About the Book
Against the backdrop of upheaval throughout the Soviet Empire the people of East Germany arose in spontaneous revolt and threw off the bonds of tyranny. In the face of police brandishing truncheons and soldiers wielding machine guns they held candles and sang. Walled within an atheist land they flocked to churches and prayed. Labeled enemies of the State they chanted defiantly, "We Are the People "
The epicenter of the revolution was Leipzig, in the St. Nikolas Church. For years, handfuls of dissidents had gathered there on Monday evenings for prayer services, but in 1988 attendance suddenly increased, and by the fall of 1989 the sanctuary was full and people literally spilled onto the streets outside. In response the State dispatched its security forces, threatening violence to restore public order. The stage was set for a decisive confrontation between the vanguard of the proletariate and the workers themselves.
Yet the story is more complex than a struggle between Church and State. In fact, Church leaders hoped to reform, not replace, socialist society, while communist officials who refused to deviate from the scientific worldview of Marxism-Leninism nevertheless conceded the Church a role within socialism. And many who attended the prayer services and then demonstrated outside St. Nikolas had long ago wearied of communist propaganda but had little interest in Christianity. They simply wanted out of the German Democratic Republic, and so they used the sanctuary of the Church to launch protests they hoped would speed their exit.
On a larger scale the drama was the end of a grand political experiment pitting democracy against the Party-State of Marxism-Leninism. Among thecountries segregated into the Western and Eastern blocs after World War II, Germany had the unique distinction of occupying both camps, a nation literally cleaved apart by an arbitrary political line. In the wake of Hitler's Third Reich both states of the divided nation competed to create a new vision for Germany's future. Yet forty years of totalitarian rule in the East by a regime armed to the teeth, which riddled its society with spies and informants and smothered it with communist doctrine, failed to extinguish yearnings for freedom. In a modern retelling of an ancient story, the walls of Jericho did not fall to foreign armies marching around the outside, but were brought down by its own citizens walking peacefully through the streets on the inside.
This book chronicles these incredible events which helped trigger the downfall of the communist government, paving the way for Germany's reunification.