Nonetheless, Honecker’s confidence that East Germany could remain largely unaffected by the new developments in Moscow soon proved illusory. East Germans began demonstrating for reforms similar to those being undertaken in the Soviet Union; when challenged by the police they flashed Soviet badges and pictures of Gorbachev. GDR authorities found themselves in the awkward position of trying to curtail contacts between East German citizens and the mother country of communism. When the Soviet leader visited East Berlin in 1986, the route he took to his official reception was swept clear of would-be greeters. The regime took the extraordinary step of banning notable works of the Soviet reform culture, such as the anti-Stalinist film
East German dissidents learned to raise their unwelcome demands at embarrassing moments for the regime. On January 17, 1988, as Honecker and company were reviewing the annual parade in commemoration of the martyrdom of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, a group of protesters broke into the ranks of the Free German Youth marchers and unfurled banners bearing Luxemburg’s dictum: “True Freedom is Always the Freedom of the Non-conformists!” Viewers of the parade were treated to the sight of Stasi agents beating and arresting citizens for brandishing a slogan penned by one of the martyrs being honored. Among those arrested were the dissident artists Bärbel Bohley, Vera Wollenberger, and Werner Fischer. Given the choice of prison or exile abroad, they chose the latter, finding temporary sanctuary in England under the auspices of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The irony of the exiles’ situation was not lost on Bohley, who declared later: “Thousands of East Germans were aching for the chance to travel, and here we were, being offered a long holiday in the West by the regime.”
As the Honecker government struggled to show that with “real, existing socialism,” the GDR had no need to take any reform lessons from Moscow, the nation’s Protestant churches emerged as crucial forums for critical debate on the future of the country. The churches played such a central role because they constituted virtually the only public venue—aside from sanctioned state functions or sporting events—where large groups of citizens could congregate. Recognizing this, the Stasi had been careful to infiltrate all the parishes and to enlist some of the clergy as “informal collaborators.” Increasingly, however, pastors began using the pulpit to admonish the government to respect basic political and civil rights. During a sermon at East Berlin’s Gethsemane Church, Gottfried Forck, the Protestant Bishop of Berlin, pleaded for the release of the over 200 people arrested in connection with the Luxemburg demonstration. In May 1989 Pastor Rainer Eppelmann of the Samaritan parish in East Berlin accused the government of falsifying the results of that month’s elections in order to gain its usual near-universal popular endorsement. The pastor proceeded to turn his church into a sanctuary for conscientious objectors and other political dissidents. Tellingly, rather than arresting Eppelmann and throwing him in jail, the regime merely subjected him to increased surveillance. The most important center of Protestant dissidence, however, was not East Berlin but Leipzig, where the congregation of the Nikolaikirche held “prayers for peace” each Monday, followed by silent, candlelit marches through the city. On the night of March 13 the police broke up one of these vigils, but on the next Monday the marchers were back again, and this time they refused to disperse.
