Die große Freiheit (1994)

Summer 1989. Hungary's newly elected President Miklos Nemeth receives from Mikhail Gorbachev, in a secret talk, permission to largely dismantle the barbed wire on the border with the west. More than 50,000 GDR citizens poured into the socialist "brother country" Hungary in order to flee to the west via the still officially closed, but already permeable border with Austria. This hole in the "Iron Curtain" initiated the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. The events developed a dynamic that made the unimaginable possible: When Erich Honecker wanted to bloodily smash a mass demonstration in Leipzig based on the Beijing pattern on October 9, in order to "put an end to the counterrevolution once and for all", he was taken by his own comrades overturned. A month later, the Berlin Wall falls. The end of the GDR is sealed - through a peaceful revolution. With the three-part report series "Die große Freiheit" (The Great Freedom), ZDF gives a comprehensive look back at those dramatic days in summer and autumn 1989. Gorbatchev, Eduard Shevardnadze, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and other politicians from back then describe - often for the first time - what was on the top floors was decided behind closed doors. Many unpublished film recordings and moving memories of many unknown people who took their fate into their own hands at the time give a captivating picture of that time.