07.07.1989: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev distances himself from the so-called Brezhnev doctrine of November 1968 and says that each socialist state can decide for themselves how to develop. Several Leipzig base groups issue a joint declaration criticising the violence of state organs against peaceful demonstrators - epd.

Impressions from the Wende period

The Leipzig photographer Martin Naumann has put together a set of postcards of images - Wende-Tage-Impressionen - from the Wende period which are taken from his book Wende-Tagebuch - both published by Militzke and available online. This is one of Naumann's photos from the period. MDR has a photo gallery here.

06.07.1989 - the opening of a four-day Kirchentag in in Leipzig, at which the social and political conflicts in the GDR were thematised as well as demands for political change. At the same time, alternative groups opened an "alternative Kirchentag" to protest at the exclusion of critical groups from the main event. The governments in Bonn and East Berlin signed an environment agreement for the clean up of the Elbe and a reduction in the air pollution in the GDR - epd.

New internet portal for the peaceful revolution

The Federal Foundation for the Investigation of the SED Dictatorship has a launched a new internet portal (in German) - Zeitzeugen 89¦90 - that promotes contacts with the eyewitnesses and actors of the peaceful revolution, and including a calendar of events "On this Day", 20 years ago.

Eastern Germans see GDR in positive terms - survey

Meanwhile, as Hungary looks back to the symbolic opening of the Iron Curtain with mixed feelings, a majority of eastern Germans see the German Democratic Republic in mostly positive terms, according to a news story on the Web site of the Protestant Church in Central Germany. Forty-nine per cent of those questioned agreed that there were "more good sides than bad to the GDR". Another eight percent said people had lived happier and better lives than now. Altogether 1208 people in eastern and western Germany were surveyed. The federal commissioner for eastern Germany, Wolfgang Teifensee, said the survey showed that "we must not relax when it comes to dealing with the history of the GDR". Eastern Germans were also more sceptical about the extent to which the hopes of the peaceful revolution had been realised. Western Germans were much more positive in their assessment about the achievements of German unity.

Hungary remembers opening of Iron Curtain with mixed feelings

ENI has posted this article about the weekend commemoration of the symbolic cutting of the Iron Curtain by the foreign ministers of Hungary and Austria. Of course, the 1989 event was PR - Hungary continued to police the border and GDR citizens visiting Hungary were still not allowed to pass through the Hungarian border in a westerly direction. The picture is of an East German Trabant - which for a few weeks in autumn 1989 became the rather unlikely symbol of freedom of movement between East and West. ENI also quotes from this statement by the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe on "Europe and the churches 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain", in which the CPCE noted that between 2004 and 2007 most central and eastern European countries had joined the European Union.

"However, not all the promises of the new freedom in Europe have been fulfilled," stated the church grouping, which gathers more than 100 Lutheran, Reformed, United, Methodist and other Protestant churches. "On the one hand are gratitude and joy at liberation from systematic and violent oppression and the positive experiences in growing together," it said. "On the other side, anxiety is growing about the great economic and social differences in Europe and a persistent mental division into 'East and 'West'."

'It wasn't meant to be like this'

In a year of anniversaries, today - 27 June 2009 - marks the 20th anniversary of the ceremony on the Austro-Hungarian border when the foreign ministers of the two countries - Gyula Horn and Alois Mock - took bolt cutters to the wire fence that divided East and West, to symbolise that the postwar division of Europe was coming to an end - this was one of the many events that was both symbol of, and catalyst for, the changes that would sweep the continent later in 1989.

For the first time in almost 20 years, I am in Budapest again, this time at a consultation sponsored by the Lutheran World Federation on "Church and State in Societies in Transformation", 20 years after the system change of 1989. Before the meeting began, I met up with an old friend who had been active in the civic rights movement and the founding of new, independent, political parties at the end of the 1980s.

Hungary is not in a mood to celebrate the events of 1989, she told me. The country has been hit massively by the global economic crunch, the value of the currency has plummeted and a prime minister has been driven out of office, while the political parties are mired in corruption. The most important thing now to my friend, she told me, is her daughter and her family.

The message was reinforced by the opening welcome from representatives of the Hungarian Lutheran church. In her sermon at the opening worship the deputy bishop of the southern region of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Hungary, the Rev. Marianna Szabó-Mátrai, noted how In today's Hungary, young people believe they need to, "reach the top and become rich". At the same time, "We, here in Eastern Europe feel that in this region and in this culture we need to run more, we need to worry more … than in the northern or western part of our continent."

Professor Tibor Fabiny, in his speech welcoming participants, noted how Hungary has been hard hit by the global economic downturn, he said, leading to the rise of extremist political parties. "The most recent elections for members of the European Union Parliament have not quenched our fears," he said. "The experience of crisis, once again in modern history, have resulted in the sudden emergence and strengthening of populist and dangerous tendencies in the political discourse, the intensification of right-wing radicalism. And this is not what we wanted 20 years ago."