August 1989
Beginning of August: According to the draft of a paper presented by the Central Committee Security Issues Department ("Information and Conclusions on Some Current Issues Regarding Hostile Influences on Citizens of the GDR"), GDR security organs have counted 160 "hostile, oppositional groups," including 150 so-called grass-roots church groups, with altogether 2,500 members. The paper says that "around 25 non-permitted printed and duplicated publications with anti-socialist content were produced and distributed, almost always using church-owned or private equipment." One of the main strategies used by oppositional elements, it says, is to allege that the GDR "permanently lags behind, particularly with regard to implementing human rights. This includes continually calling into question the validity of local elections." The existence of 51 skinhead groups (to which around 1,000 young people belong), ten punk groups, 32 heavy metal groups and nine gothic groups is seen as a "non-socialist tendency".
August 5: The GDR government makes its first official statement on the embassy refugees on GDR television, confirming that the exodus constitutes a problem.
August 7: The SED leadership rescinds the so-called "lawyer’s promise". The lawyer Wolfgang Vogel tells the West German Ministry for Inner-German Relations that he can offer those seeking refuge in West German missions impunity when leaving and returning to the GDR, but cannot, as previously, promise them a quick, affirmative decision on their applications to leave the country. – In an official statement by the GDR Foreign Ministry, the West German government is harshly accused of a "gross intervention in sovereign affairs of the GDR" for taking GDR citizens into its care; the statement calls this "typical pan-German arrogance" and says that it could "lead to far-reaching consequences".
August 8: The West German Permanent Mission in East Berlin, which is being occupied by around 130 GDR citizens, is shut. This is followed on August 14 and 22 by the closures of the embassies in Budapest and Prague, in which, respectively, 171 and 140 would-be emigrants are staying. At nearly every meeting with SED leaders, West German politicians have emphasised that they do not desire a flood of refugees from the GDR. West German politicians from government and opposition now publicly warn GDR citizens not to flee their country. In West Germany, a public debate begins on whether the country can or wants to take in refugees and how many it can absorb. – Chancellery Minister Rudolf Seiters announces that 46,343 people have legally moved from the GDR to West Germany up to the end of July. He appeals to GDR citizens wanting to leave East Germany not to do so via West German diplomatic missions.
Every day, up to 100 GDR citizens are managing to flee from Hungary to Austria. However, hundreds are still being arrested as well. Several thousand GDR holidaymakers camp out on roadsides and front gardens in Budapest in 35-degree heat and wait for their chance to flee.
August 14: At the handing-over of the first functional models of 32-bit microprocessors by the Erfurt collective combine Mikroelektronik, Erich Honecker says: "Neither ox nor mule can stay socialism’s rule." ("Den Sozialismus in seinem Lauf halt weder Ochs noch Esel auf.")
August 19: The Hungarian Democratic Forum and other Hungarian opposition groups, under the patronage of the MEP Otto von Habsburg and the Hungarian reformist politician Imre Pozsgay, member of the HSWP Politburo and state minister, have organised a "Pan-European Picnic" at the Hungarian-Austrian border near Sopron to demonstrate for the abolition of borders and a united Europe by symbolically opening a border gate and allowing a "one-off, occasional border crossing". Over 600 GDR citizens rush through the half-open gate to Austria. The gate is shut again after a few hours.
As later becomes known, this chance to cross the border without danger has been made possible by a standstill agreement between the state minister Pozsgay, the interior minister and the head of the border troops – and is a test to see how the Soviet Union reacts to such actions.
August 21: Several hundred people are arrested during demonstrations in Prague on the 21st anniversary of the "Prague Spring".
August 22: A GDR citizen is shot dead by a Hungarian border guard while trying to escape to Austria.
August 23: Hundreds of thousands of people in the Baltic republics of the Soviet Union commemorate their lost independence.
August 24: With the assistance of the International Red Cross, over one hundred would-be East German emigrants from the Budapest embassy are flown to West Germany via Austria. In Poland, the co-founder of the Solidarity movement, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, is elected as the first non-communist prime minister.
August 25: In Bonn, the Hungarian prime minister, Miklos Németh, and Foreign Minister Gyula Horn meet secretly at Gymnich Castle with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher. Németh says that he opened the talks with Kohl and Genscher with the words: "Chancellor, Hungary has decided to allow GDR citizens to leave freely. The decision was taken mostly on humanitarian grounds."
According to Horst Teltschik, Kohl promises his guests to compensate any disadvantages that Hungary might experience as the result of reprisals on the part of the GDR. The German government later gives Hungary an additional loan of 500 million marks and promises to abolish mandatory visas and to provide political aid to Hungary in its bid to join the European Community.
August 26: An initiative group including Martin Gutzeit, Markus Meckel, Arndt Noack and Ibrahim Böhme calls for the formation of a social democratic party in the GDR.
August 29: At a SED Politburo meeting, perplexity prevails on the question of how to proceed in the refugee crisis. Günter Mittag, who is standing in for a sick Erich Honecker, says: "Sometimes I’d like to smash the television, but that’s no use. (…) The business with Hungary wasn’t prepared by chance. It is an attack on the weakest point aimed at bringing the GDR into disrepute as well.
Comrade Mielke could talk for an hour or more about what means were used. Then there is the front-line reporting of the enemy, as we have very correctly called it. We have to show the main weaknesses of imperialism. We have to show where it aims to undermine socialism. But the basic guideline is: we do this calmly and don’t come to blows. We have to think about how to continue our line of argumentation."
August 31: The Hungarian foreign minister, Gyula Horn, arrives in East Berlin to talk with GDR Foreign Minister Oskar Fischer and Günter Mittag. Horn announces that Hungary is going to allow the refugees to leave the country as of September 11, if they have not by then been persuaded to return to the GDR by assurances that they will be allowed to depart. Mittag and Fischer reject both options.
In August, 20,995 GDR citizens manage to flee to the West; 12,812 people are given permission to leave the GDR.
