Bpi and You

• Questions and Answers
• Learning
• Looking for a Job
• Listening
• Watching
• Reading the Press
• The Bpi Magazine
• Selected Topic: Berlin Wall
  • 1945-1961: from WWII to the Wall
  • 1961-1989: the years of the Wall
  • 1989: the Wall falls
  • 20 years afterwards
  • To know more

Opposition in the GDR

The Wall did not collapse in a day. Its opening was the outcome of a struggle by numerous intellectuals and students who spoke out publicly, organised demonstrations, and succeeded in rallying a majority of the population to their cause. Until the fall of the Wall, the regime severely repressed all forms of opposition.

Demonstration of 4 November 1989 in Berlin (photo: Bernd Settnik, Bundesarchiv)

On 16 November 1976, Wolf Biermann, the famous singer-poet, was stripped of his East German citizenship during a tour in West Germany. Around 150 GDR authors and artists, including Heiner Müller and Christa Wolf, signed a letter of protest. The reaction of the SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany), the party in power, was brutal. Robert Havemann, whose name has been given to a historical research centre on the fight for freedom of expression, a great East German intellectual and anti-fascist hero, was placed under house arrest. Others were imprisoned. Many opposition figures were threatened and pressured to leave the country. At the University of Jena, where the philosophers Hegel and Fichte had taught, students who had protested were detained and interrogated by the Stasi (political police).

Christoph Hein (photo: Hubert Link, Bundesarchiv)

In 1987, the novelist Christoph Hein, author of La Fin de Horn, a book banned by the GDR authorities which recounts the depression and subsequent suicide of a GDR citizen, publicly called for an end to censorship. A number of arrests were made at the Zionskirche in Berlin, a place where the opposition used to meet.

In 1989, the protests intensified, especially in Leipzig, where from 4 September "Monday demonstrations"  (Montagsdemonstrationen) were organised. On the site of Arte Television, you can follow in an animated movie entitled "Le Miracle de Leipzig" (with videos, sound, images) the course of the demonstration of 9 October. These demonstrations were a turning-point in the collapse of the communist system. Their success led to the resignation of Eric Honecker. The fall of the Wall would follow soon afterwards.