Churches and the Fall of Communism

Peace prayers had been held in the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig every Monday since 20 September 1982, by the account of its pastor, Christian Führer (Führer, Recollections of 9 October 1989 (2009), answer 1). The theologian Richard Schröder, looking back in 2014, says that seven people came to the first, and that Führer and the superintendent never cancelled or moved one in eight years of pressure from the state (Schröder, Schwerter und Pflugscharen (2014), paragraphs on the first prayers of 1982). He also says that the prayers were no idyll. The political groups that used them saw the church as a protected space and a stage, and in 1988 the superintendent shut those groups out of shaping the prayers (Schröder, Schwerter und Pflugscharen (2014), closing paragraphs).

In 1989 the police blocked the approaches to the church, and on 7 October, Führer recalled, hundreds were arrested in front of it (Führer, Recollections of 9 October 1989 (2009), answer 1). He had asked the other city churches to hold prayers as well, so that as many people as possible would hear the message of nonviolence (Führer, Recollections of 9 October 1989 (2009), answer 2).

For Monday 9 October there is the report that the Leipzig head of the state security service sent to Berlin. Prayers were held from 17:00 to 18:00 in four churches in the centre, the Nikolaikirche, the Thomaskirche, the Michaeliskirche and the Reformed church, with more than 5,000 people inside and thousands more outside (Stasi report on Leipzig, 9 October 1989, Bl. 100). Führer later put the number in the churches at about 8,000 (Führer, Recollections of 9 October 1989 (2009), answer 2). The regional bishop, Johannes Hempel, had told the district authorities that he would come in person to call for calm and nonviolence and for dialogue between state and citizens, and he spoke in all four churches (Stasi report on Leipzig, 9 October 1989, Bl. 101–102). Three appeals are annexed to the report. One, signed by three church-based groups, asked the demonstrators to refrain from all violence and the security forces not to answer peaceableness with violence (Stasi report on Leipzig, 9 October 1989, Bl. 102 and 104 (annex 2)). Another, in the name of members and supporters of the New Forum, called for dialogue in place of violence (Stasi report on Leipzig, 9 October 1989, Bl. 102 and 106 (annex 3)). The third came from six Leipzig citizens, the conductor Kurt Masur, a pastor, a cabaret artist and three secretaries of the ruling party’s district leadership. They promised to work for dialogue and asked for calm, and their appeal was broadcast on the Leipzig radio and the city’s loudspeakers (Stasi report on Leipzig, 9 October 1989, Bl. 102 and 105 (annex 1)).

From 18:35 to 20:30, the report goes on, an unauthorised demonstration of 50,000 to 60,000 people moved from the forecourt of the Nikolaikirche round the city ring (Stasi report on Leipzig, 9 October 1989, Bl. 100). Among the chants it lists are “We are the people” (Stasi report on Leipzig, 9 October 1989, Bl. 100) and “No violence” (Stasi report on Leipzig, 9 October 1989, Bl. 101). There were no attacks on the security forces, and the measures prepared to prevent and break up a demonstration were not applied, because of the overall situation and by a central decision (Stasi report on Leipzig, 9 October 1989, Bl. 101).

A chronology of 1989 that the European Parliament published twenty years later records that Erich Honecker resigned on 18 October and that the Berlin Wall was breached on 9 November (European Parliament, 1989: The Year of Revolutions (2009), entries for 9 October to 9 November). In Romania, according to the same chronology, protests broke out at Timișoara on 16 December in response to the government’s attempt to evict the pastor László Tőkés, and spread to Bucharest (European Parliament, 1989: The Year of Revolutions (2009), entry for 16 December).