Matters came to a head after November 1989 when protesters breached the wall and it became apparent that the fraternal Soviet forces had no instructions to suppress the street protests by force, as they had in 1953 (and, more recently, in Prague in 1968). A succession of seemingly unstoppable events were set in train, leading to East Germany's first (and as matters turned out last) free and fair election in March 1990 and then, formally in October 1990, German reunification. At the hitherto important Carola Bluhm's career prospects disappeared. In 1990 she was informed succinctly in writing that she was being temporarily laid off ("in Warteschleife geschickt") and six months later, her job disappeared permanently (although according to her own website she remained, at least formally, an employee of the Berlin Economics Academy till early in 1991). Unemployment, hitherto a theoretical issue that she had researched and on which she had taught as an academic, became her personal reality.