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Exhibition theme: Protest and Flight: A nationwide human chain for democratic renewal in the GDR [6/56]

OBJECT INFORMATION

Info

December 3 1989
Gotha, Gartenstraße
Created By: Ernst Prause, Quelle: Museum für Regionalgeschichte und Volkskunde Gotha

License: Not Creative Commons

A human chain in Gotha alongside the F 7 autobahn, part of a human chain across the entire GDR that hundreds of thousands of citizens participated in on 3 December 1989, the HO (Trading Organisation) supermarket in the background

Depicts

group of people, Handelsorganisation, human chain, logo, supermarket, track

Places

Gotha

Text in image

HO Kaufhalle

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.