An exhibition on the 1989 Pan-European Picnic, an event that eventually led to the dismantling of the Iron Curtain and the re-unification of Germany, opened at the Hungarian Embassy of Berlin late on Monday.

Hungary’s Minister of Human Resources Zoltán Balog said that Eastern European dictatorial regimes that collapsed in 1989 should never be forgotten and “freedom is a precious asset”. Michael Stübgen, a Bundestag member of the CDU, noted that the Hungarian government’s decision in the summer of 1989 to let East German citizens freely head to the West put the first hole into the Iron Curtain.

The Pan-European Picnic was a peace demonstration held on the Austrian-Hungarian border near the town of Sopron on 19 August 1989, to promote friendship between the East and the West. Within the framework of the initiative, Hungarian and Austrian authorities agreed that they would symbolically open the border for a few hours to have a symbolic meeting between the two countries’ citizens.

(Ministry of Human Resources)