Seizing the Square: 1989 Protests in China and Germany from a Global Perspective 9783110682601, 9783110682465

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Daniel Palm Seizing the Square

SpatioTemporality / RaumZeitlichkeit

Practices – Concepts – Media / Praktiken – Konzepte – Medien Edited by / Herausgegeben von Sebastian Dorsch, Barbel Frischmann, Holt Meyer, Susanne Rau, Sabine Schmolinsky, Katharina Waldner Editorial Board Jean-Marc Besse (Centre national de la recherche scientifique de Paris), Petr Bilek (Univerzita Karlova v Praze), Fraya Frehse (Universidade de São Paulo), Harry Maier (Vancouver School of Theology), Elisabeth Millán (DePaul University, Chicago), Simona Slanicka (Universität Bern), Jutta Vinzent (University of Birmingham), Guillermo Zermeño (Colegio de México)

Volume / Band 9

Daniel Palm

Seizing the Square 1989 Protests in China and Germany from a Global Perspective

This book is an edited version of a dissertation manuscript defended at the University of Bremen. The chapter “On the SpaceTime of 1989” was written to fit the script into the book series “Spatiotemporality”. Printed with the financial support of the Erfurter RaumZeit-Forschung (ERZ) / Erfurt Spatio-Temporal Studies Group at the University of Erfurt in Germany and the Sciencefunding Erfurt gGmbH.

ISBN 978-3-11-068246-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-068260-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-068268-7 ISSN 2365-3221 Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940754 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Photograph on the book cover: Kyiv, 2014 (author’s photograph) Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Introduction

1

I I. I. I.

On the SpaceTime of 1989 16 Germany’s very own Peaceful Revolution 19 24 Modernization Tales for Tiananmen Framing a Global SpaceTime for 1989 29

II II. II. II. II.

Towards the Global Moment of 1989 45 Economic Globalization during the 1980s 46 58 The End of the Cold War Rising Global Civil Society 66 Globalization and its Local Discontents in 1989

III III. III. III.

The Global Moment of 1989 in Leipzig and Beijing Reaching Out from the Pockets of Civil Society Chasing the Moment in 1989 93 108 Towards the Fall of 1989

IV IV. IV. IV. IV.

Producing Counter-spaces on the Squares in 1989 121 The Enduring Occupation of Tiananmen 121 The Rhythmic Claim to Nikolaikirchhof in Leipzig 141 159 The Dominion of Representational Space in 1989 Globalization and the SpaceTime of 1989 184

75 77 77

188 Lessons from 1989 for 2011 and after Counter-spaces in Twenty-first Century Globalization 190 Euromaidan’s Transnational Entanglements 193 Being in Kyiv in 2014 197 Towards a Contemporary History of Seizing the Square 203 Acknowledgements Bibliography

210

List of abbreviations Index

229

209

228

To those who struggle

Introduction When the bell of the city hall in Frankfurt am Main struck six, police units in helmets and armor surrounding the central square engaged. They first broke through the sitting blockades and then immediately tore down the camp made out of tents and any other material protesters had at hand. The subsequent dissimilation of the alternative space set up on the square was thorough. Within the hour, nothing of the occupation remained. Only for a brief and exceptional moment in time would images of the seized square travel across the world to display the manifest discontent in Frankfurt at austerity measures after the financial crisis. By the end of the day, protests from across Europe reaching out to a global audience had dispersed. And though the occupation of the square did not last, it had mirrored an insistent claim that things could be different. For a brief moment, those seizing the square had created a space to demand change in global affairs. Their capacity to enforce that change, however, proved to be limited. The broad range of literature on protests and globalization notwithstanding, the answer to the question of what it means – politically – to seize a square in an increasingly interconnected world remains an open one. Protests in 2011 on Tahrir in Cairo, and later on Maidan in Kyiv, or Taksim in Istanbul were primarily discussed in terms of national or democratic trajectories. Less attention has been paid to the role of the city square itself.¹ And with regard to globalization, protests seizing squares have only recently been of interest to scholars.² Predecessors, like in 1989, remain stuck in narrations of nation. This book argues that the space produced on the squares is of crucial importance to understand political dynamics in a globalizing world. Since the 1970s, globalization pressures have been translated into protests seizing squares, which in turn have af For literature discussing the relationship of protests and space more generally, see Tilly, Charles. Spaces of Contention. Mobilization: An International Quarterly 5:2 (2000): 135 – 159; Sewell, William. Space in Contentious Politics. In Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. Dough McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly (eds.). Cambridge University Press, 2001, 51– 88; Routledge, Paul. Convergence Space: Process Geographies of Grassroots Globalization Networks. Interactions of the Institute of British Geographers 28:3 (2003): 333 – 349; Martin, Deborah G., and Byron Miller. Space and Contentious Politics. Mobilization: An International Quarterly 8:2 (2003): 143 – 156; Leitner, Helena, Eric Sheppard, and Kristin Sziarto. The Spatialities of Contentious Politics. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 33:2 (2008): 157– 172.  Tejerina, Benjamin, Ignacia Perugorría, and Tova Benski. From indignation to occupation: A new wave of global mobilization. Current Sociology 61:4 (2013): 377– 392; della Porta, Donatella. Social Movements in Times of Austerity. Bringing Capitalism back into Protest Analysis. Cambridge: Polity, 2015; Marlies Glasius and Geoffrey Pleyers. The Global Moment of 2011: Democracy, Social Justice and Dignity. Development and Change 44:3 (2013): 547– 67. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682601-001

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Introduction

fected the dynamics of globalization. When protests formed on Tiananmen Square and in the city center of Leipzig in 1989, the space produced in a global moment of time was of crucial importance. Occupations of the squares led to unpredictable dynamics in protests, impacting politics well beyond national borders. They produced not only a particular space but also a time in which actions became especially impactful. This “SpaceTime” of 1989 also offers lessons on the chaotic dynamics that have taken hold of squares from Hong Kong to Frankfurt around the year 2011. Framing protests on squares as unpredictable interventions into world politics has crucial implications for understanding contemporary globalization. Instead of assuming that protests serve as agents of national development or international trends in democratization, they need to be explored more open-endedly and within their global setting. Understanding the spatial practice of seizing a square in a moment that encompasses national borders provides an insight into what can be called the SpaceTime of squares. The following analysis shifts its attention to the role of squares in an increasingly globalizing world, which allows for interconnected mobilizations and leads to uncontrollable dynamics. Following this line of analysis, this book lays the foundation for a global perspective on protests that have seized squares in 1989 and after.

Seizing the Square in a Global Perspective The events in Frankfurt described above were part of a more significant moment of disruption that had already taken off in 2011. After the collapse of the financial markets and the consequent critical revision of liberal promises for a better future, protests in various areas of the world actively created a global context for their actions. Within a short period, several plazas in the middle of fast-moving cities turned into focal points for protests that penetrated institutionalized rule around the world. Often enough, the seized squares developed into counterspaces with their own dynamics, populated by a quite particular community refusing to leave even in the face of threatened violence. Not only was the phenomenon of what can be called “seizing the square” observable in all regions of the world around the year 2011, the phenomenon itself was apparently bound up with global dynamics that had led to a synchronous outburst of protests, which, often enough, they then also altered. Putting the seizure of the square into a global perspective is thus merely a matter of acknowledging the evident global nature of contemporary protests. Analyzing protests on squares from a global perspective means navigating between two poles for their interpretation: taking a singular event as an example

Introduction

3

of a general dynamic on a global scale, on the one side, and the rejection of any aim for generalization, on the other. This book seeks to find a middle ground between most general claims and radical prioritizations of the local. It acknowledges that though contemporary protests on the squares refer to and actively promote a global context, they often address quite different problems. In Frankfurt, an alliance of over 100 German and European non-government organizations (NGOs) were called to come to the city in order to “block a crucial center of global capitalism, learning from what we watched in Oakland and the Occupy movement in the United States, who in turn learned from the revolutions across North Africa, the Middle East and the Indignados of Southern Europe.”³ While the synchronous outburst of discontent in several world regions further stresses the transnational nature of the protests, they were nevertheless set in diverging contexts of crucial importance. Tensions in 2011 on the squares of various cities around the Mediterranean were concerned with a variety of problems that were not of interest to those seizing the square in Frankfurt 2012. The Occupy! Movement in the US again addressed particular issues of social inequality. Intertwined and connected, protests on the squares may refer to a shared cause, such as “global capitalism,” but the local ramifications of these cited global causes can differ widely. Divided by their diverging problems and motives, however, protests seizing the square around the world remain undeniably connected. There is thus a global history to unravel in protests seizing the square just as much as there are local contexts of importance to account for. To find a middle ground for interpreting protests seizing the square, this book refuses to rely on European-bound concepts for analysis. The uprisings of people in the cities around the world were too heterogeneous to be framed as “a” revolution on a global scale.⁴ More appropriately, each protest can be conceptualized as forming part of a larger “protest cycle”⁵ in which, on a closer look, any agency for democratization⁶ is far from assured. Especially in view of the aftermath of protests in Turkey, Ukraine, or Egypt, the need for reconsideration is strongly suggested. In order to understand the political nature of these protests

 Blockupy Frankfurt. #Blockupy for Global Change. 24 March 2012. http://2012.blockupyfrankfurt.org/en/Transnational.html (29 March 2020).  Paul Mason. Why it’s still Kicking off Everywhere. The New Global Revolutions. London (London: Verso, 2013), 261.  Tejerina et al. From indignation to occupation. Also: Davies, Thomas, Holly Eva Ryan, and Alejandro M. Peña (eds.). Protest, Social Movements and Global Democracy Since 2011: New Perspectives. Bingley: Emerald, 2016.  della Porta, Donatella. Mobilizing for Democracy. Comparing 1989 and 2011. Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Introduction

from a global perspective, more attention needs to be paid to one of the central objects of interest during the actual events: the square itself. This book contends that by focusing less on the consequences of events and asking about the reasons for the role of space in recent protests, a middle ground for understanding global politics on the square may emerge. Once the spatial aspect of protests is placed under scrutiny, a whole cascade of preliminary observations for further analysis opens up. From the events in Frankfurt alone, it is apparent that the question of who is allowed to be on the square is a crucial one, not only for protests but also for the police. While protesters arrived in the city center of Frankfurt from all over Europe, the right to public gatherings was rendered meaningless by the actions of local authorities.⁷ For the duration of a weekend, the police were eager to deny any politicization of urban space. In doing so, they enforced a physical facticity to the theoretical understanding that there is nothing to see and learn from those seizing the square.⁸ In turn, and nearly paradoxically at a time when people can interact effortlessly over social media, protests sought to seize the square to create a physical space for interaction. This conflict over the square was repeatedly fought over in several cities around the world in recent years: on Taksim and Tahrir, Maidan, and in Hong Kong Central. The synchronous and insistent claims to the square by protests around the world suggest that something of vital importance can be found there. Up to the imminent threat of physical violence, and sometimes enduring unfavorable conditions for weeks, people continued to seize the square. This book sets out with the premise that seizing the square is deeply embedded in a history that reaches beyond national timelines and connects otherwise clearly distinctive reasons and impacts of protests. The determined will to hold on to the square even under the threat of violence suggests that space has become a relevant category to understand politics in times of accelerating globalization. When protesters seize the square, they refer to global problems and quote transnational causes of discontent, while at the same time reacting to discontent based in distinct contexts. Globalization, in itself a space- and timebound process that interconnects people in diverging contexts, has repeatedly pushed the quest to seize the square to the fore.

