Revoluția pașnică și căderea Zidului. RDG în toamna 1989 (The peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Wall. GDR in the fall of 1989)

• Main Author: Robert GRÜNBAUM
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Editura Institutul European Iasi 2014-11-01
• Series: Polis: Revista de Stiinte Politice
• Subjects: peaceful revolution; freedom; democratic rights; the fall of the Wall
• Online Access: http://www.revistapolis.ro/ro/numarul-curent-al-revistei/276-robert-gr%C3%BCnbaum.html

Twenty-five years have passed since the citizens of GDR protested successfully against the German Socialist Union Party regime (SED) through a peaceful revolution. Armed with only their courage and with candles in hands took to the streets by the hundreds of thousands, to defy the power device. With the cry of "We are the people" they have strongly given a sustainable idiom to their requirements for freedom and democratic rights. The emotional climax of the revolutionary autumn of the 1989 was clearly the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9. The word that everybody was able to hear again and again, was simply: "Crazy!". And even that was indeed like a miracle. The wall, which had decided the destiny of millions of citizens of the GDR for decades, became all of a sudden a monument. In this article there will be, at first, a retrospective on the day of the fall of the Wall, and then there will be an analysis on the reasons in terms of internal and external policy that led to the success of the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR.