1

Leipzig 1989
John Simpson
Audioscript

(2:35) East Germany was the most obedient country I had ever visited, but by 1989, the
obedience was breaking down, not quite so much in Berlin, where you might have expected
to, but in Leipzig.
(Bells)
And the churches were at the heart of it. Today, the churches in Leipzig are celebrating the
20
th
anniversary of a revolution which turned out to be entirely peaceful, but at the time, no-
one dared to hope it would be like that. Regular prayers for peace had turned into open
demonstrations, and the one that was scheduled for Monday 9
th
October was clearly going
to be a major confrontation. The Tien An Men Square massacre had happened only four
months earlier. Might the aging East German leader, Erik Honeker, take the Chinese option,
and shoot the demonstrators down?

A key figure in Leipzigs intellectual life at that time was Kurt Mazur, the conductor of the
famous Gewandhaus orchestra.

Mazur: The tension, of course, was enormous. In the morning I had a dress rehearsal, in the
evening a concert. After the dress rehearsal came three young teenagers, with a message:
Mr. Mazur, can something be done, because we heard that today the troops and the police
will start to shoot?. I know that the young people who wanted to go to the demonstration
said farewell to their parents, as if they were soldiers going to war, and they were not sure
they would come back.
(Speech in German)

Mazur agreed to put out an appeal for calm, which he made jointly with some leading
reformers within the Leipzig Communist party. It was broadcast to everyone, the people who
were going to demonstrate, the troops and the secret police, who were starting to assemble
in the city centre.

Then Mazur had to go on stage at the Gewandhaus to perform, of all unsuitable pieces, Till
Eulenspiegels Merry Pranks, by Richard Strauss. As he did so, he had no idea whether there
would soon be a bloodbath in the streets outside.

Mazur: As I came on stage, all the people stood up. The house was full. I thought: For Gods
sake, what shall happen now?
(Music)
My hands were shaking. There was electricity in the air,; and we started with Till
Eulenspiegels Lustige Streicher. (Music)
2

And then happened what nobody could expect: the government people were so surprised
that they didnt find the way to react. (Music)

As the orchestra played, the demonstrators gathered in the darkened streets outside, there
were increasingly frantic phone calls between the local communist leadership in Leipzig and
the party bosses in East Berlin. The Leipzig party secretary had been trying to persuade the
leaders in East Berlin that there mustnt be a massacre, prevailed. But the Stasi, the secret
police, were desperate to make sure that, whatever happened that night, no word of it
would leak out. Yet the world found out that the East German government had backed down
in face of the demonstrators because of the courage of one man.

Twenty years later, I invited him back to the church tower overlooking the pleasant,
moderately prosperous centre of Leipzig to talk about that nights demonstration.

(German)
Siegbert Schefke was a dissident cameraman from East Berlin who usually made films about
the environment. He sensed that- this was going to be a critical moment and he was
determined to film it.
(German)

He told me his flat in East Berlin was under 24-hour surveillance from Stasi agents, who
would sit in a car outside his front door. Theyd follow him everywhere he went, even if it
was just to the bakery each morning. That day, though, he put his lights and radio on a time
switch and climbed out over the roof to join a friend and drive down to Leipzig. On the way,
they changed cars, to put the Stasi off the scent. As they drove, they saw with the greatest
foreboding, that there were several big military convoys travelling in the same direction.
(German)

When we arrived in Leipzig, we were looking for a safe spot to put our camera, because we
were not sure what would happen. There was always the possibility of the Chinese solution,
so there was uncertainty.

The tower of Leipzigs impressive Evangelical Reform Church in the city centre seemed ideal.
They went to the Minister, Hans-Jrgen Sievers, and his wife Wilmer. If theyd decided to
play it safe, and said no, things that night would have been very different.

Wilmer Sievers told me what happened: The doorbell rang, and two young men stood in
front of our door. They asked, Can we film from your church tower?.

JS: What did you think when you heard that?

3

WS: It was my husbands decision. His only thought was How can we manage that nobody
sees.

JS: So you didnt have any doubt about saying Yes. It was just about how it was going to be
done.

WS: Im from West Germany, and I came to marry my husband in 1967, and so part of my
life I had lived in West Germany, the second part in the GDR, and our wish was a united
Germany, of course, and an end of this socialist state.

JS: But you must have known that if the Stasi had caught the cameramen up the tower,
youd be in real trouble.

WS: One thought was, whatever happens this evening on the 9
th
October, it must be seen by
the world. If there will be bloodshed, the world must see it.

So Schefke and his friend, plus camera, were smuggled up the tower to the circular walkway
near the top of the spire. Two hundred feet below them, the demonstration was getting
underway.
(Sounds of crowd).

JS: So you went up to the tower, what did you see then?

(German) SS: When the demonstrators came around the corner, all was peaceful. We were
quite relieved, but at the same time, we could see the Stasi up on high buildings, and we
thought, if we can see them, then they can see us. (Crowd)

But the Stasi were too busy watching the action on the ground below. Schefke filmed the
whole thing, from the initial face-off to the moment the police might have opened fire, but
didnt. The government had backed away from violence. It was a hugely exhilarating
moment, and Schefke had got the pictures of it, but he still had to smuggle them out to West
Germany.

(German) SS: With a diplomatic passport, you didnt get stopped at the border. So with one
of my diplomat friends, I arranged a meeting in a revolving door in a nearby hotel, and I gave
him the tape. He was afraid, and he put the tape in his underpants, and then he left the
country.

(German) SS: And then I went back to Berlin in the Trabant. I went into the house over the
roof into my flat, looked out the window. I saw the Stasi sitting there smoking a cigarette,
and the next morning I went with them to the bakery. (11.50)