 Mullis, Daniel et al. Social protest and its policing in the “heart of the European crisis regime”: The case of Blockupy in Frankfurt, Germany. Political Geography 55:1 (2016): 50 – 59.  A negation, which Alain Bertho already observed after the riots in France 2005. Bertho summed up that negation with formula: “Silence! Il n’ya pas du d’orchestre, la scène qu’on nous joue est truqueé. La vie, la nôtre [de la politique] est ailleurs.” Alain Bertho. Le temps des émeutes. Paris (Paris: Bayard, 2009), 48.

Introduction

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Fig. 1: Eager to police the square in Frankfurt: the German police in 2012. Credit: Daniel Palm.

Talking about Globalization Globalization is understood here as a process that co-shapes the conditions under which protests seize the square today. This process is not a convergence into one homogenous world society, but a multipolar process that unites without erasing difference. It may accelerate or slow down over time, and has already undergone different periods of intensity and counter-dynamics. Though historians of globalization have pointed out that periods of growing interconnectivity may suggest “one” shared history across the world, globalization is barely experienced unequivocally around the world. Regional differences remain of importance, even in a period of increased interconnectivity such as today. At the same time, globalization has confronted people around the world more recently with the fact that decisions concerning their livelihood may have shifted way beyond the reach of national authorities. Consequently, critical responses to increased interconnectivity may promote the desire for a decision space and self-enactment. Instead of framing globalization as a development project with a defined start and ending, globalization is to be understood as a process that increasingly interconnects people around the world – to different degrees and with different

6

Introduction

implications.⁹ Experiences and hence concepts of globalization vary around the world, and, consequently, a careful openness to re-interpretations of the concept needs to be maintained. The longue durée of globalization should not be lost from the picture,¹⁰ nor can the varieties of impact and types of responses dependent on context be neglected when talking about globalization. Chinese understandings of globalization, for instance, stress its managed character, as experienced within China since the 1980s.¹¹ Western framed understandings of globalization, in contrast, stress the de-control of markets and the “Neoliberal” global economic elite.¹² The understanding of timing and impact in a specific context needs to be taken into account when situating the squares in a global perspective. This being said, the following analysis does not situate protests on the square within separated histories of globalization. There are reasonable grounds that allow arguing for shared transregional dynamics. Going through different rhythms, setbacks, and accelerations, globalization was defined by nationstate-oriented politics in large parts of the world by the mid-twentieth century. This centrality of the nation-state is commonly understood to have decreased in the second half of the last century. Where national territories used to offer a relatively reassuring “decision and identity space”¹³ in the first half of the twentieth century, scattered clusters and new digital assemblages of territory can be found today.¹⁴ From the 1970s¹⁵ on, global forces in the economy, security archi-

 It is important to stress at this point already that any argument for differences found among discussion here are no representations of “Otherness.” Differences are articulated by means of interpreting literature and sources for comparison, opening a Third Space, where both difference and similarity can be negotiated. See Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.  McNeill, William H., and John R. McNeill. The Human Web. A Bird’s-Eye View of World History. London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003; Brook, Timothy. Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventieth Century and the Dawn of the Global World. London: Bloomsbury, 2008.  See, for instance: Yan Yunxiang. Managed Globalization. In Many Globalizations. Samuel P. Huntington and Peter L. Berger (eds.). Oxford University Press, 2011, 19 – 47; Wenshan Jia. Chiglobalization? A Cultural Argument. In Greater China in an Era of Globalization. Guo Suijan and Guo Baogang (eds.). Plymouth: Lexington, 2010, 17– 26.  See, for instance: Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 2005. Oxford University Press; Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Empire. Harvard University Press, 2000.  Charles S. Maier. Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era. The American Historical Review 105:3 (2000): 807.  Sassen, Saskia. Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton University Press, 2008.

Introduction

7

tecture, and civil society undermined the former dominance of the nation state. The impact of global transformation posed different challenges to diverging regimes around the world throughout the 1980s, and in 1989, “things were falling apart; but a new world order was yet there.”¹⁶ This shared transformation of accelerating globalization undermining nation-state territoriality allows for the happenings on the squares to be situated in a shared timeframe.¹⁷ Seizing the square in times of accelerating globalization since the 1970s can be understood as a critical intervention by spatial means into global transformations. Notwithstanding the most recent efforts to revive national territory as a political space, protests forming under accelerating globalization have been shown to be prone to appropriate urban space in discontent. As Saskia Sassen has pointed out after the protests in 2011, the streets and squares “can be conceived as a space where new forms of the social and the political can be made.”¹⁸ It is not any longer militant groups fighting from the countryside that seek to replace a national regime. Regimes, today, may fall when people in the cities seek the attention of a world watching in particular moments of change. With the possibility of interacting and referring to one another in real-time due to new communication technology, responses to accelerating globalization can form a part of and produce the imaginary of a shared global moment. From this perspective, seizing the square is a response to social pressures shared across various regions of the world. It engenders a moment in time where global transformations can be addressed across different contexts. What these counter-spaces of globalization set up meant for people in different contexts, and what the spatial and political nature of the square is, will be the topic of this book. In Frankfurt in 2012, a moment within a time of accelerating globalization was sought to connect the activities there to other protests in different regions of the world in discontent after the financial crisis. Seizing the squares, then, also meant seizing a moment. This SpaceTime observable in Frankfurt connects the scattered protests that took place that year. It correlated with a period of accelerating globalization in which the former space of politics, the nation state, is

 For a collection of essays describing the changes at hand in the 70s, see Ferguson, Niall, Charles S. Maier, Erez Manela, and Daniel J. Sargent (eds.). The Shock of the Global. The 1970s in Perspective. Harvard University Press, 2010.  Ulf Engel, Hadler, Frank, and Middell, Matthias (eds.). 1989 in a Global Perspective. Leipzig (Leipziger Universitäts Verlag, 2014), 164.  Middell, Matthias, and Katja Naumann. Global History and the Spatial turn: from the Impact of Area Studies to the Study of Critical Junctures of Globalization. Journal of Global History 5:1 (2010): 149 – 170.  Saskia Sassen. The Global Street: Making the Political. Globalizations 8:5 (2014): 574.

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under transformations ongoing since the 1970s. But the first time such a moment was sought on the squares in times of accelerating globalization can already be found in 1989.

Not talking about a Revolution In response to the complex transformation around the world that took off in the second half of the twentieth century, dissenting people on city squares increasingly interacted and tended to unify in a struggle, where the role of space became of vital interest. In certain moments, those occupying the square could and did relate to one another and actively produced a social space to confront the dynamics of globalization affecting their lives. While revolutions and social movements of the twentieth century tried to alter or seize the modern nation state, their marches and uprisings were a challenge to national authority. Protests seizing the city square today stay put, and their claim to the square may render a new political SpaceTime of interest that is unlike a revolution. Protests in the cities of Europe, the United States, and around the Mediterranean in 2011 were not the first instance where city squares came to play a prominent role in addressing problems of accelerating globalization. Not even the often quoted “Battle of Seattle” in 1999 marks an adequate starting point for writing the history of global unrest culminating in the city square. Accelerating globalization since the 1970s witnessed its first transnational and spatial affine protests in 1989. This book revisits the protests in order to reframe them from their common interpretations as national revolutions for a specific cause into protests seizing a square at a particular point in time that until today has been perceived as a turning point for large areas of the world. Looking at 1989 this way allows for the studying of protests seizing the square in order to learn more about protests that do the same today. Protests in 1989 offer insights into a particular SpaceTime that was being produced in a moment of discontent, and which altered globalization significantly. Insights into the political nature of the square will then help to reframe the analysis of protests currently seizing the square. Refusing to frame 1989 as national revolutions breaks with the prevailing literature, where there were only a few attempts to analyze the protests in 1989 from a global perspective. Typically framed in relation to observations of 1789 or 1848, and heavily leaning on the transatlantic history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, concepts of revolution easily adhere to Eurocentric and

Introduction

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linear history writing, which privilege histories of the nation.¹⁹ The prominence of the concept of revolution dominated interpretations of 1989 so strongly that “it is worth noting that in all the thousands of pages that have been written about the 1989 revolutions the global aspect both of ideas and practices is generally neglected.”²⁰ Until today, the paradigm of “revolution” in 1989 has persisted, even though the hardship of methodologies operating with national spatial framings²¹ and comparative strategies were already apparent from early on. Leading scholars in the field of comparative studies on revolutions like Charles Tilly had difficulties in framing the events of 1989. They lacked common attributes like “the vindictive violence, the class base, the charismatic vision, the faith in politics as an instrument of constructive change, and the resistance of old power-holders to removal.”²² In response to precisely such imperfect features that did not quite fit with the established understanding of revolutions, scholars came up with qualifying terms like peaceful revolution, catching-up revolution,²³ democratic revolution,²⁴ or Refumution,²⁵ and others. A global perspective is thus also a response to conceptual misalignments in comparative sociology that are prevalent in the literature on 1989. Instead of altering concepts of revolution to fit the observations, a global perspective, as developed here, will seek to fit the concepts for analysis to the actual observations. Seizing the square is thus understood here as a global spatial practice that lay at the heart of many protests in 1989 – just as it does today. A global perspective on seizing the square in 1989 would hold that protests may share a time and a space that is not bound by national particularities but is embedded in global transformations. Also, and altering common European interpretations, protests in 1989 were not solely expressions of a declining Soviet

 Skocpol, Theda. States & Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China. Cambridge University Press, 1979; Tilly, Charles. European Revolutions. 1492 – 1992. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993; Goldstone, Jack. Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. University of California Press, 1993.  Mary Kaldor. Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Cambridge (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003): 78.  Middell, Matthias. Der Spatial Turn und das Interesse der Globalisierung in der Geschichtswissenschaft. In Spatial Turn. Das Raumparadigma in den Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften. Jö rg Dö ring and Tristan Thielmann (eds.). Bielefeld: transcript, 2008, 103 – 124.  Tilly, European Revolutions, 234.  Habermas, Jürgen. Die Nachholende Revolution. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990.  Thompson, Mark. Democratic Revolutions: Asia and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge, 2003.  Stokes, Gales. The Walls Came Tumbling Down: The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Oxford University Press, 1993.

