Hannes Schreiber osztrák ügyvivő beszéde

Opening of the exhibition “Freedom and Democracy” 25 June 2009

Address

I think there is only one event in history, in which two foreign ministers met with pincers in their hands. This was on 27 June 1989. The two ministers were Alois Mock and Gyula Horn. Their task was to cut the Iron Curtain in two – the curtain, which had divided Europe for more than forty years.

Usually ministers think a lot about the consequences of their deeds. But in this case, I do not think, they really could imagine what was to come in the next six months and how the picture of two Ministers with pincers in their hand would encourage millions of people in Central and Eastern Europe to fight for their freedoms and for human rights.

I do not intend to give an analysis of historic facts, which made “1989” possible – changes in Communist Party of Soviet Union, a very skillful Hungarian diplomacy in Moscow, the establishment of a multi-party system in Hungary in early 1989, developments in Poland and others. I neither want to focus on the consequences of this year – some of them may still be in distant future. But I would like to give an idea, what it meant for us, Austrians.

From most big cities of our country, the Iron Curtain was less than 150 km away, from Vienna it was 60 km. For centuries there had been an open border, with people crossing for going to markets and parish fairs. The Iron Curtain, which went down in the late forties, may physically have been only three meters high, but for us, it marked the end of the world. Hardly anybody would think there is life behind this fence. But we were well aware, that there was a military threat, including a nuclear threat, which could make our cities new Hiroshimas in less than two minutes.

For a long time, nobody promoted electrification of railways from Vienna to Prague – hardly anybody would take this train anyway. For years there were not even road signs announcing directions to Budapest, Bratislava or Prague.

During these forty years, it was four times, that we saw large groups of people from an Eastern European Country visiting Austria. In 1956 it had been Hungarians – 200.000 of them stayed; in 1968 it was Czechs and Slovaks and in 1980 Polish asylum seekers: Every time the other side of the border opened for a few months, just to close even firmer afterwards. Many of us feared another intervention of the Warsaw pact to come in late 1989, one of the sort we had seen before.

But this time, freedom and democracy were to stay: The 27 June 1989 meeting of the Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock and the Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn was of large symbolic significance and – as I mentioned - encouraged many other people. Let me just mention the Velvet revolution in Czechoslovakia and the demonstrations in Timisoara.

We Austrians also remember well September 1989: An endless queue of “Trabis” – cars seemingly mostly made of plastic and produced exclusively in Eastern Germany – crossed the Hungarian-Austrian border. I presume, we will hear during this meeting, where they originally came from and where they were going to. And why these cars made the “Berin wall” come down.

Sometimes making history is about asking the right questions. In 1989, discussions did not focus on: Who was guilty that the curtain was built? Who was guilty, that it was still there? Who should pay for its removal? What is the risk of such a removal of the Iron Curtain not silently, but in the presence of media? The questions were: How could the unique opportunity be used to overcome a historic divide? Who could lend a helping hand? And as a consequence, 27 June 1989 became a mark stone in history.

Thank you.