Karl-Marx-Platz (Augustusplatz), Leipzig

Seventy thousand on the ring

On the evening of Monday 9 October 1989 some 70,000 people walked around Leipzig's inner ring road. They came from the peace prayers held at five o'clock in St Nicholas' Church and three other churches in the city centre, and many carried lit candles. They chanted "Wir sind das Volk", we are the people, and "Keine Gewalt", no violence.

Armed police and factory militia waited in the side streets. The East German leadership had prepared for a violent crackdown. It never came, and why the order to intervene was never given is still debated.

Six names on the loudspeakers

From six o'clock the city's loudspeakers carried an appeal for calm on both sides, read by the conductor Kurt Masur. It was signed by six men: Masur, the cabaret artist Bernd-Lutz Lange, the theologian Peter Zimmermann, and three local secretaries of the ruling SED, Kurt Meyer, Jochen Pommert and Roland Wötzel.

The prayers themselves were not new. Monday evening prayers for peace had been held in St Nicholas' since 20 September 1982.

A square renamed with every regime

The crowds gathered on Karl-Marx-Platz, the vast square on the inner ring. Its name changed with the politics of the day: the Social Democratic city government renamed Augustusplatz after Marx in 1928, the Nazis restored the old name in 1933, and the East German state brought Marx back in 1953. It became Augustusplatz again on 3 October 1990, the day of German reunification.

In 1989 it was ringed by the buildings of the socialist city. To the north stood the pale Opera House of 1960. To the west rose the university's main building with the huge bronze relief Aufbruch of 1973, Karl Marx at its centre, and the university tower of 1972, about 142 metres high and shaped like an open book. To the south stood the Gewandhaus concert hall of 1981 and the Mende fountain of 1886.

One building was missing. In May 1968 the authorities had dynamited the university church of St Paul, which had come through the war with little damage. The Paulinum, the assembly hall that recalls its shape, opened only in December 2017.

Why Leipzig lights candles every October

Leipzig's 9 October is remembered as the decisive day of the peaceful revolution. The security forces held back, and the protest broke through. A month later, on 9 November, the Berlin Wall fell, and within a year Germany was reunified.

The city marks the day every year with a Festival of Lights. For Germans it stands for something rare in their history: a revolution that won because it stayed peaceful.

Sources

• Wikipedia (de): Montagsdemonstrationen 1989/1990 in der DDR
• Wikipedia (de): Augustusplatz
• leipzig.de
• Wikipedia (en): Monday demonstrations in East Germany