It is a scene that made Hans-Dietrich Genscher world-famous: On September 30, 1989, the then Federal Foreign Minister makes thousands of GDR refugees happy in the Prague embassy. From the balcony of the Lobkowicz Palace he said, "... that your departure has become possible today" (read the story here). The rest went down in jubilation.

The German embassy in Prague is now looking for contemporary witnesses to the dramatic turning-point events almost 30 years ago. It would be interested in the personal stories, "so as to complete and complete the mosaic of events at that time," said German Ambassador Christoph Israng. For the approximately 15,000 GDR citizens, who fled in three waves over Prague, was in the fall of 1989 "a dream come true - to be free and to travel to the Federal Republic".

Contact form on the Internet

At that time, some people had stayed for weeks on the grounds of the West German representation in Czechoslovakia. For the anniversary, the embassy now calls former GDR refugees, but also supporters and helpers, to share their memories.

The embassy has set up a contact form on the Internet. A selection of the memories will be presented to the public on 28th September. Then the embassy in the district of Lesser Town in Prague opens its doors for a "Festival of Freedom".

100,000 people had already left the GDR in the first six months of 1989. Tens of thousands were waiting for their legal departure or had sought refuge in the embassies in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and in the permanent representation in East Berlin. Every day, the East German citizens voted with their feet - so vehemently that on September 11, Hungary opened its borders to the West.

East Berlin let the borders close to Hungary in a seemingly helpless action. The refugees did not care so much: they went to Prague and flooded the embassy there, which was overcrowded on September 30, because Czechoslovakia rejected a Hungarian solution. In his memoirs Genscher wrote that on the flight to Prague he had finally realized: "The GDR is finished, the end of the wall is in sight."