BUDAPEST, Hungary — European leaders on Saturday marked the 20th anniversary of the symbolic fall of the Iron Curtain, often described as the first crack in the Berlin Wall and one of the key episodes leading to the end of communism in Eastern Europe.
The presidents of Germany, Austria, Finland, Slovenia and Switzerland, as well as high-ranking officials from Poland, Britain and more than 20 other countries, participated in a commemorative session at the Hungarian parliament and a gala event at the Hungarian State Opera House.
On June 27, 1989, the then-foreign ministers of Hungary, Gyula Horn, and Austria, Alois Mock, cut through some barbed wire on the border between the two countries, putting a symbolic end to a physical and psychological boundary of which by then there was little left.
“Looking at the entire chain of events, we rightfully and deservingly celebrate June 27 as the day in which the partitioning of Europe came to an end,” Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom said at the start of the special session in parliament. “We have every reason to celebrate together. The cut barbed-wire fence was an immediate symbol that helped the whole world understand what was happening here in the center of Europe.”
Hungary had begun to dismantle the Iron Curtain nearly two months earlier, on May 2, 1989 — partly because border guards said it was in such poor condition that even small animals were setting off false alarms along the electrified fence.
With most of it already gone, officials had trouble finding even a small section of the Iron Curtain for Horn and Mock’s staged photo opportunity with wire cutters.
By the end of the summer, thousands of East German “tourists” were living in tents on the grounds of the West German embassy in Budapest and in several other locations around the city, including church yards and the site of a communist youth camp.
Within two months, on Nov. 9, the Berlin Wall fell, and Germany’s reunification was formalized in October 1990.
