Fall of the Berlin Wall 1989: "Imagine, it is election and nobody goes there"

May 7, 1989 was a sunny spring day. Leipzig was hung with flags, posters everywhere demanded: "Our vote the candidate of the National Front!" Election day in the GDR. The polling stations had been open since 6 o'clock, as usual, and the first citizen to vote always received a bouquet of flowers.

He could have saved himself the trouble - like all those who followed him, because there was nothing to select. The united lists with the candidates led by the SED decided, stood for months as well as the result itself: 99 per cent yes-voices, plus / minus a few per thousand. "Zettelfalten" was the popular expression of this submission ritual, which served above all to reassure the SED: who sank the ballot in the urn on Sunday would not start a riot on Monday.

That's how it has been for decades.

Tracer destruction in the kitchen oven

This time, however, something was different. Opposition groups had agreed to observe polling at polling stations in this election. Rumors that non-voters would publicly protest in the evening were circulating in the city. A few days before the vote, my friend Bernd showed up in the middle of the night and immediately began to burn notes in my kitchen stove. "Imagine it's a choice and no one goes," it said. He had previously pasted dozens of self-made calls on advertising pillars in the Harz foreland; Now Bernd feared that the Stasi had followed him to Leipzig. But it stayed calm. My apartment was not monitored.

I should have had to vote in my home village on this 7th of May, but I had not gone to the 1986 Volkskammer election. As a student of theology at a church seminar, I was long attributed by the GDR authorities to the "enemy-negative forces". For me, the day would be quiet, I believed. Then, at two o'clock in the afternoon, it rang: "Criminal Investigation!"

In the door stood two gentlemen in civilian clothes: Would I know where my friend and fellow student Rainer Müller was? Rainer has been active in several groups - the Justice Working Group, the Human Rights Working Group and, like me, the Solidarity Church working group. He had long been one of the heads of the Leipzig opposition. At the beginning of the year he had already been in custody, and now he was clearly in danger again. No, no idea, I said, and as suddenly as they came, the two disappeared again. It was over with my quiet day. There was something going on.

"They are fed!"

At three o'clock in the afternoon I grabbed my camera and took the tram to downtown Leipzig. I wanted to see Rainer, who was living in a demolition house to warn him. How naive that was turned out immediately. When I got off at the station, I was surprised that one of the two gentlemen who had just been standing at my front door sat in the same lane as me. At the same moment I heard him say: "Mr. Gerlach, you will be sent to clarify a fact!"

"Arrested" - that was in the GDR the term for arrest, for arrest, for protective custody, for all sorts of things. Handcuffs did not click, something was unusual in "feeders". The state power had also surrounded me so well. Were they even criminal police? Probably not. Stasi? Probably. One thing was clear, they did not come from Leipzig, they were too much about it, and they did not know each other.

We stood for a long time in front of Leipzig Central Station - the car, which was to take me away, had to wait. No, it did not come at all. So off to the station - somewhere there had the "Trapo", the East German transport police, have their guard. But where? Like tourists, my two guards wondered.

If the lieutenant asks three times

At last you found the Trapo colleagues, I had to wait there in a "visiting room". After all, the security people had organized a Wartburg, which took me to the Ritterstrasse police station - which was a lot of work, five minutes on foot. There uniformed men rushed around. "Where is the feeder point?", Called my companion. Shrug. There was no feeder point, so I had to wait at the sobering cell.

Soon it went on again. This time I was driven to the police headquarters Harkortstraße, opposite the old imperial court. At first I was deprived of my identity card, then Lieutenant King introduced himself to me and began interrogating me in a small room. "Why did you stay in the city center?" In the meantime, I had made excuses: "I wanted to go to the International Book Fair, then to the opera." - "Who did you have cards with - did you want to go to the opera in a pullover?" Lieutenant King worked off his questions, I make excuses.

"Mr. Gerlach, what is your political credo?"

Then Lieutenant König became more concrete: "What do you know, what should take place today at 18 clock on the Leipzig market square?" - "No idea." - Do you have knowledge of an unauthorized event? "-" No. "-" You have allowed us to look into your bag. Why do you have a camera with you? "-" I like to photograph. "-" What did you want to photograph? "-" Nothing special. "

The interrogation was harmless - King had no idea, I had no idea.

