The West German amateur pilot Matthias Rust is pardoned by the Supreme Soviet and deported from the Soviet Union. In 1987, Rust landed on the Red Square in Moscow in a Cessna and was sentenced to four years in a labour camp.
12 August
1988
An officer from the GDR border troops flees to West Germany. In an interview with RIAS, he confirms that an order to shoot and kill would-be escapees exists for the GDR border troops; the order had been suspended during Honecker’s visit to West Germany in 1987.
RIAS interview with an officer from the GDR border troops who has fled East Germany, 12 August 1988 (in German) (Source: Archiv Deutschlandradio, Broadcast: Mittagsreport, Moderatorin/Reporter: Annette Riedel, Jochen Spengler)
15 August
1988
Diplomatic relations are commenced between the EG Commission and the GDR.
21 August
1988
Four GDR citizens escape through the Spree River near the Berlin Reichstag, watched by numerous West Berliners. The crew of the patrol boat that pursues them do not make use of their firearms; all the escapees reach the Western part of the city uninjured.
26 August
1988
The head of the State Planning Commission, Gerhard Schürer, writes in an internal document ("The Economic Situation of the GDR") that "under these concrete conditions, particularly the high burdens of foreign trade, the GDR consumes more than it produces in the long term and faces the necessity of introducing comprehensive measures to reverse this development."more
28 August
1988
Dramatic accident in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate: at an air show at a US airbase in Rammstein, three planes from an Italian aerobatics squadron crash into the crowd of spectators.more