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Introduction

empire, but a worldwide eruption of discontent. As scholars of global history pointed out, in 1989, “existing political orders were challenged, be it through disobedience and upheaval, even civil wars, or rather peaceful revolutions and/or substantial (reformist) transformations”²⁶ – across different regimes. With the spread of ever-faster communication technology in the last decades, protests seizing the square in 1989 could already create a space that facilitated direct interaction between people watching from across the globe. Thus, protests in 1989 not only had global origins, they also upheld a globally shared moment with a global impact. When people gathered on the square in 1989, they interacted with and referred to another, and were well aware of the outcomes of protests taking place on the other side of the world. Analytically, the locale of these protests can be fittingly described as a glocal²⁷, or translocal²⁸ space. Dynamics on a square in 1989 were entangled with happenings elsewhere and vice versa. However, the national frame cannot yet be abandoned entirely for the following analysis. The seized square in 1989 was a global space within a transnational setting, but national framings held vital importance as well. Mixing such spatial framings of protests seizing the square suits contemporary history writing, where “unusual spatial concepts, be they transnational, transregional, or transcontinental in nature, have become more clearly visible in very different subfields of historiography.”²⁹ In order to understand space, and ideas on space during protests in an increasingly interconnected world, nation-border transcending approaches to the square are imperative. Furthermore, a truly global perspective needs to situate the protests in 1989 in a shared point in time that emerged after several years of transformations across world regions and regimes. Because accelerative globalization in itself barely allows for “one” revolution, the creation, or “production,” of a heterogenous counter-space in a global moment is a more suitable starting point for analysis. The fact that protests tend to produce these counter-spaces in various world regions around a shared moment in time underlines the importance of a dual understanding of not only space but also time. Seizing the square in breaking

 Engel et al, eds, 1989, 19.  Robertson, Roland. Glocalization. In Global Modernities. Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson (eds.). London: Sage, 1995, 25 – 44.  On Global History writing and translocality, see Epple, Angelika. Die Größe zählt! Aber wie? Globalgeschichte zwischen großen Synthesen und neuem Empirismus. Neue Politische Literatur 59:3, (2014): 422– 424.  Dominic Sachsenmaier. Global Perspectives on Global History: Theories and Approaches in a Connected World. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1.

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points of globalization, in global moments, produces a particular SpaceTime that is of interest in order to understand not only the square but also the history of globalization itself.

Comparing 1989 Protests in Beijing and Leipzig Two protests are of particular interest when asking about the role of the square during the protests in 1989: those that formed in Leipzig and Beijing. Both protests, in their own ways, seized a square. Both shared spontaneity and global attention, and each referred to one another as well as to times of change around the world. Besides reaching out and contextualizing their actions to global changes, protests in Leipzig and Beijing also reflected some undeniable global sources of discontent that will be explored more closely in what follows. Most crucially, as will be seen in the analysis, both protests shared the dynamics of the representational space produced on the square. Finally, protests in Beijing and Leipzig had widely different outcomes, which makes their comparison even more appealing. They formed part of a united but heterogenous SpaceTime in 1989. For readers unfamiliar with Chinese history, it is crucial to note that protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989 were by far not the first expressions of an active “civil society.” China has always had a conflictual history between its inhabitants, usurpers, and external forces reaching for power. While it is true that the Chinese state has lived through dynasties lasting for hundreds of years in peace, the last two hundred years were shaped in particular by violent conflict. Already in the nineteenth century, with the Boxer Rebellion, notions of upheaval hung in the air. After the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912, China drowned into a violent cycle driven by nationalist movements seeking to consolidate the state in the name of a new order. The ups and downs of protests were nowhere reflected better than on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It turned from a sacred place in front of the emperor’s Forbidden City to a space where the first movements demanded the modernization of China in 1919 (May 4th). Then, Tiananmen Square became a space designed to approve the newly consolidated power by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The mass parades of the early Peoples Republic of China (1949) on Tiananmen Square only preceded the mass parades of upheaval during the Great Proletarian Revolution (1966 – 1976). Also, the reformist path of Deng Xiaoping from 1979 was accompanied by criticism from students who formed an initial more significant protest in 1986 on Tiananmen Square. When protesters occupied Tiananmen in 1989, they seized a square of significant sym-

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Introduction

bolic value, into which the history of China in the twentieth century was inscribed. For readers unfamiliar with the history of Germany, some context to the protests in Leipzig is also needed. Though protests in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) culminated with people tearing down the Berlin Wall, a different wall had to be broken down before that in Leipzig. With its infamous state police and rather conservative state elites, East Germany suffered from an often quoted “wall of silence.” Especially under the rule of the last chairman of the state council of the Socialist Unity Party “SED” (1976 – 1989), Erich Honecker, people barely dared to criticize the state, much less so publicly. Intimidation faded slowly by the end of the 1980s. The protests that started to form in Leipzig are particularly interesting in order to understand the breaking of the “wall of silence” because they challenged the rule over public space little by little until finally unsettling the party leadership in Berlin. The reason Leipzig had become such an important city for protests in 1989 lay in its long history of hosting fairs, which allowed foreign journalists to visit the city twice a year. That presence of foreign journalists was used strategically by the dissidents congregating in and around the Nikolaikirche. By 1989 the square in front of the church became known by police and journalists for its oppositional character. When 1989 turned into a crisis for the SED, Leipzig was at heart over the battle of public space. When protests gathered on October 9th despite warnings by police and stateowned media, Honecker had to resign. In consequence, the decline of the SED was sealed – leading ultimately to the downfall of the Iron Curtain in Berlin. The following synthesis of secondary literature and primary sources on both protests in China and Germany needs to be selective. It is organized around the idea that the square can be seen to serve as an extraordinary political space for protests that is shaped by local as well as global dynamics. Reviewing secondary literature in chapter II introduces a triad of processes that help to understand the transregional context of protests and hence their synchronous emergence. The rise of a state-skeptic and a globally oriented and connected civil society was accompanied by accelerating globalization in the economic sphere that led to synchronous but different coping strategies in China and East Germany. As the former military might of the Red Army also faded with perestroika and glasnost in Europe, a new order in international relations was at hand, unbundling the former dependence of Berlin on Moscow. The result of these transformations was a shared moment of discontent with varying motives in both regimes that finally erupted in 1989. As for the local specifics of protests, chapters III and IV delve into the micro histories of the protests forming in Leipzig and Beijing that year. The role of the square in the protests is reconstructed using material from archives, interviews,

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and visual documents. To trace the production of SpaceTime in 1989, the most important archives were the International Institute of Social History (IISH), the Archiv Bürgerbewegung Leipzig (ABL), and the Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft (RVG). Furthermore, published collections of primary sources for both protests were used. Most prominently: “Jetzt oder Nie – Demokratie”³⁰ and “Freunde und Feinde”³¹ for Leipzig and “China’s Search for Democracy”³² and “Cries for Democracy”³³ for Tiananmen. What cannot be provided within the three analytical chapters, however, is a comprehensive history of the political culture in both regions of interest, China and Central Europe. The history of the formation of civil society,³⁴ especially relating to Tiananmen Square,³⁵ have already been discussed in considerable detail elsewhere, and the comparative history of all cultural aspects goes beyond the scope of this book. The comparison of two such distant protests as those in China and Germany has its own merits and problems. First of all, any generalization from the following observations is problematic. Rather than converging around similar lines of spatial practices and ideas, the analysis of the two protests will complement another. The comparison of the political quality of the square in Leipzig and Beijing will show a spectrum of how space is used and how it may impact global politics. The timid yet penetrative use of a square with little symbolic value and of little interest to party leaders in Berlin tells a different story than the forceful occupation of the symbolically loaded Tiananmen Square. But a comparative analysis of the role of the square in the protests in China and Germany 1989 will help

 Neues Forum Leipzig (ed.). Jetzt oder Nie- Demokratie! Leipziger Herbst 89. Neues Forum Leipzig Verlag, 1989. Hereafter, Jetzt oder Nie.  Dietrich, Christian und Uwe Schwabe. Freunde und Feinde: Dokumente zu den Friedensgebeten in Leipzig zwischen 1981 und dem 9. Oktober 1989. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1994. Hereafter, Freunde und Feinde.  Ogden, Suzanne, Susanne Harfort, Lawrence Sullivan, and David Zweig (eds.). China’s Search for Democracy: The Student and the Mass Movement of 1989, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1992. In the following only quoted as China’s Search for Democracy.  Han Minzhu (ed.). Cries for Democracy: Writing and Speeches from the Chinese democracy Movement. Princeton University Press, 1990. In the following only quoted as Cries for Democracy.  Wakeman, J. Frederic. The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate. Modern China 19:2 (1993): 108‐138. Also: Sullivan, Lawrence. R. The Emergence of Civil Society in China, Spring 1989. In The Chinese People’s Movement. Perspectives on Spring 1989. Tony Saich (ed.). London: Westview Press, 1990, 126 – 144. For critical reflections on the applicability of Western concepts such “democracy” or “civil society” in China, see Ogden, Suzanne. Inkings of Democracy in China. Harvard University Asia Center, 2002: 9 – 39.  Hershkovitz, Linda. Tiananmen and the Politics of Space. Political Geography 12:5 (1993): 395 – 420; Wu Hung. Remaking Beijing. Tiananmen Square and the Creation of a Political Space. University of Chicago Press, 2007.

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to contrast Eurocentric understandings of politics, globalization, and the events in 1989: “The way to provincialize Europe is not by continually harping on some unbridgeable gap that separates East from West, but by showing that both parts of the globe are subject to the same basic forces and are therefore part of the same basic history.”³⁶ For the understanding aimed at in this book, showing the shared history in seizing the square is thus not just in line with the political agenda of post-colonial studies. It also allows the writing of a global history of protests that have so far been discussed as separate events because of their supposed cultural remoteness. Differences aside, the use of the square in 1989 also reveals a central similarity of interest: that of de-control. For 1989, seizing the square meant producing a shared SpaceTime, in which shared visions for an alternative future allowed for an interconnected struggle. But with the growth of protests beyond those who had mobilized to the square, control over the dynamics on the square faded. Neither police nor those mobilizing to in the square were able to shape activities on the square after their own interests. In contrast to a party or union, mobilizations to the square tended to be informal. It is not an established network of contacts that mobilizes for a protest march at a particular time and place. Instead, it is a place that becomes increasingly known for its dissident nature that attracts more and more people to join. This dynamic, which allowed for the penetrative gathering of dissent in the first place, ended up decoupled from the interests of those agitating for protests at the beginning. The squares became a place of de-control in Leipzig and in Beijing. Thriving on a shared moment in 1989, protesters on Tiananmen Square and Nikolaikirchhof could disrupt order, but not replace it with a new one. Revisiting 1989 from a global perspective needs to operate on a more explorative note than deductive theory formulation. With the square as a mediating space between protests seizing the square in a particular context and global transformations engendering discontent, insights gained in the following will be more apt for temporal and regional contexts. At the same time, asking about the role of the square in differing contexts will allow an exploration of similarities across different regional contexts. Thus, the following discussion of the events in 1989 can be taken as an exercise in social history writing within a global era, where space has become a central political category. It is not the mere impact of protests seizing the square that this analysis seeks to explain, but the role of space in the unfolding conflict. As will be seen, there will be

 Vivek Chibber: Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. London (London: Verso, 2013), 291.

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no teleological history emerging from such a spatial perspective, since protests seizing the square are hardly in control of the outcomes of their actions.

