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Sopronkőhida Pan-European Picnic Memorial Park, 18 August 1989, marking the first breach of the Iron Curtain with the opening of border posts for three hours and the flight of approximately 600 East Germany. REUTERS / Bernadett Szabo

Angela Merkel will visit Hungary on Monday 19 August to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the pan-European picnic, which has shaken the Berlin Wall. 600 East Germans occasionally escaped from the Eastern Bloc for the FRG.

With our correspondent in Berlin, Nathalie Versieux

Officially, it was a picnic of friendship within the Soviet bloc. In fact, the Hungarian organization of this picnic just a few steps from the border with Austria has enabled 600 East Germans wishing to flee the GDR to move west.

No longer able to maintain the barbed wire of the Iron Curtain, Hungary had indeed ordered its border guards not to fire on the fugitives, while in Moscow, Gorbachev engaged in its policy of Perestroika seems to want to end the cold war.

" We will always be grateful to Hungary for its contribution to the fall of the Wall, " Angela Merkel said Saturday in her weekly video address. The Chancellor who grew up in the former GDR recalls " the miracle of German unity ". " All of a sudden, " she adds, " we could imagine that something was going to change ."

Co-organizer of the picnic, the conservative party Fidesz of the then Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban , thus contributed to the opening of the Wall. The same ruling party has built a new wall across Europe to prevent migrants from joining the European Union.