Harald Kirschner Cracow . DDR cultural centre

At the beginning of October my photographer colleague Michael Scheffer and I were in Cracow to set up and open an exhibition of Leipzig photographers with the title “The City”, staged in the scope of the Leipziger Kulturtage festival that was taking place there. In the knowledge that important events were likely to unfold in Leipzig at that time, we embarked on our journey with mixed feelings. But Cracow surprised us. From our hotel room we observed the Spanish King Juan Carlos receive an enthusiastic welcome from a large crowd of people on the marketplace. At the same time, posters in the city called for attendance at a meeting for freedom in the GDR and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. The Poles declared their solidarity with Leipzig and the Neues Forum. On a visit to the Cracow office of the Solidarity movement we were given a warm welcome as citizens of Leipzig.

The highlight was the action of the Polish independent and oppositional youth movement WiP (freedom and peace): they symbolically bricked up the entrance to the GDR cultural centre, remembered the deaths at the Wall, applied slogans and posters. The GDR as a state was negated. Not the “GDR” but the D for Deutschland was the focus. Polish youths here were already thinking further ahead, when no-one in Leipzig, Dresden or Berlin was paying thought to reunification.

That was 05 October.