Plan of Work This book will start by critically reviewing the available literature on protests in 1989. The focus is on the spatial and temporal framing of protests in Germany and China, stressing the shortcomings of history writing on protests in 1989 in those two countries. In response to these manifest shortcomings, a global perspective on the SpaceTime of 1989 is discussed in order to apply it in the analysis. The second chapter sets out to localize protests on the squares within the context of accelerating globalization in the 1980s and its consequent rupture by the end of the decade. Chapter II is thus concerned with the historical origins, the “why” of protests. Given the complexity of developments, there is little sense in trying to come to a causal explanation for the synchronous outburst of protests in Leipzig and Beijing in 1989. Instead, the global ecology of time and space is reconstructed in order to understand the synchronicity of the desynchrony in seizing the squares. The exploration of the city square is structured across two chapters, each reflecting a different spatial aspect of protests. Chapter III discusses the global nature of protests manifesting itself most visibly on two city squares in Beijing and Leipzig, exploring international diplomacy and local agitation, and thus focusing on points that concern the “what” of the protests. It covers global entanglements, outreaches, and reactions to the protests in China and Germany in 1989. Finally, Chapter IV turns to the analysis of the “how” of protests. The spatial practice of seizing the square is discussed, including its striking qualities as a chaotic place with unreal power. Because the square is an open place that dissenter from the ruling regime can turn to, there is no binding agenda nor strategy for protests. This diffuse representation made negotiations with ruling elites difficult and finally rendered the outcomes of the protests dependent on decisions made elsewhere. The threefold discussion of the “why,” “what,” and “how” of the political nature of the city square in 1989 in Beijing and Leipzig leads to conclusions and openings for a global history of seizing the square. These findings allow for a closing glimpse on more contemporary protests such as the Kyiv protests of 2014 and protests in 2011, and for reflections on the methods of a global history of protests taking place on city squares. This line of thought can be found in the conclusion of this book.

I On the SpaceTime of 1989 Protests enforcing changes on a global scale in 1989 did not take place in the void. After a decade of accelerating globalization, people turned to the city centers to create a counter-space, where the contradictions of an increasingly interconnected society could manifest themselves. On the squares, a moment of release could be shared from Beijing to Leipzig. Pressures growing below the routines of everyday life erupted into the open in a shared moment and was displayed to those willing to watch from near and afar. Thus, space and time converged on the squares, opening up a SpaceTime for global changes to happen. Because of the narrow understanding of space in the analysis of the happenings in 1989 so far, not much more than a preliminary understanding of the SpaceTime in 1989 can be stated for now. Thus far, space has been rendered merely as a backdrop for universal developments or separated by national historiography working within their narrow timelines. Either approach, however, neglects the global nature of space and time that was experienced on the squares. Furthermore, the global origins of the discontent finding release after a decade of transformations remains mostly omitted from accounts. The enduring need for a transnational analysis to understand the protests in 1989 has to do, on the one side, with the dominance of deductive reasoning that has taken hold of the humanities and social sciences. Commonly, questions about “where” something happened are rendered of little importance in the face of supposedly universal knowledge production.¹ Concepts like democratization or modernization were intended to capture the diverse events around the world that year and conserve them in the abstract space of theory.² In this way, according to the promise of universal knowledge production, the space of theory would model society so as to predict the likely outcomes of developments, or tendencies. That promise, however, has already been fundamentally challenged by the very event of 1989 already. As Gerhard Ritter formulated it in 1995, the failure of deductive reasoning to predict the end of the Cold War undercut its own premises: “For systematic social sciences – that is, political science and sociology – and probably also for economics, the […] revealed lack of prog-

 Soja, Edward. Postmodern Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso, 1989; Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Donald Nicholson-Smith (trans.). Malden: Blackwell, 1991.  Huntington, Samuel. The Third Wave. Democratization in the late Twentieth Century. University of Oklahoma Press, 1991; Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682601-002

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nostic securities represents a huge problem for their self-regard.”³ Any endeavor to prioritize questions about the “why” of 1989 is marked with reasonable doubt if it does not account for its proven shortcomings. To the disservice of universal theory, it is the neglect of questions concerned with the “when and where” of 1989 that likely explains its shortcomings. Prioritizing deductive reasoning can blindside the search for a “why,” as it tends to ignore diverging contexts. For instance, it is today far better understood that the often-quoted end of the Cold War as a cause for synchronous uprisings in 1989⁴ can hold different meanings across Eastern Europe,⁵ and again holds wildly different meanings for China.⁶ Because of the observable limitations of timeand supposedly space-less theory building, a more general questioning of social theory became influential after 1989.⁷ In revision, the abstract space of universal knowledge was found to be filled with quite space-bound knowledge.⁸ This is what the critique of Eurocentrism addressed: knowledge gathered in Europe about Europe was not to be projected onto the rest of the world anymore without

 Gerhard Ritter. Der Umbruch von 1989/91 und die Geschichtswissenschaft. Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse Sitzungsberichte Jahrgang 1995. Heft 25. Munich (Munich: Bayrische Akademie der Wissenschaften), 1995, 8. Own translation: “Fü r systematische Sozialwissenschaften – die Politikwissenschaft, die Soziologie – und wohl auch fü r die Nationalö konomie stellt die damit deutlich gewordene mangelnde Prognosefä higkeit ein großes Problem fü r das Selbstverstä ndnis dar.”  Kälble, Hartmut and Jürgen Schriewer (eds.). Vergleich und Transfer. Komparatistik in den Sozial- Geschichts – und Kulturwissenschaften. Frankfurt: Campus, 2003.  Pula, Besnik. Globalization Under and After Socialism. In Capitalism form Outside? Economic Cultures in Easter Europe after 1989. János Kovács and Violetta Zentai (eds.). Central European University Press, 2012, 8 – 31.  Vogel, Ezra. Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China. Harvard University Press, 2011.  The shortcomings of universal theory-building hold especially true for International Relations (IR) theory after 1989. The uprisings were unforeseen by most scholars of IR, and hence doubts of the positivist paradigms that guided research on foreign affairs arose. See Gaddis, John Lewis. International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War. International Security 17: 3 (1992): 5 – 58. To add injury to insult, the whole aim of theory building has been questioned even by its advocates, as it proves to be ever more complicated to build theory with the acceleration of global interconnectivity: “Complex Interdependence […] makes it difficult, if not impossible, to determine what constitutes an independent cause (and, hence, an independent effect) and whether the units involved have an independent political capacity to choose and implement (and, therefore, to act as agents connecting cause and effect).” Schmitter, Philippe. The Nature and Future of Comparative Politics. European Political Science Review 1:1 (2009): 47.  Acharya, Amitav and Barry Buzan. Why is there no non-Western International Relations Theory? An Introduction. International Relations of the Asia Pacific 17:3 (2007): 287– 312. For epistemic doubts, see Antony, Louise M. Embodiment and Epistemology. In The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology. Paul K. Moser (ed.). Oxford University Press, 2002, 463 – 478.

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anticipating the possible limitations of that projection. For interpretations of 1989, Eurocentrism often enough meant that analysis was “heavily reliant on prefigured concepts such as revolutionary movements or trajectories of development.”⁹ Concepts like revolution,¹⁰ democratization,¹¹ or civil society¹² dominated analysis, without necessarily questioning their suitability for societies with experiences that were not similar to European history in the first place. From this point of view, discussions that seek to situate the events in space- and timeless (universal) theory easily fall short in delivering encompassing answers not only as to why, but also when and where 1989 happened. To counter Eurocentrism in universal knowledge building, questions on the where and when of 1989 need to be taken into account just as thoroughly as questions of why and what happened that year. Historians, on the other side, have rendered a firm space and a time in which 1989 happened. Staying true to traditional lines of interpretation, the broad range of historical literature on the “annus mirabilis” 1989 argued that protests took place within a national space and timeline. The SpaceTime of 1989 is then divided into nation-time. For each nation, the history of 1989 unfolds primarily within the boundaries of its territory. They culminate in a synchronous yet separated protest around the globe. Such divisions of the SpaceTime of 1989 that leave global origins, entanglements, and impacts uncharted have increasingly been questioned by historians lately. As globalization drives societies around the world into ever more compund social phenomena, the stress of transnational

 Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives, 133.  Of course, one of the first conceptualizing a general theory of revolution was Karl Marx. Classic Marxist literature was qua methodology supposed to formulate universal developments, even though if formulated by solely looking at European (or even merely British) history. But it was probably Albert Camus who discussed the concept of revolution in its most Eurocentric form. See Camus, Albert. L’Homme Re´volte´. Paris: Gallimard, 1951. Consider, in contrast, the idea of revolution as embraced by Liu Xiaobo. That Holy Word, Revolution. In Popular Protest & Political Culture in Modern China. Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Elizabeth Perry (eds.) Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, 309 – 332.  Huntington Third Wave; della Porta, Mobilizing for Democracy.  A concept that barely even fits Western society in 1989, since Habermas argued that the agents (civil society) of his ideal concept of the Public Sphere vanished with “late-capitalism.” Habermas, Jü rgen. Strukturwandel der Ö ffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der Bü rgerlichen Gesellschaft. Munich: Luchterland, 1962. For a discussion on the applicability of the concept for China in 1989, see the whole issue of Journal of Democracy 1:1 (1990). Most tellingly, Wakeman came to conclude that China lacked a real public sphere since civil society 1989 “failed to come together in a sustained and organized way.” Wakeman, Public Sphere Debate. The same could be said about pretty much any disruptive event on the streets, however, or for 1989 in Leipzig in particular.

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entanglements and global perspectives overcome the idea of isolated national histories.¹³ For the literature on 1989, however, these rather new approaches to space and time have remained on the margins of academic discussion. Consequently, analyzing the globally entangled space on the seized squares in 1989 requires a departure from the set time and space in much of the historical literature discussing events that year.

I.1 Germany’s very own Peaceful Revolution SpaceTime in German history writing is, for the vast part of the literature, nationtime. In general, historians in Germany played a crucial role in fostering ideas and narratives of national identity.¹⁴ Besides the notion that most history writing was guided by ideas of modernization and nationalism,¹⁵ for Germany, historical literature further consolidated around the national paradigm after 1945.¹⁶ Due to the moral burdens that accompany the national socialist past, German historians reinforced the national conceptualization of history in the second half of the twentieth century. As Dominic Sachsenmaier argued: “It is particularly the dark shadows cast by the Nazi past that for a long time made transnational approaches appear less relevant or even problematical in the eyes of many German historians. Coming to terms with the Nazi heritage and creating an apt historical consciousness for a liberal democratic culture has certainly been the main concern of historical research in the modern period.”¹⁷ Debates about the German Sonderweg,¹⁸ and how to cope with Nazi history in general, dominated reflec-

 Lawson, George, Chris Armbruster, and Michael Cox (eds.). The Global 1989: Continuity and Change in World Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2010; Engel et al, eds, 1989; Stemmler, Susanne, Valerie Smith, and Bernd Scherer. 1989 / Globale Geschichten. Gö ttingen: Wallstein, 2009.  Benedict, Anderson. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Books, 1983. Iggers, Georg. The German Conception of History. The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to Present. Wesleyan University Press, 2012.  Berger, Stefan. The Search for Normality. National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Germany since 1800. Oxford: Berghan Books 1997, 30 – 62.  This is also true for most of the Marxian approaches on history following up the East German historiography, see Iggers, Georg, Konrad Jarausch, Matthias Middell, and Martin Sabrow (eds.). Die DDR Geschichtswissenschaft als Forschungsproblem. Historische Zeitschriften. Beihefte. Band 27. Munich: Oldenburg Verlag, 1998.  Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives, 112.  Augstein, Rudolf et al (eds.). Historikerstreit. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalistischen Judenvernichtung. Berlin: Piper, 1997.

