Gauck remembers 'decisive' Leipzig march
October 9, 2014
President Gauck told invited guests at Leipzig's Gewandhaus concert hall on Thursday that the march of an estimated 70,000 people in the then East German city on October 9, 1989 was "decisive" in the popular push for freedom and democracy.
"The images of the peaceful march around Leipzig's city center ring road became an inspiration which encouraged more and more people in more and more towns and cities throughout the GDR every day to come out and protest in public," he said.
Gauck, who was a pro-democracy pastor in the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR), recalled that just weeks after Beijing had used deadly force to put down the Tiananmen Square protests, demonstrators in Leipzig took to the streets despite their fears of a "Chinese solution," which he said was a real possibility in the GDR.
"But they came all the same: Tens of thousands of people overcame their fear of the oppressors because their longing for freedom was stronger than their fear," Gauck said.
'Totalitarian state'
He also described the GDR as a "totalitarian state without an independent judiciary" in which individuals were "subject to arbitrary actions by the state."
Among those in the audience were the presidents of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as well as former German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Prayers, candlelight procession
Thursday's celebrations were to continue later in the day with the leaders gathering for prayers for peace at Leipzig's Saint Nicholas Church, where prayer meetings 25 years ago helped spark the protest movement.
The festivities are to culminate with a candlelight procession through Leipzig, a reenactment of the march of thousands 25 years ago to the day, in which demonstrators chanted the slogan "we are the people."
One month later, on November 9, 1989, the GDR authorities opened the border to West Germany for the first time since 1961. Just under a year later, on October 3, 1990, East Germany ceased to exist, joining West Germany to form a united country.
pfd/kms (dpa, AFP)