Pan European picnic: milestone in reunifaction of Germany

(Vatican Radio ) As we mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall  we take a look at an historical event of significance that paved the way to this memorable event. It's the so called Pan European picnic which took place in August 1989. In this programme  we shed light on this rush to freedom as the border guards looked on. We also interview one of its key players, Walburga Habsburg Douglas, currently a Member of Sweden's Parliament .

Listen to an interview with Walburga Hapsburg Douglas in a programme presented and produced by Veronica Scarisbrick: 

Twenty five years ago a barbed wire fence known as an iron curtain still divided Europe separating East from West. One patrolled by border guards both on the ground and high up in threatening looking watch towers. But in May 1989 something changed when the Hungarian government passed a decree approving the demolition of that iron curtain, anyway along its borders.

And as these winds of change gathered over Hungary, word of these winds reached East Germany where the people, thousands of them, embraced the news trickling through the border to Hungary, eager to leave behind them that stricter Soviet regime in place in their home country.

They came with their families, filled camping sites, relied on their status as refugees on parishes or other charitable organisations and  more famously occupied  West Germany's Embassy and Consulate in the nation's capital Budapest. This massive presence of East Germans across Hungary created an issue for the Hungarian government, one for which a solution had to be found. And in August of  that same year a solution was found in a seemingly curious event organised at Sopron close to the Austrian border, a picnic gone down in history as the Pan European picnic.

In an effort to find out more about this special picnic which was to change the course of history Veronica Scarisbrick turns to Walburga Hapsburg Douglas one of the key players in its organisation. She explains how the original idea of this picnic stemmed from the conviction that Hungary should be part of  Europe once again. Organised by the Pan European Union and the Hungarian opposition Hungarian Democratic Forum, under the protection of her father Otto von Habsburg and Imre Pozsgay, it was to prove an instrumental move. 

Veronica Scarisbrick asks Walburga Hapsburg Douglas to describe this picnic for us: "The idea was that it should be a picnic, that the border gates should be opened for a couple of hours, the two mayors of the two adjacent cities in Austria and Hungary would  shake hands and sign a paper of eternal friendship, and ..it would be possible to cross the border...we knew that something great had happened  when we saw the faces of the people who fled into liberty and who obviously did not have the required papers to leave the East, their incredible joy to  leave communism behind them and rush into freedom..."