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tions on historiography in Germany before 1989 and have continued to do so after. Locating 1989 in a timeline of national development, the commonly raised questions of interest in German history writing elaborated the meaning, causes, and effects of the reunification of Germany. For the analysis of causes, historians typically turned their attention to the last years of the German Democratic Republic and discussed the diminishing legitimacy of the ruling regime.¹⁹ Others stressed the awakening desire for democratic reforms within the population, accentuating the agency of change from below.²⁰ Some works on the “downfall”²¹ of socialism and/or the “rise” of democracy within the GDR, in fact, sought to situate the events in Germany within a European context.²² This was being done, however, without necessarily exploring the importance of entanglements and in-

 Bahrmann, Hannes. Chronik der Wende. Die Ereignisse in der DDR zwischen 7. Oktober 1989 und 18. Mä rz 1990. Berlin: C. H. Links, 2009; Hertle, Hans Hermann. Der Fall der Mauer: Die unbeabsichtigte Selbstauflö sung des SED Staates. VS Verlag fü r Sozialwissenschaften, 1999; Sü ß, Walter. Staatssicherheit am Ende. Warum es den Mä chtigen nicht Gelang, 1989 eine Revolution zu Verhindern. Berlin: C. H. Links, 1999; Jarausch, Konrad and Martin Sabrow (eds.). Weg in den Untergang. Der Innere Zerfall der DDR. Gö ttingen. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999; Jarausch, Konrad. The Rush to German Unity. Oxford University Press, 1994.  Rö dder, Andreas. Deutschland. Einig Vaterland. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2009; Kowalczuk, IlkoSascha. Endspiel. Die Revolution von 1989 in der DDR. Munich: Beck, 2009; Schuller, Wolfgang. Die Deutsche Revolution. Berlin: Rowohlt. 2009; Lindner. Bernd. Die Demokratische Revolution in der DDR 1989 – 1990. Bonn: Bundeszentrale fü r Politische Bildung, 2010.  See, for example, Meuschel, Sigrid. Legitimation und Zerfall. Zum Paradox von Stabilitä t und Revolution in der DDR. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992; Steiner, Andre´. Zwischen Konsumversprechen und Innovationszwang. Zum Wirtschaftlichen Niedergang der DDR. In Weg in den Untergang. Konrad H. Jarausch and Martin Sabrow (eds.). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999, 153– 194; Wolle, Stefan. Der Traum vom Westen. Wahrnehmungen der bundesdeutschen Gesellschaft in der DDR. In Jarausch et al, eds, Weg in den Untergang, 195 – 211; Bauer, Reinhold. Ö lpreiskrisen und Industrieroboter. Die Siebziger Jahre als Umbruchphase fü r die Automobilindustrie in beiden Deutschen Staaten. In Das Ende der Zuversicht. Die siebziger Jahre als Geschicht. Konrad H. Jarausch (ed.) Gö ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008, 68 – 83. For discussions in the U.S., see, especially, Kopstein, Jeffrey. The Politics of Economic Decline in East Germany. 1945 – 1989. Cape Hill, London: University of Carolina Press, 1997; Kotkin, Stephen. Uncivil Society. 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment. New York: The Modern Library, 2009.  Kocka, Jü rgen. Vereinigungskrise. Zur Geschichte der Gegenwart. Gö ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995. For a critical discussion, see Templin, Wolfgang. Die Osteuropäische Befreiungsbewegung – Voraussetzung fü r eine erfolgreiche Friedliche Revolution 1989. In Die Demokratische Revolution in der DDR 1989. Katharina Gajdukova and Sigrid K. Baumgarten (eds.). Cologne: Bö hmar, 2009, 92– 102.

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terdependencies crossing national borders.²³ Furthermore, questions of German identity and setbacks after reunification, as well as the mutual alienation of supposedly conflicting liberal and socialist values, have first and foremost been discussed within the German setting – as opposed to a European one.²⁴ In this large branch of literature, the contextualization of events in Germany paying respect to world developments leading to 1989 is, if not wholly absent, limited to a passive setting in which the German history of 1989 unfolded. It is thus fair to say that the history of the German nation state has been at the center of the inquiry in the German community of historians dealing with 1989. Alternatives to the nation-state perspective were presented for histories operating on scales smaller than the nation. Several complementary spatial units for analysis were consequently integrated into the overarching national narrative of events. Richter, for example, put forward an encompassing history of changes around 1989 in Saxony.²⁵ The history of rising discontent within the churches of the former GDR has also been of interest to historians in Germany.²⁶ Finally, the history of changes in cities and even smaller communities were explored. Here, in particular, the histories of protests in Berlin and Leipzig²⁷ were discussed at

 Only more recently has this debate produced findings reflecting on the transnational nature of the events in 1989 across Europe, see Brier, Robert (ed.) Entangled Protests. Transnational Approaches to the History of Dissent in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Osnabrück: Fibvre, 2013.  Meier, Christian. Die Nation, die keine sein will. Munich: Carl Hanser, 1991; Jä ger, Wolfgang. Die Ü berwindung der Teilung. Der Innerdeutsche Prozeß der Vereinigung 1989/90. Berlin: Hermes, 1998; Pollack, Detlef and Olaf Mü ller. Die unvollendete Einheit – ein spä ter Triumph der DDR? Theoretische Konsequenzen aus der Analyse der politischen Kultur Ostdeutschlands. In Politikwissenschaft als Kulturwissenschaft. Theorien, Methoden, Problemstellungen. Birgit Schwelling (ed.). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag, 2004, 207– 230; Henke, Klaus-Dietmar (ed.). Revolution und Vereinigung 1989/90. Als in Deutschland die Realitä t die Phantasie Ü berholte. Mü nchen: DTV, 2009; Schroeder, Klaus. Die Verä nderte Republik. Stamsried: Vö gel, 2006; Gö rtemaker, Manfred. Berliner Republik. Wiedervereinigung und Neuorientierung. Bonn: Bundeszentrale fü r Poltische Bildung, 2006; Ritter, Gerhard. Der Preis der Deutschen Einheit. Die Wiedervereinigung und die Krise des Sozialstaats. Munich: C. H Beck, 2007.  Richter, Michael. Die Friedliche Revolution. Aufbruch und Demokratie in Sachsen 1989/90. Gö ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009.  Rein, Gerhard. Die Protestantische Revolution 1987 – 1990. Ein Deutsches Lesebuch. Berlin: Wichern Verlag, 1990; Also: Neubert, Ehrhart. Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949 – 1989. Berlin: C. H. Links, 1997. Particularly from page 248 on.  From the perspective of the police, see Kriz, Karl-Heinz and Hans-Jü rgen Grä fe. Mittendrin. Die Berliner Volkspolizei 1989/90. Berlin: Das Neue Berlin, 2014; Opp, Karl Dieter, Peter Voß, and Christiane Gern. Die Volkseigene Revolution in Leipzig. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1993; Zwahr, Hartmut. Ende einer Selbstzerstö rung. Leipzig und die Revolution in der DDR. Markleeberg: Sax, 1993; Neues Forum Leipzig, Jetzt oder Nie; Sü ß, Walter. Der friedliche Ausgang des 9. Oktober

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length. Historical analysis was further scaled down to the level of community in and around the Nikolaikirche,²⁸ and even the importance of the square in front of the church in the city center of Leipzig was already highlighted by the German sociologist Detlef Pollack.²⁹ Furthermore, personal perceptions of events helped to document and interpret the emergence of protests. Biographies of actors in key leading positions around 1989 have been presented by Western leaders,³⁰ as well as East German ones.³¹ Their perspective from the top down is complemented by perspectives from activists from the bottom up. Here, the chronology of events by Ekkehard Kuhn,³² or by Leipzig pastor Christian Fü hrer,³³ are the most popular. Together, these biographical reflections offer a mélange of interpretations concerning the events of 1989. However, this increase in detailed knowledge of developments “on the ground” operated either directly or implicitly on the idea of a primordial space that belonged to the nation. This came at the price of further decontextualization and neglect of global entanglements in 1989. Even if the international level was presented as a background for local developments, interactions and cross-references of events in 1989 remained unspecified for the happenings in Saxony, Leipzig, or the church. Instead, smaller scales of analysis fostered and supported the national narrative of 1989 in Germany, complementing it with local aspects of mobilization and agency. Activist perspectives, the motive to document events in 1989, and a thoroughly German-focused interpretation of events culminate, for example, in the work of historian Ehrhart Neubert. As a former activist within the GDR, and later as a historian working for the critical revision of East German history, he published several works on opposition and change in 1989 in Germany. To Neu-

in Leipzig. In 1989 und die Rolle der Gewalt. Martin Sabrow (ed.). Gö ttingen: Wallstein, 2012, 174– 207. Also, from an American perspective: Bartee, Wayne. A Time to Speak Out. The Leipzig Citizen Protests and the Fall of East Germany. London: Prager, 2000.  Geyer, Hermann. Nikolaikirche, montags, um fü nf. Die politischen Gottesdienste der Wendezeit in Leipzig. Darmstadt: WBS, 2009.  Pollack, Detlef. Die Friedlichkeit der Herbstakteure 1989. In Sabrow (ed.), 1989 und die Rolle der Gewalt, 108 – 128. Also, coming from a rational choice perspective, see Opp et al, Volkseigene Revolution, who argue for the importance of the square to overcome initial “costs” for mobilization due to insecurity.  Genscher, Hans-Dietrich. Erinnerungen. Munich: Siedler Verlag, 1995.  Krenz, Egon. Wenn Mauern Fallen. Stuttgart: Paul Neff Verlag, 1990; Modrow, Hans. Aufbruch und Ende. Hamburg: Konkret Literatur, 1991.  Kuhn, Ekkehard. Der Tag der Entscheidung. Leipzig, der 9. Oktober. Berlin: Ullstein, 1992.  Fü hrer, Christian. Und wir sind dabei gewesen. Die Revolution, die aus der Kirche kam. Berlin: Ullstein, 2010.

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bert, 1989 stood at the end of a long-lasting movement towards a new, liberal Germany, and was a happy ending to a dreadful century of dictatorships. The eastern and central European people, who after the Second World War were shackled by the chains of communism, have in an unprecedented wave of revolutions in 1989 and 1990 won their liberty and founded democratic republics. One of these revolutions is the German one: “our revolution.” For the Germans, it is already a unique event merely because it was the first revolution that successfully connected ideas of freedom and nation.³⁴

This quote exemplifies the national teleology of history writing that, after 1989, could be projected easily onto the events in Germany: Through a process of rebellious change, the enlightened stage of the sovereign nation state could finally be reached.³⁵ These notions of German history were also supported by optimism from abroad, where scholars accepted the idea that with 1989, “the old Sonderweg had finally come to an end.”³⁶ It was the nationalistic will for self-determination, which, in the end, allowed the German people to formulate what “was in our hearts and on our lips: Germany.”³⁷ Neubert offers a radical example for a community of historians quick to feed into nationalistic sentiment after 1989. The where and when of 1989 here is clear cut: in Germany, at the end of dictatorship, and at the beginning of the democratic republic. Questions about nation border crossing dynamics and global developments as crucial settings to understand 1989 are subsumed under the national space of a German self-enactment. It is then hardly a surprise that the main interest of German historians regarding 1989 was concerned with the meaning of the events as related to national development. As Berger put it, “after 1989 the alleged ‘normality’ of the nation-state found its enthusiastic propagators amongst German historians, both

 Ehrhart Neubert. Unsere Revolution. Die Geschichte der Jahre 1989/90. Munich (Munich: Piper Verlag, 2008), 13. Own translation: “[E]in glü cklicher Ausgang eines schrecklichen Jahrhunderts der Diktaturen. Die ostmitteleuropä ischen Vö lker [sic], die nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in den Fesseln des Kommunismus gelegt worden waren, haben in einer beispiellosen Welle von Revolutionen 1989 und 1990 ihre Freiheit errungen und demokratische Republiken gegrü ndet. Eine dieser Revolutionen ist auch die deutsche – ”unsere Revolution”. Fü r die Deutschen ist sie schon deshalb etwas Einzigartiges, da es die erste Revolution war, die erfolgreich die Ideen von Freiheit und Nation miteinander verband.”  For a further outstanding example of German-centric history writing, see Jä ckel, Eberhard. Das deutsche Jahrhundert. Eine historische Bilanz. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999.  Berger, Search for Normality, 236.  Neubert, Unsere Revolution, 441. Own translation: “was uns am Herzen und auf der Zunge lag: Deutschland.”

