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German, E. Europe presidents to mark overthrow of communism
Joachim Gauck plans to visit five cities between June and November that played a key role in the 1989 revolution that brought an end to Europe's communist regimes, a spokeswoman told AFP
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oachim Gauck plans to visit five cities between June and November that played a key role in the 1989 revolution that brought an end to Europe's communist regimes, a spokeswoman told AFP.
Together with the presidents of Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, he will kick off the tour in Warsaw on June 4, followed by Budapest later that month.
The five heads of state will then go to Leipzig in eastern Germany on October 9 where peace prayer meetings held in the city's Protestant St. Nicholas Church later snowballed into mass rallies in 1989.
By October 9 of that year, 70,000 people converged on the square outside the church for a rally at which demonstrators first chanted "we are the people", in a direct rebuke to leaders of the "people's republic".
In November the presidents' tour rounds off in the capitals of Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Their trip aims to underscore that "the peaceful revolution took place in all Eastern Europe", the spokeswoman said.
Gauck, a former East German rights activist and Lutheran pastor, was a leading figure in the peaceful revolution that helped topple the Berlin Wall and went on to head the vast archives left behind by the despised Stasi secret police after reunification. (*****)
