... but the peaceful revolution continues

One of the most long standing misconceptiuons about the events of 1989 is that it was the opening of the Berlin Wall brought freedom to the people of East Germany, when it was the people of East Germany demanding and seizing freedom for themsleves. The other is that once the Berlin Wall was opened the peaceful revolution was over. Yet it was still the SED that held the levers of (state) power in the GDR, the Stasi had not been disbanded, political parties had not been allowed, there was no independent judiciary and there was no mechanism for freee and fair elections. Nor was it clear that all sections of the apparatus would still give up their power. This poster is for the founding assembly of New Forum in Prenzlauer Berg in east Berlin on 10 November - at the Gethsemane church as it happens. Throughout the autumn the new political parties and citizens' movements began to take shape. The Round Table that was to become the instance for the transfer of power from the SED to society was to meet for the first time only in December. the peaceful revolution continued.

Watching and Praying in Gethsemane

For most of the five years that I lived in Brussels (from 1989 to 1994) I had stuck on my wall a cutting from the front page of The Independent newspaper from 9 October and the whole of the back page from the issues of 14 October. With the high quality black and white photogtraphy for which The Independent was then famous the pictures showed how the Gethsemane church in East Berlin had become a place of refuge and spiritual support for opposition to the SED. The title of the article on the back page was, "Where East Germans coonquer fear".

On 2 October 1989, the Gethsemane church, under its truly Christian pastor, Bernd Albani, had started a vigil for people who had been unjustly imprsioned after demonstrations calling for change. A month later, on 7 October 1989, as the SED celebrated 40 years of the GDR, demonstrators gathered on the Alexanderplatz and started marching towards the Palace of the Republic where the festivities were taking place. Ranks of police beat them back, arresting and beating demonstrators indiscriminately - the scene portrayed at the beginning of the film "Goodbye Lenin". Many demonstrators then made a U-turn towards the Gethsemane church, about 2 kilometres away, where they took shelter inside the church while the police sealed off the area around the church. For two days there was an uneasy standoff, those who had taken shelter couldn't leave but the police were not prepared to storm the church. The journalist Andrew Brown recorded the experience of Angela Kunze who began a fast on 4 October for the unjustly persecuted (he has also recently blogged about 1989). Her manifesto read:

I am fasting to cleanse myself of fear and hopelessness, hate and violence, impatience and the lust for novelty. I am fasting because I see no other way to express my protest against the ways in which our politicians brazenly keep us appearances and celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the state as their victory. I am fasting because, unlike our state media, I am worried about the great number of people who have left our country. I am fasting to live in solidarity with all who suffer and are persecuted because they have committed themselves to social justice. I am fasting in the hope that others will take part, for an hour or for days, and that we will show our personal commitment to this country by limiting our material needs.

"Watch and pray" - this is how the Bible records Jesus' injunction to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane as he prepared for his arrest. It is also a chant from the Taize community much sung at the Gethsemane church as those who had taken shelter from the police waited for their fate. It was not until 9 October, as the huge march in Leipzig passed off peacefully, that the police moved back from the church.

"Watch and pray" - this is the motto for the series of events that has been taking place this autumn in the Gethsemane church to mark 20 years of the peaceful revolution and the felling of the Berlin Wall. On 9 November, the Gethsemane church will be the location in the morning for the central ecumenical service for state and religious leaders to mark the 20th anniversary of the opening of the wall, just a kilometre or so away from where the church is located.

On the evening of 9 November, however, the church is holding another service of public remembrance. The 9 November marks not only the 20 years since the opening of the walls, but the anniversary of the "Kristallnacht" - the night of broken glass or the state pogrom night - when throughout Germany, Jewish Germans and their houses of worship and property were attacked by the Nazis.

"The festivals of the Jewish and of the Christian religion are almost all festivals of remembrance" the brochure announcing the service states, "of the events of the history of the Jewish people or the life of Jesus. This ancient religious practice of remembering now has its modern forms when a date for the community has taken on such significance as the 9 November for Germans. In the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall the joy of the unexpected opening of the borders in autumn 1989 is linked irrevocably with the painful remembrance of the 'Reichsprogrommnacht' in 1938. A day such as this enjoins us to think ourselves about the forms and history of our remembrance."

