Hungarian border opening of 1989

Seven o’clock, 10 September 1989

Hungarian foreign minister Gyula Horn announced on state television at about 7 p.m. on 10 September 1989 that Hungary would allow East German citizens in the country to leave for willing third countries.

The mechanism was not thousands of individual exit visas. Hungary temporarily suspended the provisions of its 1969 visa-free-travel agreement with East Germany that had legally blocked such departures. Camp administrators in Budapest and at Zánka on Lake Balaton had told prospective emigrants that morning that departures would begin during the coming night.

Midnight, and the Trabants

The announced opening took effect at 00:00 on 11 September. East Germans crossed into Austria and continued toward West Germany, with Hungarian guards checking papers at the crossings.

More than 10,000 were reported to have crossed in the first 24 hours, and more than 12,000 used the route within three days.

What the listing gets wrong

The corpus entry files this under Austria-Hungary, a state that ceased to exist in 1918. The event involved the modern Republic of Austria and the Hungarian People’s Republic.

East Germany also had no Austrian border of its own: the escape route ran from East Germany through Czechoslovakia into Hungary, and only then across Hungary’s frontier with Austria.

Nor was this the first breach of the physical Iron Curtain. Hungary began removing its electronic fence in May, officials symbolically cut wire in June, and more than 700 East Germans crossed during the Pan-European Picnic on 19 August.