Exhibition theme: Protest and Flight: Welcoming trainloads of refugees at Hof station [37/56]
OBJECT INFORMATION
Info
October 4 1989
Hof (Saale), central station
Created By:
Gerhard PuchtaLicense: Not Creative Commons
Banner: "We came from Hungary, and you from Prague, the zone will soon be a thing of the past". Trainloads of refugees from the West German Embassy in Prague arriving at Hof station in Bavaria
Depicts
banderole,
group of people,
joy,
refugee,
train,
train stationwave of refugeesPlaces
Hof (Saale)Text in image
Hof Hbf
Wir kamen aus / Ungarn, ihr aus / Prag, die Zone ist bald / ein leerer Sarg
Other items in this set
Ultimately, it was the citizens of the GDR themselves who brought down the SED regime. From the summer of 1989 on, thousands of East Germans tried to flee to the West across the Hungarian-Austrian border and via the West German embassies in Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw. In East Germany itself, ever greater numbers of people supported the demands of the citizens' movements for free elections, freedom of the press, and freedom to travel, despite their fear of state repression. In October, mass protests, which now involved hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, spread across the entire country. Aware that their protest could no longer be stopped, people increasingly felt a desire to capture events on film.