Reformation and Revolution in Wittenberg

Today marks the 492nd anniversary of Martin Luther's 95 Theses, which he is reputed to have nailed to the door of the Schlosskirche in Wittenberg, thus setting in train what has been described as the Protestant revolution. 20 years ago in this town about 90 kilometres south of Berlin, Christians organized the fourth of their "prayers for renewal" ("Gebet um Erneuerung") calling for civic rights and reform in East Germany. For the first time, the service since the "prayers for renewal" began, was followed by a "demonstrative procession" from the Schlosskirche to the Marktplatz, where 7 theses were stuck onto the door of the Town Hall. Jane was then studying at Wittenberg and she wrote in her diary:

The Gebet um Erneuerung in the evening was preceded by a certain amount of tension - what if there was violence, how would we cope? ... It went well. Over an hour before the start, the church was full and the courtyard outside was packed. Hans Treu, the dean of Wittenberg, had written a very good meditation and hand led the intercessions so there was no clapping of speechifying. As we sang the Kyrie, suddenly he atmosphere changed and in the gallery, people started lighting their candles. It was very moving. The demonstration was terribly orderly. I was one of two people carrying a banner reading, "You can't fill a hungry soul with prosperity". We were very near the back. I felt rather uncomfortable that I and not a GDR person was carrying something. Our candles dribbles wax everywhere, of course, making weird and wonderful sculptures on our hands.

In the distance it looked as if a small group of police were watching the demonstration from the corner, but as we got closer it turned out to be a group of Soviet soldiers who had turned up to watch us. Someone had even handed one of them a candles. One of the students greeted them in Russian and they returned the greeting with a smile. It was a small sign of the kingdom of God.

The market place was full, the local council had supplied (spontaneously) a proper P.A. system. It was all a bit calm, still a church service really. People no doubt expected a bit more. Some shouting at the town hall, "Come out". We sang a bit more, things were read about Luther and Melanchthon. Demokratischer Aufbruch and Demokratie Jetzt read their programmes out. DA sees socialism as the dominant force in the GDR. DJ sees no role for socialism except with a (modern) democratic set-up. DA is like a left wing Social Democratic Party and DJ like a left wing Dree Democratic Party. It's all really weird. No doubt they will all start splitting rather than merging in the coming years. There's supposedly a meeting of the United Left coming off soon, which really of course means a meeting of the Un-United Left. Once everyone had finished talking and it was agreed that we'd meet again next week and invite the Burgermeister as well. The market place was covered in candles, really very pretty. Many were on the steps of the Rathaus where the 7 Theses (thank goodness not 95!) had been attached to the door as a reminder of Luther.

It was stressed throughout the evening that this was not a church/state conflict but a people/state conflict. Quite an important difference but for how much longer can the church speak for the people, will it be able to give up that role? ...

Discussion over supper indicates that the local newspaper carried pictures and a full article about yesterday's demonstration, over 8000 people they reckon. In Prague many arrests have been made in the past fortnight. Havel is in jail again. If the world markets are about to go through a sticks patch then it's really worrying to think what the effect on Glasnost and Perestroika might be.

The German theologian Kay-Ulrich Bronk has written about the Gebete um Erneuerung in Wittenberg in autumn 1989 in his book, "The flight of the dove and the fall of the Wall", in which he quotes from Propst Treu's meditation:

Martin Luther did not discuss his theses with a small group of his students and colleagues but published them on 31 October 1517 so that they would be known to all and so bring renewal to church and society. We want to reconstruct this move to the outside world. We want to take renewal from the church through the streets of our town to the market place and from their to our homes and families, to where we work and - especially importantly - into the schools of our town (applause) ... This is the way we are going, creating conditions that have been renewedl relationships through people who have been renewed ... I want to mention something that has been mentioned in the previous three Tuesday evenings ... We have been brought to our current crisis and plight because a single party has claims the monopoly of power and truth, that must be changed (long protracted applause, stamping of feet) Dear friends, the Bible says: only people who have been renewed have the power to create conditions that have been renewed.

