page_title: German reunification
section_title: Precursors to reunification
hierarchical_section_title: German reunification / Precursors to reunification
caption_attribution_description: العربية: مواطنون فوق جدار برلين بالقرب من بوابة براندنبرج في 9 نوفمبر 1989 Deutsch: Menschen auf der Berliner Mauer nahe dem Brandenburger Tor am 9. November 1989 Aufschrift auf dem Schild: „Achtung! Sie verlassen jetzt West-Berlin“, übersprüht mit der Frage „Wie denn?“ English: People atop the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate on 9 November 1989. The text on the sign "Achtung! Sie verlassen jetzt West-Berlin" ("Notice! You are now leaving West Berlin") has been modified with an additional text "Wie denn?" ("How?"). Also in blue is the logo for ONCE, whose cycling team was started in 1989 Español: Personas trepadas sobre el muro de Berlín, cerca de la puerta de Brandeburgo, el 9 de noviembre de 1989. El texto de la señal —Achtung! Sie verlassen jetzt West-Berlin, ‘¡Atención! Está por abandonar Berlín Oriental’— presenta un grafiti que añade: Wie denn?, ‘¿Cómo?’.
context_page_description: German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic became part of the Federal Republic of Germany to form the reunited nation of Germany, as provided by Article 23 of the FRG's then constitution. The end of the unification process is officially referred to as German unity, celebrated each year on 3 October as German Unity Day. Berlin was reunited into a single city, and again became the capital of united Germany.
  The East German government started to falter in May 1989, when the removal of Hungary's border fence with Austria opened a hole in the Iron Curtain. It allowed an exodus of thousands of East Germans fleeing to West Germany via Hungary. The Peaceful Revolution, a series of protests by East Germans, led to the GDR's first free elections on 18 March 1990, and to the negotiations between the GDR and FRG that culminated in a Unification Treaty. Other negotiations between the GDR and FRG and the four occupying powers produced the so-called "Two Plus Four Treaty" granting full sovereignty to a unified German state, whose two parts were previously bound by a number of limitations stemming from their post-World War II status as occupied regions.
context_section_description: In 1945, the Third Reich ended in defeat and Germany was divided into four occupation zones, under the Soviet Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The capital city of Berlin was similarly divided into four sectors. Between 1947 and 1949, the three zones of the western allies were merged, forming the Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin, aligned with capitalist Europe (which later developed into the European Community). The Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic with its capital in East Berlin, part of the communist Soviet Bloc. The FRG was a member of the western military alliance, NATO, and the GDR was a member of the Warsaw Pact. Germans lived under such imposed divisions throughout the ensuing Cold War.
  Into the 1980s, the Soviet Union experienced a period of economic and political stagnation, and correspondingly decreased intervention in Eastern Bloc politics. In 1987, US President Ronald Reagan gave a speech at the Brandenburg Gate, challenging Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down the wall" which divided Berlin. The wall had stood as an icon for the political and economic division between East and West, a division that Churchill had referred to as the "Iron Curtain". Gorbachev announced in 1988 that the Soviet Union would abandon the Brezhnev Doctrine and allow the Eastern bloc nations to freely determine their own internal affairs. In early 1989, under a new era of Soviet policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (economic restructuring), and taken further by Gorbachev, the Solidarity movement took hold in Poland. Further inspired by other images of brave defiance, a wave of revolutions swept throughout the Eastern Bloc that year. 
  In May 1989, Hungary removed their border fence. However, the dismantling of the old Hungarian border facilities did not open the borders, nor were the previous strict controls removed, and the isolation by the Iron Curtain was still intact over its entire length. The opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary at the Pan-European Picnic on August 19, 1989 then set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, at the end of which there was no longer a GDR and the Eastern Bloc had disintegrated. Extensive advertising for the planned picnic was made by posters and flyers among the GDR holidaymakers in Hungary. The Austrian branch of the Paneuropean Union, which was then headed by Karl von Habsburg, distributed thousands of brochures inviting them to a picnic near the border at Sopron. It was the largest escape movement from East Germany since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. After the picnic, which was based on an idea by Karl's father Otto von Habsburg to test the reaction of the USSR and Mikhail Gorbachev to an opening of the border, tens of thousands of media-informed East Germans set off for Hungary. The media reaction of Erich Honecker in the "Daily Mirror" of August 19, 1989 to the Pan-Europe picnic, showed the public in East and West the now loss of power of the Eastern European communist rulers in their own sphere of power and that they were no longer the designers of what was happening: “Habsburg distributed leaflets far into Poland, on which the East German holidaymakers were invited to a picnic. When they came to the picnic, they were given gifts, food and Deutsche Mark, and then they were persuaded to come to the West.” In particular, it was examined by Habsburg and the Hungarian Minister of State Imre Pozsgay, whether Moscow would give the Soviet troops stationed in Hungary the command to intervene. But with the mass exodus at the Pan-European Picnic, the subsequent hesitant behavior of the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany and the non-intervention of the Soviet Union broke the dams. Thus the bracket of the Eastern Bloc was broken. 
  Now tens of thousands of the media-informed East Germans made their way to Hungary, which was no longer ready to keep its borders completely closed or to oblige its border troops to use force of arms. By the end of September 1989, more than 30,000 East Germans had escaped to the
caption: Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate on 9 November 1989 showing the graffiti Wie denn ("How now") over the sign warning the public that they are leaving West Berlin
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