through society. It runs, and it has become unbearable, through families too.

7 October 1989, Karl-Marx-Stadt: large relay race on the Street of Nations. Like every year.

But this time it's not like every year. In the late morning, a demonstration procession of around 700 people moves silently from the Luxor Palace towards the central station. No torches, no blue shirts, no GDR flags. No organised demonstration. But probably the strongest sign that many had hoped for, much more than just going along.

Karl-Marx-Städter, who were in the city centre at the time, were presented with an unbelievable picture.

The central bus stop and the surrounding streets are literally blocked off by police forces. Vehicles equipped with dozer blades stand like iron monsters.
The sight of protective shields, batons and water cannons is frightening. Squadrons of police with dogs, battle groups march up. A helicopter circles overhead. Its roar makes everything seem almost surreal.

What will they do, the riot squads, the People's Police, the State Security, if the people do not obey the order to leave the square? What if the courageous demonstrators simply keep walking?
The people are surrounded at the central bus stop. Horror spreads as the police use force to disperse the demonstration. Water cannons lash out. There are fights.

I'm standing among what are now perhaps a thousand Karl-Marx-Stadt residents, just as stunned as everyone else, disgusted by this seemingly indomitable violence.
Next to me is a teenager. He asks a man standing diagonally in front of him loudly and clearly: "Mr Director, is this your socialism?"

Demonstrators involved in the silent march, but also completely uninvolved people, are arrested. They are treated inhumanely, humiliated and locked up in the remand centre on Kaßberg.

Salutation,
The faces of quite a few members of the riot squads, most of whom were equipped with hard hats and truncheons to intimidate the demonstrators, also reflect uncertainty and unease.

Aren't there neighbours, colleagues, members of the sports club, friends or even family members among the demonstrators? The son? The daughter? Is this what counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the state look like? Which side am I on? Which side is the right one?

Some people know of plans to set up internment camps. Internment camps to lock up opponents of the regime. And this here, with our history. It was supposed to be a better Germany.

Emotions alternate between hope for de-escalation and realisation of the seriousness of the situation. The question on everyone's mind is: how great is the danger that the state will shoot down its own people?
Television images appear in the mind, fear of a "Chinese solution", of a massacre like the one on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

On this day, 7 October 1989, the state power violently demonstrates its power. It was to be their last major appearance in Karl-Marx-Stadt. However, neither the powerful themselves nor the people who were courageously striving for change in the state and society were aware of this at the time.

And so it takes a great deal of courage when, on the same evening, a protest resolution for change in the country is read out from the stage of the Schauspielhaus by our city's theatre professionals.
The minutes of liberating applause from the audience once again brought confirmation: This country is at a crossroads. And it is no longer just a few who see it that way.

"Hope," says Václav Havel, "hope is ... the certainty that something has meaning, regardless of how it turns out."

Address,
GDR citizens have been keeping themselves informed wherever possible with Deutschlandfunk and West German television for a long time. Nevertheless, the events in Karl-Marx-Stadt and other cities in the country were ignored or defamed by the GDR state media, sometimes both at the same time.
To mark the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, "Neues Deutschland" ran the headline: "The development of the German Democratic Republic will continue to be the work of the entire people". The editors were proved right - just in a different way than they had intended.

The SED leadership's calculation that the anniversary celebrations and cheerful public festivals would lead to an easing of the situation in the GDR did not work out. The sale of goods that were otherwise difficult to obtain, such as original jeans or tropical fruit, was intended to feign normality or an upswing once again. But even this could no longer pacify the citizens. Especially as this was not the decisive factor for many.

It was obvious that the successes constantly proclaimed by the same propaganda and the actual reality of the people were drifting further and further apart. If you compared your own circumstances with those presented in the state media, the only question was: is it a comedy or a tragedy?

Salutation,
"Revolution is the self-defence of a people offended in its most sacred rights," said the publicist and diplomat Lothar Bucher in the middle of the 19th century.

The deepest offence to the people of the GDR took place in 1961. "Nobody has any intention of building a wall." A sentence formulated for the public by State Council Chairman Walter Ulbricht at a press conference in June 1961 laid the foundations for the lie of a state. It was a lie for the world and a humiliation for the citizens of the GDR.
For this very border, which closed just a few weeks later - seemingly for good - tore families apart, separated friends and walled an entire nation into a lack of freedom.

The Iron Curtain was closed. It also became the border between the Warsaw Pact countries and NATO. The armies on both sides had nuclear weapons.

The world froze for a long time under a "balance of terror" in the "Cold War".

Over the decades, there were periods of "ice age" and "thaw" in the Eastern Bloc. The GDR was always affected by this. A series of events and changes in strategy by the GDR leadership can be categorised in this context.

One example is the treatment of artists. Honecker became the new party and state leader in 1971. There were signs that a more liberal attitude towards art and artists might be gaining ground.

There was a hint of hope for a little freedom of spirit.
Wolf Biermann's expatriation just five years later stifled this hope. Disappointment spread.
Many artists left the country. They became - perhaps without wanting to - role models for their generation.

But regardless of whether the artists left or stayed: With their songs, poems and theatre plays, they gave a voice to the criticism and longings of the people in the GDR. And it was a seed that sprouted - hidden or open - throughout the country.
Culture is capable of much more than we are sometimes able to realise.

And so it is fitting that today's ceremony also marks the beginning of this year's "Encounters".
Twenty years after the peaceful revolution, the festival's motto is "Borderless". The programme recalls a time of borders and the time when barriers fell. It explores new beginnings, turning points and growing together.

