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Leipzig in Fall 1989
In the fall of 1989, the Monday prayers for peace at Leipzig's St. Nicholas Church, the Nikolaikirche, became the starting point for weekly demonstrations through the city center. On October 9, around seventy thousand people marched around the inner ring road chanting Wir sind das Volk, We are the people, despite fears of a violent crackdown. Security forces did not intervene, and the peaceful demonstration became a turning point; a month later, on November 9, the Berlin Wall opened. The period from fall 1989 to reunification on October 3, 1990, is known in German as die Wende, the turn. For people who lived in the GDR, it changed almost everything at once: currency, jobs, laws, and the shops. Memories of everyday life in the East, such as standing in line for scarce goods, parcels from relatives in the West, or the Konsum cooperative stores, are part of many family stories. The word Ostalgie, a blend of Ost and Nostalgie, describes a fondness for the products and routines of GDR life. Historians and many East Germans themselves caution against both a nostalgic picture and a purely dark one: the GDR was a dictatorship with a powerful secret police, and at the same time people built lives, friendships and traditions within it.