Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World after 1989. Kristina Spohr
above any obligations to fellow communist states. Rather than being illegal defectors, East German escapees could now hope to obtain the status of ‘political refugee’ in international law and thereby give legitimacy to their flight.[123]
The situation on the ground, however, was still somewhat opaque. The Hungarian bureaucracy had so far not decided on the status of GDR citizens: they argued that those desiring to leave (ausreisewillige DDR-Bürger) were not in the same category as those deemed to be politically persecuted (politisch Verfolgte) under the UN convention. But even if Hungarian border officials were still hindering escape attempts by East Germans, sometimes with firearms as happened on 21 August, the number of those being returned to the GDR security forces or even just notified by name to East Berlin as attempted escapees was dwindling. Clearly close cooperation between the Stasi and the Hungarian security forces (and also those in Poland) was a thing of the past; this was another sign that the bloc was beginning to crumble.[124]
By late August an estimated 150,000–200,000 East Germans were vacationing in Hungary, mostly near Lake Balaton. Campsites were full and roads were jammed. Many GDR visitors had overstayed their originally planned and officially approved two- or three-week holidays. Some were simply hanging around in the hope of dramatic new political developments; others were watching for the right moment to slip through the increasing number of open stretches of border fences through quiet fields or secluded woodland. Hundreds more tried a different route to freedom, squatting in the grounds of the West German embassy in Budapest where they hoped to claim their automatic right to citizenship in the Federal Republic. Whatever their route, the East Germans were becoming a serious refugee problem for Hungary.[125]
The 19th of August would prove a pivotal moment. The MEP Otto von Habsburg – eldest son of the last Austro-Hungarian emperor – together with human-rights activists and the opposition Hungarian Democratic Forum, had planned a party to say ‘farewell to the Iron Curtain’. What became known as the ‘Pan-European Picnic’ was intended as a jolly gathering of Austrians and Hungarians to celebrate freedom on a sunny summer afternoon in meadows near a border crossing on the road from Sopron (Hungary) to Sankt Margarethen im Burgenland (Austria). This was where, several weeks earlier, foreign ministers Horn and Mock had cut open the barbed-wire fence between East and West.[126]
But these modest, local festivities turned into something much more political when, at the last minute, Imre Pozsgay got in on the act as the party’s co-sponsor. He arranged with his old friend István Horváth, the reformist interior minister, as well as Prime Minister Németh, that as a symbolic gesture the border gate would be open for three hours that afternoon. Border guards were instructed to carry no weapons and not to take any action. While the picnic posed no particular legal issues for Hungarian and Austrian citizens, who had permission to travel between their countries, the situation was different for East Germans. Leaflets publicising the event were printed in German and distributed beforehand; these included maps guiding people to the picnic spot and to where they could ‘clip off part of the Iron Curtain’. As a result the little border town of Sopron filled up with some 9,000 people camping or staying in B&Bs, and the West German Foreign Ministry had even dispatched extra consular staff there to ‘assist fellow Germans’. All this added to the pressure on the Hungarian border guards who were now, in effect, being observed by Western diplomats.[127]
Nevertheless most of the East Germans who toyed with escaping were really scared. They did not know about the orders given to the Hungarian soldiers. But then the picnic began. A brass band played, the beer flowed and folk dancers in traditional Hungarian and Burgenlandish attire mingled with the crowd. Some 660 East Germans who attended the picnic took heart that day. As soon as the wooden gate was opened, there was a stampede. They rushed through and, unhindered by the border guards, they entered Austria – surprised and elated. It was the largest mass escape of East Germans since the Berlin Wall went up in 1961. Another 320 managed to cross to freedom elsewhere that weekend.[128]
Such numbers were not in themselves spectacular. Thousands more East Germans stayed behind, hesitating. Over the next few days the Hungarian government increased the number of guards patrolling its western border, which resulted in far fewer refugees reaching the West. Nevertheless, every day more East Germans poured into Hungary. Behind the scenes the FRG government kept pressing the Hungarian authorities to clarify the UN refugee status of the East Germans. But Bonn’s aim was not to turn the flow into a flood – far from it: the FRG was desperate to avoid disorder and instability. Frantic efforts were made to prevent the media getting their hands on an escapee crossing the border or an embassy-occupier (Festsetzer) lest such publicity would fan East German hopes of an easy exit at a time when the FRG had agreed nothing formally with either Hungary or the GDR. And the historic shadow of the Red Army also still loomed in the background. What if the situation suddenly got out of hand? What if a crowd of refugees rioted or some soldiers or secret police panicked and started shooting? Would the Soviets suddenly get drawn in? It was in this edgy atmosphere that the transnational migration crisis gathered momentum. Alarmingly, there was still no international solution.[129]
In the end, however, what forced matters to a head was not the toing and froing on Hungary’s borders but the humanitarian crisis in Budapest. The Németh government realised that it could no longer sit on its hands and watch events unfold: before its eyes the crowd of GDR refugees outside the German embassy was growing every day. Some 800 were now camped out near the building. There were also 181 in the embassy grounds and the mission itself had been forced to close to the public on 13 August. Several emergency reception camps were then created in the vicinity by the Red Cross, the Order of Malta and other aid agencies: in the Budapest suburbs of Zugliget (capacity 600 people) and Csillebérc (2,200 people) and later around Lake Balaton for another 2,000 or so. In all the camps food and water were desperately short. There were not enough toilets and showers, let alone sleeping bags, pillows, clothing and toiletries.[130]
In the intense glare of the world media, Bonn was desperate to alleviate the distress of the East Germans and contain the international crisis. But the two German governments were deadlocked about how to deal with these people. The Honecker regime was obsessed with holding on to communist orthodoxy and not letting the GDR drift into ‘the bourgeois camp’. It took no fewer than six conversations between 11 and 31 August 1989 before East Berlin grudgingly promised Bonn that it would not ‘persecute’ embassy-occupiers and would process applications for exit – but without any commitment to give a positive response for immediate permanent emigration. Meanwhile in East Berlin the pressure for such permits was mounting almost exponentially day by day, because of the GDR’s bureaucracy’s restrictive practices and its citizenry’s alienation in the light of Poland and Hungary’s liberalisation.[131]
To resolve the crisis, the West German leadership took the initiative to deal with matters at the highest level, both with East Berlin and Budapest.[132] Normally East German leavers or escapees – being a German–German matter rather than an issue of ‘foreign’ relations – came under the aegis of the Chancellery. But most refugees were in third countries, moreover in or around FRG embassies, so the Foreign Ministry had to be involved. It was run by the forceful Hans-Dietrich Genscher – a man with his own agenda. Born in 1927 in Halle – a town that became East German after 1945 – Genscher felt he had a personal interest, almost a mission, to sort out this issue, going far beyond the call of duty. What’s more, Kohl headed a coalition government, formed by his own Christian Democrats and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), whose party leader was Genscher. This made the foreign minister also the political ‘kingmaker’ on whom the chancellor depended for his working majority in the Bundestag. So Kohl had to tolerate a certain amount of independence by Genscher in the handling of this deeply national and highly emotional problem, and their relationship was certainly not devoid of rivalry. The result