prager botschaft

To prevent further exodus to the West Germany via Prague, the government of East Germany closed its border with Czechoslovakia on this day in 1989 after some seven-thousand political refugees had camped out on the grounds of the West German Embassy and were granted safe passage on special trains bound for the BDR. The Velvet Revolution is fomenting at the same time as unrest in Berlin, Leipzig and elsewhere ensues and once the border is reopened a month later, another group of East German asylum-seekers cross into Hof, a West German frontier town.