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inside and outside the university sector.”³⁸ Consequently, German history writing after 1989 has rarely abandoned the nation-state container for narration and has left broader questions on transformations culminating in 1989 to social sciences or regional experts on Europe located mostly at American institutions. In particular, little work regarding the enmeshed history of China and Germany throughout the twentieth century has been presented so far. Analyzing protests on the squares in Leipzig and Beijing 1989 hence will need an approach diverging from historical literature in spatiotemporal terms.

I.2 Modernization Tales for Tiananmen In China as well, takes on 1989 saw primarily national developments working towards the emergence of protests. Sinologists led discussions of the events on Tiananmen Square in the US in particular. Aligned with the European Studies centers that were mainly concerned with the Cold War,³⁹ American universities had developed a stronghold of regional expertise. This expertise was further deepened after the Tiananmen protests, when intellectuals and activists from China fled to academia in the US and proved highly motivated and productive in discussions of the Tiananmen protests. Publications issued briefly after the event and throughout the 1990s held critical connotations against the party regime, and Tiananmen was mainly interpreted as the failure of a modernizing Chinese nation state. Despite the broad diversity of approaches to the study of the Tiananmen protests, literature in the direct aftermath came with the for the field of sinology then typical modernist⁴⁰ premises that situated 1989 in a national timeline

 Berger, Search for Normality, 2. For the discussion of the argument, see, in particular, 199 – 221.  See Cumings, Bruce. Boundary Displacement: Area Studies and International Studies during and after the Cold War. In Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War, Christopher Simpson (ed.). New York: New Press, 1999, 159 – 188. Also: Needell, Allan. Project Troy and Cold War Annexation of the Social Sciences. In Simpson (ed.), Universities and Empires, 3 – 24; Wang Ban. The Cold War, Imperial Aesthetics, and Area Studies. In Culture and Social Transformations in Reform Era China. Cao Tian Yi, Zhong Xueping, and Liao Kebin (eds.). Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2010, 409 – 432.  See Levenson, Joseph R. Confucian China and its Modern Fate. University of California Press, 1968; Hsü , Immanuel C. The Rise of Modern China. Oxford University Press, 1979; Cheng, Joseph Y. S. (ed.). China: Modernization in the 1980s. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1990; Spence, Jonathan D. The Search for Modern China. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1990; Chen Lai. Tradition and Modernity. A Humanist View. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2009.

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and space.⁴¹ Scholars of Chinese history argued for a modernization process leading to Tiananmen in 1989, and complemented this understanding with performative views,⁴² geographical analysis,⁴³ or introduced perspectives from the provinces of China.⁴⁴ These diverse aspects of events in 1989 aligned easily with the master narrative of intellectual elites pushing for democracy in a modernizing China.⁴⁵ The emphasis of such a modernist take on Tiananmen was not received uncritically, though. Richard Madsen even labeled the reductionist readings of protests as a push for democracy by enlightened students a “Liberal Myth”, which merely “portrayed China as a troubled modernizer”⁴⁶ in European terms – a myth that, as Birte Hermann argued, was established not only by foreign scholars but also by journalists.⁴⁷ Some authors dared to highlight early on that due to the heterogeneity of protests on Tiananmen Square,⁴⁸ a clear-cut interpretation of the ideals and motives of students and intellectuals in 1989 were not easy to come by. As Jeffrey Wasserstrom already noted shortly after the event, wishful interpretations of protests rendered “objective” assessments of the events impossible, as “there is now no way of separating myth from history when dealing with

 For the first discussion of key publications, see Dittmar, Lowell. Tiananmen Reconsidered. Pacific Affairs 64:4 (1991): 529 – 535; For a discussion of the sources used commonly by the wide literature published in the aftermath of the protests on Tiananmen, see Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 595 (footnote 1). See also the already quoted Han, Cries for Democracy, and Ogden et al, eds, China’s Search for Democracy.  Guthrie, Douglas. Political Theater and Student Organization in the 1989 Student Movement: A Multivariate Analysis of Tiananmen. Sociological Forum 10:3 (1995) 419 – 454; Esherick, Joseph and Jeffrey Wasserstrom. Acting out Democracy: Political Theater in Modern China. In Journal of Asian Studies 49:4 (1990): 835 – 865.  Hershkovitz, Politics of Space; Wu, Remaking Beijing.  Unger, Jonathan (ed.). The Pro-Democracy Protests in China. Reports from the Provinces. New York Routledge, 1991.  Goldman, Merle and Ruth Cherrington. China’s Students. The Struggle for Democracy. London: Routledge, 1991; Cheek, Timothy. From Priests to Professionals: Intellectuals and the State Under the CCP. In Wasserstrom et al, eds, Popular Protests, 124– 145; Calhoun, Craig. Neither Gods nor Emperors. Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China. University of California Press, 1994; Bachman, David and Dali Yang (ed., transl.) Yan Jiaqui and China’s struggle for Democracy. New York. M. E. Sharpe, 1991.  Richard Madsen. China and the American Dream. A Moral Inquiry. Berkeley (University of California Press, 1995), 28.  Hermann, Birte. ‘Battle Cries of US Democracy’ on Tian’anmen Square? US Media and the Chinese Movement of 1989. In Engel et al, eds, 1989, 205 – 230.  See, in particular, Zhao Dingxin. The Power of Tiananmen. State Society Relations and the 1989 Beijing Student Movement. University of Chicago Press, 2001; Hermann, Battle Cries of US Democracy, 211– 220.

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the protests and the repression of 1989.”⁴⁹ Such revisions of early claims on the political nature of protests did not, however, question the national framing of protests as such. Also, the reach of such critical reviews was limited. The narratives that remained impactful after 1989 situated the protests in a national intellectual history of Chinese avant-garde thinkers that hoped to embrace Western ideas of democracy. Genuinely exemplifying the modernist line dominating the discussion after 1989 is Merle Goldman. As a scholar of ancient and modern Chinese thought, she stressed the role of institutional and educational elites learning about Western ideas and diffusing them among students and party leaders in the lead up to 1989.⁵⁰ When tanks rolled over Tiananmen, this vulnerable learning process was found to be cracked, and with it China’s national path to modernity. Goldman consequently declared China’s further development dependent on the renewal of its political elite: Until China’s leaders match their commitment to economic modernization with a similar commitment to democracy and political liberalization, China will continue to lurch from autocracy to reform and back again without achieving the goal that has motivated and eluded all of the country’s twentieth-centuries leaders – to make China “rich and powerful.”⁵¹

Stressing intellectual history leading up to 1989, Goldman comes to state that China eventually became a modernization “refuser,” failing to develop into a rich and powerful country. This projection, of course, did not age well. It did allow, however, for the setting of China in a timeline apart: A timeline of national development on hold, awaiting its continuation after the violent end of the protests on Tiananmen Square. Within the literature on Tiananmen adhering to modernization tales, China is rendered an isolated space stuck in a broken timeline after 1989.

 Jeffrey Wasserstrom. History, Myth, and the Tales of Tiananmen. In Wasserstrom et al, eds, Popular Protest, 275.  Goldman, Merle. China’s Intellectuals. Advise and Dissent. Harvard University Press, 1981; Gu, Edward. Cultural Intellectuals and the Politics of the Cultural Public space in communist China (1979 ‐ 1989): A Case Study of three Intellectual groups. Journal of Asian Studies 58:2 (1999) 389‐ 431; Ogden, Suzanne. From Patronage to Profits. The Changing Relationship of Chinese Intellectuals with the Party State. In Chinese Intellectuals Between State and Market. Merle Goldman and Gu Edward (eds.) New York: Routledge, 2004, 111– 131.  Goldman, Merle. Tiananmen and Beyond. China’s Great Leap Backward. Journal of Democracy 1:1 (1991): 9 – 17.

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More recently, modernization theory has introduced yet another space apart for China. By essentializing otherness and hypostatizing conflicting values along the dividing axis of civilizations, newer historical literature advocated for a space of distinct regional culture.⁵² Such a space tends likewise to neglect global perspectives, since, as Artif Dirlik formulated it, “to the extent that they express themselves in universalistic terms, the universality is contained within cultural spaces at odds with one another – which is another way of saying that they represent the end of universalism, as they rule out any commonly shared vision of the future.”⁵³ The theoretical underpinning of such history writing that “Orientalizes” and allows for “self-Orientalization” stands in contrast to a global perspective on protests seizing the square, as the dividing lines of culture are drawn to render the search of shared experiences and ideas misconceived. Eventually, such supposedly “postmodernist” theories that seek to point out division lines between world cultures may be found to be counterproductive to their own intellectual agenda, however. By holding that the “Western” notion of modernity is not to be projected onto the “other,” literature cannot simply move epicenters of modernization eastwards,⁵⁴ argue for a flipped capitalistic consciousness in Asia,⁵⁵ or mark out the “return” to Confucian value systems as a new strength for development.⁵⁶ Such supposedly postmodern (and, often enough, proudly proclaiming to be post-colonial) theories are nothing less than a recycling of the underlying topos of modernism. Cultural distinctions serve as explanations for the premise of an analysis that comes to state the same fact: modernization is underway. And “this is what modernization discourse has been about all along: to enforce a cultural homogeneity that is consistent with a program of modernization conceived, if not along Euro American lines, then along their functional

 See, for example, King, Ambrose Y.C. The Emergence of Alternative Modernity in East Asia. In Reflections on Multiple Modernities. European, Chinese & Other Interpretations. Dominic Sachsenmaier, Jens Riedel, and Shmuel S. Eisenstad (eds.). Köln: Brill, 2002, 139 – 152; Wakeman, Frederic J. Chinese Modernity. In Sachsenmaier et al, eds, Multiple Modernities, 153 – 166.  Artif Dirlik. Modernity as History: Post Revolutionary China, Globalization and the Question of Modernity. Social History 27:1 (2002): 18.  Frank, Gunder. ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age. University of California Press, 1998.  Arrighi, Giovanni, Hui Po-keung, Hung Ho-fung, and Mark Selden. Historical Capitalism, East and West. In The Resurgence of East Asia. 500, 150 and 50 year perspectives. Arrighi, Giovanni; Takeshi Hamashita, and Mark Selden (eds.). London: Routledge, 2003, 259 – 333.  Ambrose, Alternative Modernity; Wakeman, Chinese Modernity. For a “pre-China” discussion of Neo Confucianism in Japan and the “Dragons,” see Tu Wei-Ming (ed.). Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity. Moral Education and Economic Culture in Japan and the Four Mini-Dragons. Harvard University Press, 1996.

