How a picnic started the fall of the Iron Curtain
Update: 2025-08-19
Description
A brass band, goulash cooking in giant pots over open flames, people dancing around a bonfire — a pan-European picnic at the border between Hungary and Austria in 1989 was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Suddenly hundreds of East Germans stormed the border into the West and freedom. It's a moment in history where the power of ordinary people changed the world.
An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain was presented at the Adelaide Writers' Week
Speakers
Matthew LongoAuthor of The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron CurtainAssistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University
Annabelle Quince (host)ABC broadcaster and presenter of ABC Radio National's Rear Vision
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