Net for God is going to tell us about a very unusual revolution:
the revolution that occurred in Germany in 1989.
Having been divided up into two separate entities at the end of the Second World War,
it was reunified without a shot being fired.
Nowhere else were the divisions and differences between political systems more visible
and more manifest.
Many people had died while trying to cross the border,
and yet relations between the East and the West were never completely discontinued.
Courageous people, including many Christians,
rebelled against the socialist (that is to say, communist) dictatorship until its ultimate collapse.
Wolfgang Thierse, who is a Catholic, was born in Breslau a city now situated in Poland.
Having grown up under the East German dictatorship,
he became a member of the first free political party in the GDR in 1989.
He was elected President of the Unified German parliament in 1998,
and he now gives us his account of his experience as a human being and a politician.
As a young man, I already had a feeling of being closed in,
trapped in this country without freedom and without any way of getting out.
At the time, we had to write a piece to address the question,
‘Would you be prepared to shoot a German?’
for our homework.
The teacher told us to express ourselves freely, stressing that,
‘Those who are not prepared to defend the GDR by shouldering arms
do not deserve to finish their course at this school and go on to higher education.
’ The essay was thus to be written under a political threat.
This was during that terrible school year 1961/1962, my last year at school.
My brother and my mother!
My sister!
Grandmother!
My mother!
My wife!
My fiancée!
Germany became divided as a result of Hitler’s fascism,
the terrible war that Germany had waged against its neighbours,
its defeat and the dispute that ensued between the former allies:
the Western powers on the one side and the Soviet Union on the other.
The history of the GDR and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe
is a history of hopeful situations and bitter defeats.
In 1953, when I was nine years old,
a revolt by the people against the dictatorship was crushed with the help of Soviet troops.
In 1956, when I was 12,
uprisings against the Soviet regime were violently suppressed in Poland and Hungary.
In 1961, when I was 17,
a wall was built all the way around the GDR and across Berlin
in order to prevent the population from escaping to the West.
The 42 km wall inside Berlin had claimed the lives of 138 people between 1961 and 1989.
This figure does not include the deaths at the frontier between the two Germanys,
which stretched over 1400 km.
I grew up in the GDR with eight brothers and sisters, my father was a pastor.
We therefore had an upbringing in a family that was very unusual in the GDR, it was not easy.
For example, it was quite clear that we could not pursue our studies up to university entrance level
because we did not belong to the government organisations for children and young people
I didn’t go to work for a while because the education of the children was a priority
and we didn’t want them to become communists.
I think that we really succeeded.
We wanted to pass on our essential religious values,
which was not an easy task given that communism was ever present at school.
As a family, we would discuss these issues openly.
We taught the children to stick to their religious convictions,
not to tell the whole world about them, but to explain their position clearly if asked.
I was 24 years old in 1968,
it was the time of the Prague Spring, the attempt to create a new form of socialism,
socialism with a human face. It was suppressed by military force under the direction of the Soviet Union.
On 16 October 1978, the Polish cardinal, Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope.
He chose the name of John Paul II.
I will never forget the reaction of my father when Karol Wojtyla was elected pope.
A Pole becoming pope! My father then said,
‘God has not forgotten us after all!’
That is when I realised how desperate he was
and how this Polish Pope was suddenly instilling a new sense of hope.
Indeed, we were not to be disappointed.
I will never forget his speech in Warsaw in front of a million people.
He said one small phrase,
‘Do not be afraid!
’ This was an incredible message, not only for the Poles, but also for many people in the Eastern bloc.
In 1978, 79 or 80, we could not imagine the overthrow of the system.
However, I was convinced that this event was going to have an impact on us,
that we could not retreat into the private sphere.
That is why this Pope was a real encouragement for us.
Plans were afoot to give 11, 12 and 13 year students a weekly preparatory course in military training.
This was just another step towards increased militarisation.
As people became aware of this, some protested.
Naturally, nothing changed.
The school year began on the 1st of September, with this new course.
A small group of women who, despite having drawn up a petition, had become resigned to the idea.
They said to themselves, “We do not wish to remain resigned to the situation.
There is something that we can do now, we can pray.”
Matthias Klemm, a Protestant artist, expressed his opposition to the regime
through his art and, hence, became a voice for justice and democracy.
