The country that opened its border with Austria in September 1989, allowing a mass exodus of East Germans, was Hungary.
Hungary was already carrying out political reforms and dismantling sections of its fortified border with Austria. On September 10, 1989, the Hungarian government announced that East German citizens in Hungary could cross into Austria, effectively creating the first large breach in the Iron Curtain. Thousands used the route to reach West Germany.
The movement accelerated after the Pan-European Picnic near Sopron on August 19, when Hungarian guards briefly opened a border gate and hundreds of East Germans escaped into Austria. Although the event was initially symbolic, it demonstrated that the border could be crossed and encouraged more people to travel to Hungary. The September decision transformed those individual escapes into a mass departure.
This episode is sometimes overshadowed by the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9. Hungary’s action came earlier and weakened East Germany’s control by exposing the government’s inability to prevent citizens from leaving through another communist country. The exodus also intensified the political crisis that brought down the Berlin Wall weeks later.