During a visit to China, SED Politburo member Günter Schabowski signs a partnership treaty between Beijing and East Berlin.
5 May
1988
Chancellery minister Wolfgang Schäuble and SED foreign-currency procurer Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski hold talks on the review of the lump-sum transit fee and regulations regarding the Elbe border.
It becomes clear that the SED expects a marked rise in travel, visitor and transit traffic in the coming years. Schäuble presses for the GDR to use "legal regulations" to guarantee "that travel and visits by citizens to non-socialist countries continue to follow this positive trend".
What is important, he says, is "that every GDR citizen knows under which conditions he can apply for a passport and travel visa for non-socialist countries and go on trips to these countries." The West German government, he goes on to say, has no interest in "GDR citizens, except in the case of urgent family matters and other special cases, migrating to West Germany and to Berlin (West)."
Memo by Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski on a conversation with Wolfgang Schäuble, 5 May 1988 (in German)less
10 May
1988
In the SED Politburo, a controversy breaks out over future economic policy. While Honecker continues to extol the GDR as a bastion of economic stability to the outside world, the chairman of the State Planning Commission, Gerhard Schürer, is so concerned by the high Western debt of the GDR and its imminent insolvency that he proposes a drastic change of course in economic policy.more
The Soviet Union starts withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.
22 May
1988
In Hungary, Prime Minister Károly Grósz, an advocate of political and economic reform, is chosen to succeed János Kádár as the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party.more
26 May
1988
Joint statement by the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the GDR (BEK) and the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) for the 50th anniversary of the 1938 November pogroms.
29 May - 2 June
1988
Summit between US President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet party and state leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow.more