Then another uniformed man appeared, listened, then asked, "Herr Gerlach, what is your political credo?" My credo? I dodged. This was not the right time, I objected. The second interrogator disappeared again. At some point they handed me coffee.

By then it was half past six, the polling stations were closed. If there were protests, then downtown would have to start now. Meanwhile, the typewriter rattled in the guard. King held his questionnaire in front of me. I nodded. "Sign it!" - "No." - "What?" - "I do not sign anything!"

Receipt for the coffee

I had been thinking for a long time what I would not do if I got arrested: sign anything. King tried cunning: "Please acknowledge the coffee!" - "No." Now he was indignant. "Shall I pay your coffee? With such mistrust, no dialogue is really possible!" Dialog? Was that just dialogue? King adds to the protocol: "Mr Gerlach confirms the accuracy of his statements, but rejects a signature because he does not want to." King says I have to wait a while and disappear.

The guards take turns at nine o'clock, then I am taken to room number 111. There are already about 20 people, but it is still quiet. After ten minutes, it continues. Together with another "supplied" it goes down the stairs, in the back the guards. We are wordlessly towed down into the basement and out on a brightly lit courtyard, into another building.

The square seemed familiar to me. At the other end, on the Peterssteinweg, was a cafeteria of the University of Leipzig - and in between the detention center on the Beethovenstraße, in which Rainer M. and other colleagues from the GDR opposition were arrested in January 1989. Often enough, I had walked past Beethovenstrasse when prisoner transporters parked there. Should I go in there? We walked down a dim corridor, white tiles on the wall. What if the two guards now took one over my head? It was just a feeling, not a thought. There was no time to think. We rushed on, now upstairs again. The prison was behind us.

A classroom full of arrestees

In a hall everything had gathered, which has in the People's Police legs, including two shepherd dogs. I was pushed through one of the many doors. In the room then blackboards, benches. Was that about classroom? Indeed. About 15 arrested were in "my" class. The mood was relaxed; some talked, others were silent. I did not discover familiar faces.

There had actually been a demonstration in the center of Leipzig, I heard now. Vopo-Hundertschaften had encircled the protesters who denounced the electoral fraud of the SED openly on the street. Dozens had been arrested, probably well over a hundred, and many were now crammed into Leipzig's business school.

The first to rebel were the smokers. Helplessness among the guards, then the decision: smokers can smoke individually in the corridor. The next ones were hungry. "We have nothing to eat!" retorted the Vopos. But soon there was a roll and a piece of sausage.

"I want to get out!"

After midnight, however, the frustration increased. "I want to go to bed!" One shouted. "Leave me to my wife!" Someone else asked. "I want to get out!" Wrote a third on the board. Instead, the guards turned off the light.

At some point, in the middle of the night, the first of us was called out. A little later he waved from the street: released! Half past four in the morning. But then it was over, and the rest of us pushed frustration again. "Better a cell with a couch than these chairs!" Groaned one.

"Get ready," yelled at five o'clock across the hall: "We're moving!" In groups of five, we went back to the Harkortstraße. We went through Leipzig like criminals on this spring morning, policemen with rubber truncheons on both sides. The march ended again in room 111.

The worst election result in GDR history

The following morning, there was sometime rolls with sausage, otherwise we seemed to have forgotten. Some suspected that our case was already being heard in the SED Politburo. At least nothing happened until noon. Out of boredom, we turned the room upside down - the howl was great, as somewhere a Honecker portrait came to light.

The release of the last 35 "arrived" began at half past eleven. I was third in last place. I was again presented with an explanation of the signature. It stated that in the future I would no longer take part in actions that disturb socialist living together or endanger order and security. I refused the signature. Nevertheless, I got my ID back and was taken out. It was Monday, May 8, 1989 at 12:30.

On this day, the SED Central Organ "New Germany" ("ND") reported 98.85 percent yes votes to the National Front's unifying list on its front page. What did not stand there: It was the worst election result in the history of the GDR. What also did not stand there: Thousands of GDR citizens had previously counted in the polling stations the votes - and thus the SED convicted of systematic electoral fraud. And in Leipzig and in Berlin hundreds had demonstrated despite Vopos and Stasi against the electoral farce.

What neither the "ND" nor the protesters could know: The election of 7 May 1989 was the last "Zettelfalten" according to the old pattern - ten months and a revolution later, the SED at the first free election in the GDR on 18 March Voted out in 1990.