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equivalents.”⁵⁷ Problematically, shifts towards nativized culture again engenders the division of SpaceTime in 1989. In the case of China, in particular, the reification of “otherness” does little to overcome the nation-state bias of history writing. From a comparative perspective, the review of history writing on the protests in China and Germany shows a peculiar convergence of the two bodies of literature that have, in fact, rarely contributed to one another. Though the available literature addressed significant questions regarding the particularities of developments leading up to 1989, it was rather neglectful of global entanglements as part of the history unfolding that year. In China, as in Germany, 1989 is read as a matter of national development, merely exemplifying a universal development towards modernity that may succeed (Germany) or fail (China). The dominant idea ordering time and space in both narrations is then teleology within the nation state. This convergence in histography may easily be ascribed to the trajectories of modern history writing as an academic discipline.⁵⁸ Generally speaking, modern history writing has held a bias towards narrating far-reaching changes within the lines of the nation state, developing into modernity. Historian Stefan Berger demonstrated this for history writing in Europe,⁵⁹ and for Germany in particular.⁶⁰ For China as well, Sino-centric history writing has been dominant throughout the twentieth century. Thus, a global perspective will need to depart from both traditional lines of history writing on 1989 in China and Germany. The need for comprehensible answers on the “when” and “where” of 1989 is overshadowed by writings advocating for the nation state and modernity. In line with the traditions of the field, historians have tended, so far, to narrate national timelines as developing independently from one another – only to mysteriously converge in 1989. The remarkable prevalence of the intellectual tradition to separate the analysis of developments that led to the synchronous protests in various parts of the world 1989 is due to the reliance on a prominent meta-narrative: Modernization. Though not so far directly comparing protests in China and Germany, both communities of historians operated on the same lines of interpretation regarding time and space, locking-in the developing nation state to the center of the respective analyses.

 Dirlik, Post Revolutionary China, 20.  Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives, 11– 59.  Berger, Stefan. The Power of National Pasts: Writing National History in Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Century Europe. In Writing the Nation. A Global Perspective, Stefan Berger (ed.). New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007, 30 – 62.  Berger, Search for Normality.

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I.3 Framing a Global SpaceTime for 1989 To find a shared space and time of 1989 in China and Germany, a turn to histography that stresses connections is imperative. The mode of history writing in an age of growing interconnectedness must be that of transcending divisions introduced by national methodologism. Though still rather marginal, discussions on such alternative ways of writing history already exist in China and Germany. In contrast to such historiographies that would isolate national experiences and stress differences, transnational or global history writing underlines the exchange of ideas, practices, goods as well as shared experiences, even in places as far apart from one another as the squares in Leipzig and Beijing in 1989. In China, some authors foster a critical attitude against Western notions of modernity while remaining opposed to nativist postmodernity. This led to new ideas on how to situate China’s history within the larger, global setting that is informed by more Asian-centered literature.⁶¹ This branch of literature avoids claims of nationalist history writing and the isolation of Chinese history through “othering.” As discussed by Hsiung Ping-chen, roots of transnational history writing in China can be uncovered, showing that even such identity-loaded ideals as held by Neo-Confucianism are, in fact, reliant on early collaborations of intellectuals in the broader region of Southeast Asia.⁶² With such insights into transnational historiography in China from the early ages, divisions along national parameters become less convincing for history writing. If even such nativized discourses as those of Confucianism can be deconstructed and reframed in a transnational framework, so can the protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989. Correspondingly, German scholars have also been eager to decouple history writing from national lenses and have sought to situate local developments within transnational contexts. The emerging field of global history and global studies in Germany stresses the history of co-authorship in transcultural ideas,⁶³ and deconstructs ideas about the diffusions of development originating from the West

 Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives, 206 – 231.  Hsiung Ping-chen. The Evolution of Chinese Humanities. American Historical Review 120:4 (2015): 1267– 1282. Such reflections on the transnational origins of national history writings are also of central interest to contemporary history writing on Tiananmen protests, where most of the literature by Chinese scholars is still written and published abroad, and in the autonomous regions in particular.  Pernau, Margret and Dominic Sachsenmaier (eds.). Global Conceptual History. A Reader. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. For a concrete example: Conrad, Sebastian. The Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique. The American Historical Review 117:4 (2012): 999 – 1027

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and traveling to the rest.⁶⁴ Questioning institutionalized hierarchies of knowledge around the world and critical of concepts borne out of an idealized European past led, however, to sometimes overstretched revisionisms. Adopting the paradigm of “provincializing Europe” as an epistemological vehicle,⁶⁵ cultural differences can be overstressed. Concepts for history writing in a global era should not lend Europe a renewed special place in history – however worthy of critique due to its colonial past. One concept introduced by German historians to narrate a global perspective onto 1989, where Europe is regarded merely as one region among others, is the global moment. Following the discussions about the global moment of 1989, protests erupting around the world took place in a scattered yet united spatial frame and shared point in time. Crucially, this spatiotemporal frame exceeds not only the national but also the socialist territory. Protests were not limited to socialist countries. Neither did they mark the end of all socialist regimes in the world.⁶⁶ The image emerging from thinking of 1989 as a global moment is that of a breaking point in time that marks a connected cluster of ruptures across states, regions, and the spectrum of political regimes. In this global “mosaic of different 1989s,”⁶⁷ social tension was translated into diverse protests in cities around the world. Two of these seized the squares in Leipzig and Beijing. However, for a further conceptualization of this urban mosaic, a dual understanding of the SpaceTime on the squares 1989 needs to be established.

A Shared Global Moment In terms of time, a first step in overcoming the separation of history writing is to stress the coexistence of global transformations and local dynamics that are inseparably interconnected with one another. Because of this interconnectivity, however, global time will always remain an ambiguous category. As Geyer and Bright formulated it in their leading article on this topic in 1995: “In a global

 Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives, 135. See, also, Werner, Michael. Maßstab und Untersuchungsebene. Zu einem Grundproblem der vergleichenden Kulturtransferforschung. In Nationale Grenzen und internationaler Austausch, Lothar Jordan and Bernd Kortlä nder (eds.) Tü bingen: Niemeyer, 1995, 20 – 33.  Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference – New Edition. Princeton University Press, 2007.  Engel et al, eds, 1989; Lawson et al, eds, The Global 1989; Stemmler et al, eds, 1989 / Globale Geschichten.  Engel et al, eds, 1989, 26.

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age, the world’s pasts are all simultaneously present, colliding, interacting, intermixing, producing a collage of present histories that is surely not the history of a homogeneous global civilization.”⁶⁸ To analyze this mélange of time, it is thus useful to shift from an understanding of time as a line, to an understanding of time as a point that allows for interconnected history writing. While time imagined as a line invites a framing of developments around the world as parallels,⁶⁹ a moment in time serves as a focal point for different experiences that may or may not align. Thinking about the global 1989 means trying to understand how different experiences at a point in time may relate to one another – in their varying degrees and different terms to account for that relation. The concept of a global moment shifts the analysis from the search for parallels in time to a more open exploration of a point in time. Following Matthias Middell, there are three meanings of a global moment to be distinguished from one another.⁷⁰ There is, firstly, the understanding of a global moment as a marker in time that sets the groundwork for shared memorization of an event stretching around the globe. This meaning of a global moments mostly relates to history writing as an agent of conservation and remembering. As could be seen, historical literature has marked 1989 as a year of collective memorization, but with a stress on national division in memory. A truly global perspective on 1989, in turn, would seek to shift the attention to the shared histories of 1989 transcending national or cultural division. This first meaning of a global moment will primarily be of interest to historians. The second meaning of a global moment needs to be distinguished from mere matters of history writing. It shifts the attention to the produced globality of an event by the very actors living in the moment. Formulating “a whole set of different hopes and anxieties that coalesced around the notion of an interconnected future,”⁷¹ people at the time co-constructed the global moment, as Sebastian Conrad and Sachsenmaier stress. A global moment is then not only constructed by the analysis of a historian framing happenings in a global

 Geyer, Michael and Charles Bright. World History in a Global Age. American Historical Review 100:4 (1995): 1043.  For interdisciplinary reflections on the “line,” see: Dorsch, Sebastian. SpatioTemporalities on the line. Interdisciplinary perspectives for a cartography of lines. In SpatioTemporalities on the Line. Representation, Practices, Dynamics. Sebastian Dorsch and Jutta Vinzent (eds.). Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017, 3 – 12.  Middell, Matthias. 1989 as a Global Moment: Some Introductory Remarks. In Engel et al, eds, 1989, 33 – 48.  Sebastian Conrad and Sachsenmaier, Dominic (eds.) Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880 – 1930. New York (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.), 12.

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understanding but is “made” by those already living in the moment. Crucially, the making of such global moments is ever more feasible due to technical innovations that allow for relatively low-cost communication over distance. When protesters in Frankfurt 2012 shared their global outlook with people in Cairo and Oakland via twitter and posts on the internet, the global of the moment can come into place rather easily. But already in 1989, technology such as the satellite networks of news agencies allowed for a ready co-construction of a point in time that could easily transcend national and regional borders. The third understanding of a global moment is of importance for understanding global origins of the shared moment in 1989. This third lens explores the factors that drive actors to formulate interconnected visions within the moment. For a focal point in time such as 1989 to occur, there are global dynamics of interest that provoke “short historical periods of one or a few years characterized by an exceptional density of quasi-simultaneous events in different parts of the world.”⁷² This analytical aspect of the global moment will put global transformations under scrutiny. Without asking for connecting dynamics in such distant places as China and Germany, the synchronicity of events would need to remain a myth or withdraw again into abstract theory. Thus, the following analysis of the “global moment of 1989” explores the accelerating dynamics challenging the political order in China and Germany simultaneously. Together, the second and third understanding of the global moment of 1989 is then explored in the following in a twofold way: the global understandings of actors on the squares complement the exploration of the global dynamics that help to explain the emergence and formulation of emerging global visions. By reaching out to an audience beyond the local setting, people in different places of the world interpreted and promoted the idea of a global moment. To understand the reasons for these global framings of time in 1989, global trajectories are to be explored. This twofold analytical focus on the global moment allows for the diverging motives for protests in China and Germany to be related to one another by stressing the visible global connections that were drawn by the actors themselves that year and by trying to understand the reasons for such a visible global outreach. Time is then a category won out of the lived experience of actors around the world coming to the square. Reaching out to an audience beyond the nation state, the mode of history writing here is that of an exploration of global entanglements of the people seizing the square. For further analysis, however, the question of space in the global moment remains to be answered.

 Middell, “1989 as a Global Moment,” 40.

