Back النزهة في عموم أوروبا Arabic Panavropa pikniki Azerbaijani Еўрапейскі пікнік Byelorussian Эўрапейскі пікнік BE-X-OLD Паневропейски пикник Bulgarian Pícnic paneuropeu Catalan Panevropský piknik Czech Den paneuropæiske picnic Danish Paneuropäisches Picknick German Tuteŭropa pikniko Esperanto

Pan-European Picnic

Tree-lined road with gates and a guardhouse
The border crossing where the Pan-European picnic took place.
Otto von Habsburg, who was a key figure in the event.

The Pan-European Picnic (German: Paneuropäisches Picknick; Hungarian: Páneurópai piknik; Slovak: Paneurópsky piknik; Czech: Panevropský piknik) was a peace demonstration held on the Austrian-Hungarian border near Sopron, Hungary on 19 August 1989. The opening of the border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic was an event in the chain reaction, at the end of which Germany reunified, the Iron Curtain fell apart, and the Eastern Bloc disintegrated. The communist governments and the Warsaw Pact subsequently dissolved, ending the Cold War.[1][2][3][4][5]

The idea of opening the border at a ceremony and testing the Soviet Union's response came from Ferenc Mészáros of the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) and Otto von Habsburg, then the President of the Paneuropean Union. The idea was brought up by them to Miklós Németh, then the Hungarian Prime Minister, who also promoted the idea.[6][7][8]

The Pan-European Picnic itself developed further from a meeting between Otto von Habsburg and Ferenc Mészáros in June 1989. The local organisation in Sopron took over the Hungarian Democratic Forum, and the other contacts were made via Habsburg and the Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay.[9][10][11] The Austrian Paneuropean Union and the MDF took care of advertising the event with leaflets that were distributed in Hungary. The patrons of the picnic, Habsburg and Pozsgay, who were not present at the event, saw the planned event as an opportunity to test Mikhail Gorbachev's reaction to an opening of the border on the Iron Curtain.[12][13][14]

The official emblem of the picnic was a pigeon breaking through the barbed wire.[15] At the picnic several hundred East German citizens overran the old wooden gate, reaching Austria unhindered by the border guards around Árpád Bella. It was the largest mass exodus since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. The Hungarian borders were opened on 11 September, and the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November. The Warsaw Pact disintegrated in 1991.[16][17][18][19]

  1. ^ Roser, Thomas (16 August 2014). "DDR-Massenflucht: Ein Picknick hebt die Welt aus den Angeln" [GDR mass exodus: A picnic unhinges the world]. Die Presse (in German). Retrieved 21 March 2023.
  2. ^ Martin Nejezchleba "Als in Ungarn die Berliner Mauer fiel" In: Berliner Morgenpost, 19 September 2019.
  3. ^ Appenzeller, Gerd (9 November 2019). ""Wir sind so verblieben, dass er uns rechtzeitig Bescheid geben würde"". Der Tagesspiegel Online – via Tagesspiegel.
  4. ^ Oliver Moody "The picnic that opened the Iron Curtain" In: The Times, 17 August 2019.
  5. ^ "20 Jahre nach dem Mauerfall: "Der 19. August 1989 war ein Test Gorbatschows"". Faz.net – via www.faz.net.
  6. ^ Miklós Németh in Interview, Austrian TV - ORF "Report", 25 June 2019.
  7. ^ György Gyarmati, Krisztina Slachta: Das Vorspiel für die Grenzöffnung. Budapest 2014, pp 89.
  8. ^ "Páneurópai Piknik 25 évvel ezelőtt". 19 August 2014.
  9. ^ Hilde Szabo: Die Berliner Mauer begann im Burgenland zu bröckeln (The Berlin Wall began to crumble in Burgenland - German), in Wiener Zeitung 16 August 1999.
  10. ^ Otmar Lahodynsky: Paneuropäisches Picknick: Die Generalprobe für den Mauerfall (Pan-European picnic: the dress rehearsal for the fall of the Berlin Wall - German), in: Profil 9 August 2014.
  11. ^ "Sommer 1989: Weil Gorbatschow es doch ernst meinte". Frankfurter Rundschau. 28 July 2019.
  12. ^ Thomas Roser: DDR-Massenflucht: Ein Picknick hebt die Welt aus den Angeln (German - "Mass exodus of the GDR: A picnic clears the world") in: Die Presse 16 August 2018.
  13. ^ "Der 19. August 1989 war ein Test für Gorbatschows" (German - 19 August 1989 was a test for Gorbachev), in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 19 August 2009.
  14. ^ Anat Kalman "Eine europäische Zukunft im Geiste Otto von Habsburg" In: Budapester Zeitung, 3 November 2019.
  15. ^ "Paneuropäisches Picknick 1989: Sturm des Eisernen Vorhangs". Der Spiegel. 19 August 2019 – via www.spiegel.de.
  16. ^ The picnic that changed European History, DE: DW Akademie, 19 August 2014, retrieved 23 May 2015.
  17. ^ "A World-changing European picnic", The Vienna Review, 1 September 2009, archived from the original on 5 July 2018, retrieved 23 May 2015.
  18. ^ ""Paneuropäisches Picknick"". Bundesregierung. 29 July 2022.
  19. ^ Karl Grammer "Tor zur Freiheit stand plötzlich weit offen" In: Kronen Zeitung, 19.8.2019.

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