ABSTRACT
Until 1989, Communist rule in East Germany seemed perdurable, buttressed by a Wall which SED leader Erich Honecker promised would still be standing a century later. Popular revolt seemed doomed to fail. From June 1953—the date of a workers' uprising—until 1989, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) suffered a dearth of collective protest. For decades ordinary East Germans had been denied any say in public life, any influence on political power. From the mid-1970s onwards, East Germany suffered almost permanent and intractable economic stagnation. The failure of the Honecker regime to cope with this—except through desperate measures of enforcing austerity and expanding borrowing—nourished frustrations and discontent throughout society. The regime had failed to placate the movement. Faced with the choice between intransigently defending GDR sovereignty, which would provoke further radicalization, or bowing to the call for unification, Hans Modrow chose the lesser evil and announced his conversion to pan-German nationalism.
