The picnic that changed Europe

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Participants in a very eventful picnic gather for its 20th anniversary at the Austro-Hungarian border.

By Colin Woodard — Special to GlobalPost

Published: August 19, 2009 05:32 ET
Updated: August 20, 2009 08:04 ET

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Nearly 700 East Germans escaped that day, encouraging tens of thousands more to flee their country in an exodus that would ultimately prompt the East German authorities to open the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, ending the Cold War division of Europe and, ultimately, the Soviet empire itself.

The official delegates showed up shortly thereafter, including Walburga Habsburg Douglas, archduchess of Austria and daughter of the heir to the Habsburg throne, Otto von Habsburg, who had supported the picnic. “All around me there were abandoned German Trabant cars and German-speaking people running for the border,” recalled Douglas, now a Swedish parliamentarian. “The expressions on their faces were just incredible as they got across and the border guards were just smiling.”

The mayor of the nearest Austrian village, St. Margarethen, organized food and shelter for the escapees who were later transported to West Germany, where they were entitled to citizenship. In the days afterward, the organizers of the picnic — and Hungary’s reformist Prime Minister, Miklos Nemeth — held their breath, waiting to see the reaction from Moscow, which had 60,000 troops in Hungary. “At that moment nobody knew what would happen,” said university professor Laszlo Magas, one of the chief organizers of the event.

But Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said nothing, emboldening Nemeth. On Sept. 10, 1989, his government announced that all East Germans on its territory would be allowed to travel freely to Austria. Some 60,000 fled East Germany via Hungary, prompting East Berlin to open the Berlin Wall in an effort to placate its citizens and reduce the hemorrhaging of skilled workers.

Today there are no border controls at all between Hungary, Austria and 23 other members of the Schengen Area, Europe’s customs union. Crossing the former Iron Curtain is as easy as traveling between U.S. states.

Bella, the border guard, went unpunished and after the collapse of communism was awarded a medal for his actions at Sopronkohida. “My colleagues always joke that I’m the only Border Guard officer ever given high honors for not following his orders,” he said.

This fall, GlobalPost will be covering remembrances of the events of 1989 and Eastern Europe, as well as developments in the two decades since the fall of Communism there. Check our Europe page for more soon.

Comments:

3 Comments.

Posted by david wayne osedach on August 19, 2009 09:41 ET

It seems so much longer than 20 years. This remarkable reunion had to happen.

Posted by ejlyman on August 21, 2009 03:29 ET

What a great story, especially with the first-person comments from the border guard! I'm looking forward to more stories from 1989. What a history-changing period that was ... we could never guess what the fallout of events like this picnic would eventually be.

Posted by mikearama on August 21, 2009 08:39 ET

It is funny how real grass roots actions like this, take by real and brave people acting in extraordinary ways, get claimed by politicians and bureaucrats. I doubt that the border guards were thinking about Ronald Reagan the day they started the process that brought down the Berlin Wall.

-Mike