Berlin - Even as its residents escaped in streams through tears in the Iron Curtain and signs of weakness began to show throughout the system, East Germany prepared for celebrations marking its 40th anniversary on October 7, 1989. In response, thousands who did not want to emigrate, who were willing to stay put and try changing the system from within, took to the streets in protest in Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden.
The government's response created one of the many dichotomies of the autumn of 1989. While, on the one hand, the government prepared a spectacle to show off the wonders of East Germany, it simultaneously embarked on a crackdown of the protesters.
Armed units and plainclothes secret police operatives were sent out to violently put down the protests. There were scores of injuries and arrests among the protesters, but weeks of protesting made them less easy to intimidate than in recent years.
That only showed all the more when East Germans gave a rousing welcome to Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev as he arrived for the festivities. The welcome could hardly have pleased ailing East German leader Erich Honecker.
Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet Union had set the stage for the loosening of restrictions across Eastern Europe. But Communist leaders in East Germany would have none of it, banning comparatively liberal Soviet newspapers, magazines and films. There were to be no reforms in East Germany.
Indeed, the night before the parade, the state youth organization FDJ held a commemorative march, complete with blazing torches, through East Berlin. The military parade the next day was only to highlight East German power.
Nonetheless, people lined the streets chanting "Gorbi ... Gorbi" when the Soviet leader drove to the Palace of the Republic, the seat of the East German government in East Berlin, as Honecker waited to receive him and other Eastern European leaders.
Tension was palpable between the two leaders. Already, in 1986 at the 11th Party Congress of the SED (East German Communist Party), Gorbachev had warned that the Socialist world was living through "a momentous period, one that can rightly be designated as a time of change."
This time, Gorbachev was even more specific. East Germany, he said, "must be willing to cooperate with all the powers of society" and would run risks if it failed to accept political liberalization.
Honecker, predictably, reacted sourly, saying: "We will solve our problems ourselves, with Socialist means." It reflected earlier comments in which he had said he could see the 100-mile barbed wire barrier around West Berlin lasting "for another 100 years."
Gorbachev was dismayed. Taking a stroll on Unter den Linden, a major Berlin boulevard, the Soviet leader was soon surrounded by excited East Berliners who asked him what he thought was likely to happen in East Germany.
He answered them with his now famous statement, about "those coming too late being punished by history!"
Soon, demonstrations were spreading throughout East Berlin, Dresden and Leipzig, with participants pleading for reforms, travel freedoms, more consumer goods, Socialism with a human face, democratization, and even "national unification" with West Germany.
Unlike earlier demonstrations, these metamorphosed into peaceful candle-lit processions through city streets, often with thousands of discontented East Germans joining in. At times, police used massive force to break up what they termed "unauthorized" gatherings. But that only seemed to encourage the demonstrators.
Horst Sindermann, a GDR Central Committee member, would observe later that: "We had planned everything and were prepared for everything, but not for candles and prayers." Sindermann died in 1990.
Protestors in Leipzig, aware of what had happened when the Chinese Army in Beijing crushed pro-democracy student "demos" on Tiananmen Square that June, had feared a similar style crackdown.
"We really thought they would opt for the Chinese solution," said Christian Fuehrer, a pastor at Leipzig's St Nicholas Church, in his later years. Instead, the hard-pressed East German Politburo members sprang a surprise by suddenly announcing a willingness to discuss limited reforms with its citizens.
The shift indicated a crack in one of the Eastern bloc's most ossified regimes, and spurred speculation that the ruling party was in disarray.
Just 11 days after the State's much hyped 40th anniversary celebrations on October 7, Honecker was forced to resign as Communist Party leader and head of state. The East German state was on the very brink of collapse.
