Shredding Iron Curtains

On this day thirty years ago, the Iron Curtain shredded.  More specifically, there were protests, soldiers didn't shoot, and one month later, East Germans began to dismantle the wall that separated them from West Germany, and soldiers didn't shoot them.  It's a story that could have had a much worse outcome.

Instead, it changed the face of Europe and the larger world.

Many people don't realize that part that prayer played in this story.  Months before the pivotal moment, a Lutheran pastor who began to hold weekly Monday meetings in his church to pray for peace. This movement spread to other churches, and soon it was a mass movement of thousands of people. Communist officials later said, "We were prepared for everything except the prayers and candles" (quote from this story on All Things Considered).  People waited for the bullets. But the power of peace defeated the forces of violence.

For more on the prayer meetings, including pictures of the church, see this post by a Lutheran bishop, Mike Rinehart.

I am also struck by the administrators who played a part in the story. In a story in The Washington Post on November 1, Mary Elise Sarotte tells about the East German official who was holding a boring news conference when he announced that travel restrictions would be loosened. The journalists immediately began to ask questions, but he hadn't read the briefing very carefully, so he made it up as he went along, announcing that the changes would be taking place immediately. The journalists reported, the ordinary citizens began to assemble, and the guards at the border were overwhelmed:

"Before long, the guards at Bornholmer Street were outnumbered by thousands of people; the same thing was happening at several other checkpoints. Overwhelmed and worried for their own safety, Jäger and his fellow guards reasoned that the use of violence might quickly escalate and become uncontrollable. They decided instead at around 9 p.m. to let a trickle of people cross the border, hoping to ease the pressure and calm the crowd. The guards would check each person individually, take notes and penalize the rowdiest by refusing them reentry. They managed to do this for a while, but after a couple of hours the enormous crowd was chanting, 'Open the gate, open the gate!"

After more debate, Jäger decided that raising the traffic barriers was the only solution. Around 11:30 p.m., the decades-long Cold War division of Germany ended.

Throughout the night, other crossings opened in much the same way."

I think of that boring bureaucrat and the blundering news conference, and I am reminded that even if we have the most dull jobs in the world where we feel like we affect nothing, we still might be an agent for social change. I think of those border guards who chose not to shoot. Even if they did it for fear of losing their own lives in the chaos that would ensue, that choice changed the future.

So in these days where many of us need hope that individuals may be able to have an impact, let us remember the autumn of 1989, where prayer spilled out of churches, people held candles, gates were opened, borders breached, and no bullets fired.

Let us remember that peaceful protests can change the world.  Let us light our candles.