Salutation,
Autumn 1989. Glasnost. Openness. Perestroika. Transformation. These simple words change the world. But Honecker and the entire GDR leadership, caught up in self-deception, despondency and ignorance, failed to recognise the situation. They misjudged Mikhail Gorbachev. It is the last, the decisive mistake before the curtain closes on decades of staging.

The images of the GDR refugees in Hungary and Prague, the liberating words of Hans-Dietrich Genscher on the balcony of the Prague embassy, the cheering young refugee families with their children, the trains through the GDR, the violence of the security forces at the railway stations along the route: the many who applied to leave and left, often less than 30 years old. Doctors, skilled workers, students, they leave behind friends, home, family and divide the country anew on the inside.
All this leads to a great urge for change.

And the Soviet Union is suddenly no longer a threat. On the contrary: Mikhail Gorbachev meant hope for the people in the GDR. Applying to leave the country - in 1988 alone, 110,000 people in the GDR were sitting on packed suitcases - escape was no longer the only way out.

Address,
People in the GDR were lively and hard-working. They were used to improvising and were prepared to help themselves and others. Nevertheless, the country was not only ideologically, but also economically and ecologically exhausted.
And many of those who did not want to leave, but wanted to stay, asked questions, sought answers and other ways out. The churches, including here in our home town, offered space and support. Initiatives for human rights, for peace and environmental groups were given a platform here.

It was a strange atmosphere that settled over the country in the months before the fall of the Wall. The poet Uwe Kolbe describes it like this: "It was an endless autumn. An autumn that didn't want to end."

In this oppressive atmosphere, pastors did some great things. They provide protection as far as possible. They provide encouragement, encouragement and guidance.
The fact that there was a peaceful revolution in Plauen, Leipzig, Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Cottbus or Berlin, that the German Democratic Republic came to an end without bloodshed, is also thanks to the churches.

Hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country took to the streets in the weeks following 7 October. They shout: "No violence!" And here in Karl-Marx-Stadt, Karl Marx is suddenly standing in a sea of people and candles.
Perhaps this is the moment when the memorial really arrives in this city and in people's hearts. Perhaps this is the reason why it has remained standing.

Salutation,
20 years have passed since the autumn of reunification. Many of you were there in 1989, directly involved in the events. Each and every one of us therefore has our own personal view, our very own story.

It's hard to say how many contemporary witnesses there are in our city alone. There may be over 100,000.
That makes honouring and coming to terms with our history authentic, but also not easy. That is also true for me and it is also true for this speech.

In preparation for the ceremony and all the other events surrounding 7 October and the peaceful revolution, I have therefore asked personalities from our city to advise and support us.

I would like to thank them most sincerely:

Mr Christoph Magirius, the first honorary citizen of our city after the peaceful revolution,
Dr Peter Seifert,
Mr Hartwig Albiro,
Mr Martin Böttger,
Dr Eberhard Langer.

I would also like to thank Mrs Heike Richter-Beese for chairing the advisory board and all those involved from Chemnitz City Council, some of whom were also active during the period of change.
They have put together today's festive programme.

We must be grateful to those who contributed to changing the course of world history with their efforts two decades ago. Because they were here in Karl-Marx-Stadt, had courage, risked a lot.
Some of them are here today. I cannot read out your names individually, but I can tell you that it means a lot to me that you are here with us. As Hans-Dietrich Genscher put it just a few days ago, you all wanted to achieve freedom and made history.

Salutation,
Every great event in history carries messages and certainties for the future.
The vast majority of the citizens of the GDR wanted freedom. Freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom to travel. Free elections and basic democratic rights. That has been achieved.

Much of what seemed unattainable in the summer of 1989 is now taken for granted. Basic values that we claim.

But the great good fortune of having successfully fought for these democratic freedoms does not always bear fruit in our personal lives.
Some people have been bitterly disappointed. Today, it seems that a rift sometimes creeps through society when it comes to the question: What was better in the past? What was easier? And what was life actually like in the GDR?

The official culture of remembrance is often polarised between glorification and disgust, between "It wasn't like that" and "Yes, exactly like that". Here, too, there are over a hundred thousand contemporary witnesses in our city alone. Hundreds of thousands of biographies and views of our own past.
But remembrance also demands responsibility, a close look, honesty.

For our children and grandchildren, the GDR will soon be nothing more and nothing less than a piece of history.

For me, what happened 20 years ago in autumn 89 is proof that circumstances can be changed if people are courageous. If they take responsibility, if they stick together.

And when we return to today: Yes, democracy can be exhausting. The results are not always fair. And they are not always right.

But we have - and this is what fundamentally distinguishes a liberal democratic society from the GDR, for example - we have the instruments to select those who make representative decisions. Politicians hold office for a fixed term. They have to justify themselves in public. And: we can all be different without fear. This is precisely what makes democracy a controversial and at the same time self-confident form of coexistence.
We can decide to be for or against a cause. Or we can look for a compromise. That is a blessing - and at the same time a great responsibility: free elections, how much we wished for that 20 years ago. Finally having a say in who is allowed to take on responsibility in the city and state for a limited period of time? And yet not even one in two people voted in the 2009 local elections. Is the longing for freedom greater than the realisation that freedom cannot be taken for granted?

Being allowed to decide means having to take a stand. We shouldn't shy away from this just because it might not be enough for our own majority or because it might be uncomfortable.
Democracy needs diversity of opinion and it needs fellow campaigners. There will be no freedom without democracy. Shouldn't we know that?

Address,
In the autumn of 1989, the people of the GDR achieved something that had seemed unthinkable for decades: they brought down the Wall from the inside. The peaceful revolution was, in the very best sense, a referendum.

Let us remember the phrase that characterised the autumn demonstrations two decades ago: We are the people.

It still applies today.