How a pan-European picnic brought down the iron curtain

On 19 August 1989, Hungarians and Austrians gathered in friendship at the border, paving the way to unification

When the end finally came for the iron curtain, it was not bulldozers or hammers that struck one of the first decisive blows, but a picnic.

Thirty years ago this Monday, on 19 August 1989, thousands of Hungarians and Austrians gathered at the border fence between the two countries, which also marked the dividing line between the Communist bloc and the west. They had come for a "pan-European picnic" of solidarity and friendship across the iron curtain, as momentum for political change increased and the eastern bloc regimes struggled to keep up with rising popular discontent.