Bronk then continues himself:

The prayers for renewal ... were oriented towards specific issues like the political worship of the 1968 generation and inductive like the ecumenical assemblies of the conciliar process ... Before the people leave the church and move through the streets of Wittenberg in a "demonstrative procession", the final hymn of the prayers for renewal is sung, "Bewahre uns Gott" ("La paz del Señor"). I have already noted how this song had the character of a a song for sending out. But on no other evening did it have this character as on this occasion. Many of the participants probaby understood the refrain, "Sei um uns auf unsern Wegen", was probably understood by many of the participants as a direct reference to the march through the streets to the Marktplatz in front of the Rathaus. Then although the walk had been agreed with the town bosses, it was without any precedent ..,The demonstrations in other towns that had passed off peacefully could serve as an encouragement, but the first step from the protective space of the church had to be done anew in each town, and as such was accompanied by uncertainty ... As the people left the Schlosskirche and the Stadkirche the bells of both churches were rung. This had not only a liturgical but also a psychological function: a psychological in that this helped to overcome inner anxiety, a liturgical function in that it signalled that the move out of the church was not simply a political affair, but was a consequence of what had happened inside the church. Noah's dove had found dry land. The people left the Ark.

This year the Reformation celebration is going to be marked by a tree planting ceremony in Wittenberg, as the first trees are planted for the Luther Garden, in which churches worldwide are to be encouraged to adopt one of the 500 trees that are planned for the Luther Garden and also to plant a tree themselves to denote a link with the birthplace of the Reformation.

Meanwhile, over on the StranzBlog, Jane is blogging about the prayers for renewal being a spirituality of civil society.

(Photo is from Friedrich Schorlemmer's book, "Die Wende in Wittenberg")

Erfurt remembers the peaceful revolution

An exhibition opened today in the Predigerkirche in Erfurt to mark the peaceful revolution. The exhibition includes original documents from the GDR time including a leaflet about the manipulation of the elections in 1989 that was one of the catalysts for the demonstrations. Displays chart the history of the open church youth work and the environmental, peace and womens's groups that belonged to the opposition. The church was one of the two churches in Erfurt that organized weekly peace prayers, alongside the Catholic Lorenzkirche, and was also the location for events organised by New Forum in September 1989.

Erfurt remembers more than 3 decades of ecumenical peace prayers

Earlier in this blog I wrote about the peace prayers in Leipzig - even older than the prayers in the GDR's second city are the ecumenical prayers for peace in the Lorenzkirche in Erfurt - said to be the oldest prayers of their kind in the former GDR.

The first ecumenical peace prayer took place in December 1978: the reason was the introduction of pre-military education in GDR schools. This militarisation of educational institutions and society unsettled many people in the GDR and a number of Erfurt citizens gathered to pray together, something made possible by the then Catholic bishop of Erfurt, Hugo Aufderbeck who enabled the prayers to take place in the Lorenzkirche.

From these peace prayers in 1978 there is a direct line of continuity to the GDR's Ecumenical Assembly of 1988 and 1989 both in the ecumenical dimension, and the continuing militarisation of society as a catalyst for disaffection and dissent. The peace prayers in Erfurt also highlight another dimension of the Ecumenical Assembly sometimes overlooked - as well as being a de-facto political event it was also a gathering with long standing and deep spiritual roots.

Following the peace prayers on 18 June, "Zeitzeugen" will look back at the prayers as one of the roots of the peaceful revolution on 1989.

"In autumn 1989 the peace prayers became for a for public debate," recalls Aribert Rothe, director of Erfurt's Protestant city academy, "Meister Eckhart". "Many people found them to be a source of encouragement and motivation for their action. This event is intended to recall the impact of the prayers, and the fact this this power still exists. More than ever there is a need for peace prayers."

The 'peaceful revolution' or the 'revolution of non-violence'

The musings on the history of civil disobedience in the 20th century made me think again about describing the events of 1989 in East Germany as a "peaceful revolution". Peaceful revolution may conjure up images of an ordered transition of power, and yet it was a revolution in which those who were camapigning for change faced the full force and violence - both open and covert - of the state. It's true that what has become to be seen as the turning point of autumn 1989 - the mass demonstration in Leipzig on 9 October - passed off peaecfully. Yet, in September and early October, the GDR police and security forces set about protesters with violence using truncheons, and batons and physical force. And even after the fall of Honecker and the opening of the Berlin Wall, the covert violence of the state continued, despite new freedoms of expression and of movement. As Walter Suss points out, a proposal drawn up on 4 December 1989 by the higher echelons of the now rebaptised Office for National Security postulated the continued surveillance and actions to repulse the "unconstitutional" activities of movements and associations, and using all available possibilities to prevent the "misuse" of churches by such forces. It was the non-violent action to occupy the offices of the state security apparatus that neutralised such attempts to roll back the revolution. Maybe rather than speaking of a "peaceful revolution", it would be better to speak of a "revolution of non-violence" to underline it was a revolution using non-violent methods, rather than an ordered change that faced no real opposition.