The state publicly banned me from exhibiting my work anywhere except in churches.
This also depended on what I was showing in the exhibitions!
Initially, the Church acted as a guardian
and I consciously exhibited works that were critical of the Church.
As a result, the state realized that this was not just opposition, but a critical re-examination of both sides.
In a totalitarian country, this can create very uncomfortable situations.
Sometimes my husband did not tell me in advance which painting he was going to show,
because, as a mother, I was more worried.
I would have discouraged him from exhibiting such works.
But ultimately, the outcome was positive.
At the initiative of a group of young people who wanted to pray for peace,
in a country where atheism was rapidly gaining ground,
prayer and discussion groups were forming throughout the GDR (East Germany).
The student Catholic chaplaincy was a place of freedom in a country with no freedom.
This is where we learnt to exchange thoughts, develop political ideals
and strengthen our anti-establishment voice.
This also meant that Catholic and Protestant students were meeting together and becoming friends.
Ecumenism is essential for a Church that is in the minority, not the majority,
in a country that was unfavourable to Catholics and Protestants.
Under the circumstances, ecumenism was necessary for survival,
but it was also fun, useful and encouraging.
It played a key role in 1989/90, at a time when opposition was becoming more visible,
when the peaceful revolution was beginning to gather steam
and then, particularly during the summer and autumn of 1989 during the big rallies.
These were always held in churches, which were the only places that offered real freedom.
The Protestant church of St Nicholas of Leipzig played a central role in precipitating the collapse of the wall.
The first prayer for peace was held in September 1982.
This was the start of an uninterrupted series up to today.
And since that time, every Monday at 5 pm a prayer vigil for peace is held.
I remember that when we met together, one or other of us would bring an idea for a theme of the day.
Very often the passage where Israel came out of Egypt or the 'Golden Calf' would come up.
We didn't need to add much - the message was clear at the time and it still is today.
Well-being is not a bad thing in itself but it is not everything.
And gold is not the most important thing to value, but rather human rights, freedom, religious freedom, etc.
These are the values that really matter.
There were times when few people came to the prayers and sometimes we said:
"Does this make sense?"
Each time it was the participants themselves who said
"Yes! We want to continue to pray. We don't want to give up!"
Praying is like lighting a lamp on this earth.
Even today there is still a big chandelier in the church, we call it "a shaft of light for Easter",
as a sign of the Risen One who is among us and supports us.
The GDR commemorated its 40th anniversary on the 7 of october 1989.
It was quite clear for the State that prayers for peace should not take place.
Army vehicles surrounded the church of Saint Nicolas
and battle commando units from the party were summoned.
The church leaders remembered the recent images from Tiananmen Square
- the so-called "place of heavenly peace" in China, where the demonstration had been violently suppressed.
We could imagine a similar scenario in Leipzig - the fear was justified.
Despite this the prayer for peace went ahead that evening.
My husband was away travelling.
My 14 year old son really wanted to go.
"We must protest," he said.
I was filled with panic and fear.
Then I said to our children,
"Even if you reproach me all my life and say that I am a coward, I can't take this responsibility alone.
But what we can do is to sit and pray together.
The people in the street need our prayers"
I am the wife of the photographer Heinz Müller, who has sadly passed away.
We used to go together to all the Monday demonstrations.
At the centre of Leipzig there was a book-store "International Books".
My husband asked the bookseller:
"What if we were able to exhibit the pictures that we had just taken every Tuesday?
That way we would show people how important it is to be together, and so we would gain new protesters.
"People wanted to send these pictures around the world,
to their friends everywhere, to show them what was happening here.
More than 2,000 people were in the church, which only seats 1400 .
You can imagine how many people were standing
or who found a place somewhere in the central aisle, everywhere.
Outside they had to put up a notice saying
"Church closed due to overcrowding"
Other churches had opened their doors in the town centre:
the catholic church, the reformed church, St Michael's church;
so there were prayers for peace everywhere.
During these prayers for peace we read the text of the Beatitudes:
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.
"And we read the Magnificat, the canticle of Mary:
God raises up the lowly.
The Lutheran bishop at the time read some words inviting us to non-violence;
he went to each of the churches to launch his appeal.
