Now, let me tell you about the year 1989, the year of the Peaceful Revolution, as we have called it. To understand this short period, I’m going to summarize the ideology of the Eastern German state. It was founded with the help of the Soviet Red Army by the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The strategy of this party was: “Everything has to look democratic, but we must have everything in our hand.” This party managed to unite with the Social Democratic Party, more exactly, the SPD was forced to unite with the KPD. Of course, only in the Eastern part. And even some more conservative parties were allowed, but they gave them a position without any real influence, a kind of democratic show. The goal of the communist policy has been to build up a state without Nazism and without capitalism. Nobody had to be exploited by somebody else. All the means of production had to be in the ownership of the people, that means in the control, not ownership, of the united communist party, called SED, Socialist Unity Party of Germany, that means in the control of the leading level of this party, the Politburo, as it was called. Many people believed in this dream of a just society. Indeed, there was some equality. Nobody had had the chance to get overwhelmingly rich, not even the political leaders. Corruption existed, but not as much for getting money as more for gaining advantages of different kinds. But, as always, in such dreams, the state wanted to determine everything and everybody, to manipulate the people’s, and as a dissident has called it in his book title: “Der vormundschaftliche Staat” (“the paternalistic state” or “guardianship state”). It was a state which prescribed everything and everybody from birth until death, what he or she had to do. And we shouldn’t forget and shouldn’t forgive, this state had been a jail. Nobody was able to leave this country without official permission or getting in danger, getting shot at the border. Building the Berlin Wall in 1961 was a kind of declaration that the state wasn’t able to give the people a positive vision anymore. The people were getting tired of this policy more and more, and applications for leaving the state increased a lot. Every four years elections took place. Elections meant you got a piece of paper, written on it all the candidates for one of the parliaments, and you had to put this paper into a box. You needed a little braveness for going into the cabin, crossing out the paper, folding it, and putting it into the box. 99.94% positive votes was a typical result.
In May of ’89, again such an election took place, and it was clear that a lot of people were declining to play in this act, this theater, this game anymore. And a lot of people were going to observe the counting process and noted the results and compared it with each other. And then they knew that at most 70 to 80 percent yes-votes were given in reality, but the official results had been 95 percent. This deception couldn’t be endured by the people. That was the beginning of the Peaceful Revolution.
Every Monday evening demonstrations took place in several towns demanding the correction of the official result and ending with the call: “We are the people.” Some towns were leading in this movement, especially the big town Leipzig. Some responsible figures from the party and from the culture scene prevented the security police and other organizations from applying violence, applying their deadly weapons. Most of these opposition people – like me – wanted to improve the state, not to destroy it. Under this pressure, the government wasn’t able to act clearly. The actions of the state and the ruling party were getting confused more and more, but, happily, without using their weapons. In this confusion, the Berlin Wall broke down as a result of some weird or confusing formulation of a leading member of the party during a press conference. After that, the people were going to the wall and demanded to open it, and the guarding soldiers opened it, and this without any violence neither by the guards nor by the demonstrators. They were suddenly powerless with their weapons, because nobody gave them any order. This meant for the future that the reunification of Germany was possible and finally allowed by Gorbachev. And this was the end of the Peaceful Revolution. The dream of a better state was given up. We have become a part of Western Germany, indeed a better state, but not such a good one as many of us had in mind and as good as it would have been with our experience of our kind of socialism and of dictatorship.
4 years later the peaceful change took place in South Africa. I think there were some connections that are valuable to discuss. But now this peaceful time is over.