September 30th 1989: The Garden of Freedom: Hans-Dietrich Genscher opened the gates to the West for thousands of refugees from East Germany
35 years ago tomorrow, one of the most significant events of the end of the Cold War took place in the garden of the West German Embassy in Prague. The German Foreign Minister at the time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, stepped onto the balcony of the Lobkowicz Palace and announced to around four thousand East German refugees that they were allowed to travel west to the Federal Republic of Germany.
The news caused a huge wave of joy and relief among the refugees who had been waiting in the embassy garden for weeks in the hope of freedom.
"Wir sind zu Ihnen gekommen, um Ihnen mitzuteilen, dass heute Ihre Ausreise..."
(‘We have come to you to inform you that today your depature…’)
Genscher's words were interrupted by a thunderous cheer from the crowd. It is probably one of the most famous never-completed sentences in German and Czech history. Hans-Dietrich Genscher later recalled his speech as "one of the most moving moments of his life".
After the speech, there was a mass exodus of East Germans
Only a few hours later, the refugees were boarding buses that took them to the railway station in Prague’s Libeň district. From there, East German railway trains would take them on to West Germany.
Word about the "freedom trains" got around at lightning speed, and three days later the Lobkowicz Palace faced a wave of approximately 5,000 more East Germans, with another 2,000 remaining outside in front of the building. The streets of Malá Strana were lined with abandoned Wartburg and Trabant cars, their owners having been taken to the West by further trains that left Prague during the night of October 4th and 5th.
The breaking point
This moment became a symbol of the collapse of the Iron Curtain, and heralded the fall of the Berlin Wall. In memory of the many thousands of East Germans who sought and found a way to freedom through the embassy in Prague in the summer and autumn of 1989, a sculpture by the artist David Černý, in the form of a Trabant on four legs, stands today in the garden of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany.