The officials of the dictatorship realised that there was no counter-revolution taking place in the Church,
as some people had claimed,
but that the atmosphere was non-violent and a message of peace was being proclaimed.
Finally we opened the doors of the churches, and many people could not believe their eyes.
70,000 people came out, and made their way round the ring road to the meeting on Karl Marx Square.
Ralf Kohde was a riot policeman in Leipzig.
That October 9, 1989 will forever remain etched in his memory.
There were ten of us in front of the Church of Saint Nicolas.
We had been trained with machine guns, tear gas and how to charge with batons and shields.
We thought "This is becoming very serious"
Of course we all hoped that the order to fire wouldn't come.
We didn't know how we would have reacted.
Would we really have fired or would we have said at that moment "You're firing on people who... "
It's a question that is very difficult to answer.
When you go to protest with a candle in your hand, you have to protect the flame.
You can no longer fight!
When I heard the phrase, "We are the people!"
I did not feel like a riot policeman, but rather a citizen, sympathizing with the protesters.
Because somehow these were my fellow citizens.
The peaceful revolution had started.
70,000 people, more than ever before for a demonstration since the creation of the wall,
marched round about the city of Leipzig.
Despite their fears the weapons remained silent.
They arrived at the "Runde Ecke", the state police building.
It had not been attacked, but immediately the people lit candles.
When they had finished the tour of the city centre,
people knew that the GDR was no longer the same as before.
The Spirit of God acted in the 80s.
He united people in the Church and even people who were far from the Church were touched
and carried this spirit into the streets
It's something that we can't programme, that we can't order.
It's something we can only welcome as a gift.
Professor Andras Varga, a Holocaust survivor,
lost his father and grandfather in the concentration camps in 1944.
In 1989, he was dividing his time between serving the synagogues of Berlin and Leipzig.
40 days before the fall of the Wall he felt an urgent appeal within himself:
forgive the German people for killing my family members,
so that this ongoing revolution remains peaceful.
The small synagogue of Leipzig was packed.
In the silence of my heart, I prayed to God to forgive the German people,
and also that on this day, October 9, 1989 blood would not flow in the streets of Leipzig.
He recognised my sincerity and my willingness to forgive and He is all powerful to forgive.
Machine guns were placed on bridges.
I prayed to God from the bottom of my heart, in the silence of my mind, facing the holy Torah,
that he would give peace and that the people would find unity once again.
But there was something more: not only the people but the whole continent regained its unity
On 9 November 1989 the regime crumbled definitively.
There were thousands crossing the wall, overwhelming the border guards who would soon control nothing
Horst Sindermann of the GDR Central Committee would recognize years later:
"We had everything, we were ready for anything, except to have to face candles and prayer! "
The German people found themselves again after 28 years of separation.
It's a miracle.
Pastor Christian Führer said it was a miracle of biblical proportions that this revolution remained peaceful.
Not a drop of blood was shed, no shots were fired.
Biblical also through the fact that the GDR had actually existed for 40 years
It is a symbolic number, 40.
Afterwards it really collapsed on itself.
It was almost like walking through the desert. And then the promised land,
which of course we don't have today, but we are just the people of God journeying through time.
The terms of reunification were signed in Berlin the following year by the Parliament of both East and West.
The reunification became effective October 3, 1990.
Faith is not a private matter, although I know that faith is first of all a personal and free choice of each person.
No State has the right to interfere there, no politics can say a word.
In this way it is a private matter, a free decision for each person.
But faith, especially Christian faith
although this holds true to some extent also for the Jewish and Muslim faith
doesn't just mean holding on to beliefs and doctrines.
Faith is a good, fair and meaningful introduction to life.
This is what makes Christians so important for democracy
because democracy lives in the fact
that there are as many people as possible who have a sense of the common good, thus the lives of others.
And I believe that the Christian faith motivates us very strongly in this.
21.000 kilometres of wall currently separate peoples in the world and fuel conflicts.
At this time, when people are fleeing oppression and war,
give us Lord the grace to pull down the walls inside and around ourselves.
Let us pray that the Spirit of peace will spread and help men to respect one another and to live together.
Psaume 18, 27-31 :
You save the humble but bring low those whose eyes are haughty.
You, LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light.
With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall.
As for God, his way is perfect:
The LORD’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.
