The Foreign Service Journal, November 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2019 67 Hungary Played a Role, Too Donald Kursch Budapest, Hungary I was the deputy chief of mission at U.S. Embassy Budapest when the Berlin Wall was breached in November 1989. Although this historic moment caught us by surprise, as it did almost everyone else, on reflection we saw it as the culmination of a series of events in 1989 that brought the four-decade-long divi- sion between Eastern and Western Europe to an end. The Hungarians were rightfully proud of the forward-leaning role they had played in the process during this momentous year. This included the dis- mantling of the “Iron Curtain” border impediments with Austria in May; a hero’s reburial in June of former Prime Minister Imre Nagy, who had been executed during the 1956 revolution; the government’s Sep- tember decision to open its western border for East German vacationers who did not wish to return home; and the proclamation ending the Hungarian People’s Republic and establishing a parliamentary democracy on Oct. 23. Our ambassador, Mark Palmer, skillfully led our embassy in providing practical and moral support for this process, and President George H.W. Bush’s historic visit in July 1989 made clear that the United States stood behind those who sought to create an open and democratic society in Hungary and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. In August 1989, while en route to a luncheon at Hungary’s Lake Balaton with visiting Congressman Tom Lantos, I saw a large number of East German–plated cars whose owners appeared to have no intention of returning to the GDR. As these numbers multiplied in the ensuing weeks and these East Ger- mans were directed to temporary facilities in Budapest and else- where, it became increasingly evident to me and my embassy colleagues that a weakened Hungarian communist government leadership, struggling to retain some degree of public credibility and under pressure fromWest Germany’s leaders, would allow these East Germans to leave for the West, which they did on Sept. 10. In the days prior to this decision it seemed to us as if Erich Honecker and his hard-line compatriots in East Berlin had less appreciation of this reality, clinging instead to the hope that Hungary would somehow force these GDR citizens to return home. Thus, the fall of the Berlin Wall in November may have been a greater surprise to the East German leadership in Berlin than it was for us in Budapest. As we watched the wall collapse, we concluded happily that the process of demolishing the barri- ers between Eastern and Western Europe had reached the point of no return. Hungary’s Foreign Minister Gyula Horn, a former hard-line communist who played the key role in the government’s deci- sion to allow the East Germans to leave Hungary, was awarded Europe’s prestigious Charlemagne Prize in 1990 to recognize his outstanding work in the service of European unification. And although Horn’s former communist compatriots, now compet- ing as Democratic Socialists, were soundly defeated in Hungary’s first free elections of the post-communist era in March 1990, Horn survived politically and subsequently led his party back to power, serving as prime minister from 1994 to 1998. Donald Kursch was deputy chief of mission in Budapest from 1986 to 1990. He was assigned to Bonn in 1990, where he witnessed the formal reunification of Germany in October 1990. Mr. Kursch lives in Washington, D.C. In places where it no longer stands, the path of the Berlin Wall is marked with cobblestones set in the pavement. Berlin, 2015. JAMESTALALAY