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Producing a Counter-space in 1989 The space of protests in 1989 was not a given place, nor a container to be “filled” with dissent. It needed to be created, or “produced.” When protests seized the square in 1989, they produced a deviant form of space within the urban life of the city. Oppositional voices could speak their minds in this space, and people gathered there to put their discontent into practice. With these activities, a counter-space emerged on the square. Just as a global moment is constructed by protests communicating and thinking across borders, so the space for living the global moment of 1989 is produced. To understand the role of space in general, Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space production is instructive.⁷³ Concerned mainly with the evolution of urban space, Lefebvre refused to take space as a category that merely contains social interaction and proposed to think of it as a social product that is continuously shaped, thought about, and interacted with. In particular, Lefebvre saw the city as a central space of interest. In the city, different levels of order and thus power intersect, and the codes of everyday life and the private coexist with the codes of the state and most global dynamics.⁷⁴ Due to its mediating nature, according to Lefebvre, the city serves as a projection of society itself. In this line of thought, the city increasingly embodies the center of power under the conditions of accelerating globalization. Decisions taken in the city today concern not only the city but eventually global order.⁷⁵ It is thus only as a consequence that the city does not solidify as a space of harmony, but rather as a space where conflict lines of contemporary times are manifest. In its role as a center for decisions, the city may be appropriated as to prioritize new ideals and practices. Claiming a “Right to the City” by seizing the square is hence not only a question of who may be present in a specific urban area, but about the content that the centrality of the city signifies. To learn more about the contradictions of space production in an increasingly urbanized society, Lefebvre proposed operating with a dialectical triad for analysis. At the core of his theory lay the intertwined concepts of spatial practice, representational space, and representations of space. Together, they allow for the

 Lefebvre, The Production of Space.  For an excellent discussion of Lefebvre’s work, see Schmid, Christian. Stadt, Raum und Gesellschaft. Henri Lefebvre und die Theorie der Produktion des Raumes. Munich: Franz Steiner, 2005.  Sassen, Saskia. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton University Press, 2001; Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. New York: Verso, 2012.

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reconstruction of space production, and as part of the city, the squares are particular social spaces that can be studied more closely by applying Lefebvre’s dialectical triad. It is, however, not the city square itself that is of interest here, but the space the city square is turned into once people protesting seize it. Because the production of counter-space in 1989 is bound up with a particular moment in time, the following spatial analysis modifies Lefebvre’s approach for “reading” space in one crucial aspect. Instead of the longue durée and its related spatial practices that were of interest to Lefebvre, the space of interest here came into being rather abruptly and did not last for longer than a period of weeks or months. The following analysis hence needs to couch Lefevre’s dialectical triad in a much narrower epistemology than in his far-reaching project discussed in the Production of Space. His dialectical triad used to analyze the production of space provides important insights into the nature of the urban space as such and into the different spheres that constitute the process of space production. But it is the moment in which the squares were seized, not the production of the public city squares as such that is of interest here.

Appropriating Lefebvre’s spatial triad for analysis The contradictions that led to contention in 1989, as well as the space that emerged striving in these contradictions, can be analyzed by combining the analysis of space with the analysis of the global moment. It is not the mere right to be present on the square that was at stake during the occupations. With protests seizing the square, questions over what the occupied space was to represent and what protests were about arose; and once raised, these questions tend to demand to be answered. This cycle of global origins, emerging contentions on the square, and insisting claims for closure is what constitutes the SpaceTime on the squares in 1989. For the analysis of such spaces as the ones produced by protests on the square, an analytical approach discussed by Susanne Rau serves to offer a more specific epistemology that can complement Lefebvre’s dialectical triad of space production. Following Rau, spaces can be analyzed by following a four-step procedure.⁷⁶ This procedure starts with the identification of a space type (1). It is then followed by studying the dynamics of a space, entailing an origin, a transformation process, and, eventually, an end (2). The third step is to learn more about the subjective experience in space and the ways these experi-

 Susanne Rau. Räume. Konzepte, Wahrnehmungen, Nutzungen. Frankfurt (Frankfurt: Campus, 2013), 133.

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ences are then shared (3). Finally, the observable ways of using space are of interest (4). Comparing these four steps with the dialectical triad discussed by Lefebvre, a significant overlap in terms of methodology for learning about any social space is apparent. Only one step is not covered by the dialectical triad of Lefebvre, which is the first of Rau’s proposed analytical approaches. This first step seeks to find a general type or category of space that is analyzed. From her list of different figures and types of space that can be analyzed, the idea of a “Heterotopia” suits the SpaceTime of 1989 on the square. The figure of a “Heterotopia” has been put forth most prominently by Michel Foucault. Fittingly, he had already claimed that Heterotopias emerge in multiple facets at specific points in history: “Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time – which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men [sic] arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time.”⁷⁷ Spaces linked to such slices or moments in time that indicate a break with order suit the idea of a seized square in the global moment of 1989. Especially if they serve as “counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.”⁷⁸ Seizing the square produces such a chaotic counter-space, which can be analyzed further by exploring the three dimensions of social space: spatial practice, representational space, and representation of space. Lefebvre’s three categories of spatial practice, representations of space, and representational space relate directly to the last three of the four steps Rau proposed for spatial analysis. The dynamics of a space can be covered here with the seizure of the square, which has a start, a transformative period, and an end (2). No broader dynamics than the ones present during the global moment of 1989 are of interest to the following spatial analysis. Representations of space, as Lefebvre and Rau discuss it, shift the interest directly to the way people talk about a space (3). Lived space gives attention to the way space is used (4). This triad for spatial analysis reduces its questions on space to those connected to the particular moment in time when a square is seized. This is possible, as described more closely below, because the central dynamic (2) of interest on the square intersects with what Lefebvre labeled “representational space.” Embedding the dia-

 Michel Foucault. Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. Jay Miskowiec (trans.). Diacritics 16:1 (1986): 28.  Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 25.

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lectical triad of Lefebvre in Rau’s four steps allows for a closer analysis of the production of space during an occupation.

Spatial practice Following Lefebvre and Rau, one central aspect for analyzing space and thus the seized square is to trace the activity observable in it. By using all available sources to reconstruct the practices and movements on the square, the first crucial element of space production in the global moment of 1989 can be traced. In this dimension of space production, the practical aspects of seizing the square are of interest. Interactions of bodies with others and with the square need to be explored to learn more about the spatial practice within the produced counter-space. Actions translate into the appropriation of the square through and by the body, which allows for a specific spatial environment to emerge that can be analyzed. The critical spatial practice of interest here is that of appropriation. Seizing the square implies the shifting of meaning and the material environment according to the needs of protests. A protest’s use of the square is a deviant form of spatial practice because the way people use the square does not “comply anymore with the initial conventions, recommendations or original intentions” of a space.⁷⁹ Crucially, as Rau points out, an appropriation is not a mere passive act of overtaking set symbols and material shapes. Rather, seizing the square alters space – in an observable manner. Tents are set up to allow for sleeping on the square. Food needs to be provided for enduring protests just as crucially as a sanitary infrastructure. Thus, a new spatial environment may emerge when people seize the square. But an apportion may also be performed by the body alone.⁸⁰ By being somewhere even though it is forbidden, appropriation takes place. Moving and shouting through the silence that is ordered can appropriate social space. Performing a gender identity that breaks with the inscribed exclusivity of social space may imply an appropriation of it. Such bodily and material appropriation of the square can be studied within this framing of “spatial practices.” And though Lefebvre himself focused on more extended periods of spatial practices forming slowly through acts of repetition and difference, he also presented a particular form of spatial practice suiting the proposed analysis of

 Rau, Räume, 184. Own translation: “nicht mehr den Gepflogenheiten oder Empfehlungen, Verordnungen oder Ursprungsintentionen folgen.”  See, also, Butler, Judith. Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly. Harvard University Press, 2018.

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the seized square: autogestion.⁸¹ Lefebvre, concerned about the possibilities for progressive action in a time where socialist revolutions had been a disappointment for those opting for a democratic, anti-capitalist society, suggested a practice of autogestion to appropriate space. He thought of it as a spontaneous engagement that could complement strategic planning to enable a utopian practice. “In itself and through itself the concept of autogestion consequently has critical import.”⁸² In its radicalized form, autogestion on the square allows for a disruptive voicing of a “no,” a claim for self-enactment in a space that is otherwise dominated by the state. Whether called appropriation, seizure, or autogestion, the spatial practice of interest here stands in contrast, aims to modify, and maybe even subordinates the preexisting social routines and conventions on the square. In 1989, the spatial practice of seizing the square was inseparably bound up with worldwide events. Because the spatial practices observable on the squares were co-shaped by events far away, they cannot be understood as activities relat-

Fig. 2: A barricade “produced” to defend the Euromaidan at Christmas in Kyiv 2013. Credit: Daniel Palm.

 Lefebvre, Henri. Theoretical Problems of Autogestion. In State, Space, World. Selected Essays, Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden (eds.). University of Minnesota Press, 2009, 138 – 151.  Lefebvre, “Theoretical Problems,” 148.

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ing to the square alone. Protests in 1989 in Leipzig as well as in Beijing were tied up with local, regional, and global developments simultaneously. Analytically, this turns the squares and the spaces of dissent produced on them into translocal places: “By embedding places in interactions, they ought not to be thought of as exclusively local places but have to be thought of as translocal ones.”⁸³ This is to say that as different protests around the world appropriated the square at the same time, they were bound up with one another as they were bound up with other forces outside of their reach. Furthermore, as the events in 1989 tended to “occur beyond the limitations of national boundaries or control,”⁸⁴ the action on the squares formed part of transnational⁸⁵ dynamics engendering the global moment of 1989. As the following analysis of two protests seizing a square in contexts where national framings still played a vital role, the square can be understood to be at the same time global, transnational, and translocal. By using primary sources with secondary accounts of the protests of 1989 that document the use of the square from its beginning to the end in 1989, the “lived space” of Lefebvre’s spatial triad is reproduced. Accounts of time witnesses and photos, as well as documents are reviewed to analyze protests from a spatial perspective. This part of the analysis is concerned with the actions on the square and discusses local dynamics and global outreaches of protests. But also, the reactions to the spatial practices on the square are studied in order to gain insights into the handling of protests from the side of the state.

Representational space The analysis of the “representational space” of the squares in 1989 dwells in the imaginary realm of protests. This dimension of space production will be of interest in order to learn more about the dynamics of the square. Crucially, an exceptional quality of the space produced on the square in 1989 can be traced by thinking of it as a representational space. The imaginary realm of the square translates into the central dynamic of interest and, simultaneously, also defines the square’s transformation and end. In its representational dimension,

 Rau, Räume, 189. Own translation: “Durch die Einbindung von Orten in Interaktionen dürfen dann auch Orte nicht mehr ausschließlich lokal, sondern müssen translokal gedacht werden.”  Anheier, Helmut K. and Mark Juergensmeyer (eds.) Encyclopedia of Global Studies. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2012, 761– 765.  “Transnational – actions and interactions that cross borders of states but are not necessarily performed by them.” AHR Conversation. On Transnational History. American Historical Review 111:5 (2006): 1441– 1461.

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the square proves to be out of control. This de-controlled dynamic relates directly to the question of power on the square and hence its political nature. Described by Lefebvre as “passively experienced – space which the imagination seeks to change and appropriate,”⁸⁶ representational space relates directly to the question of power on the city square. The analysis here turns from the actions on the square to the experience of appropriating it during the global moment of 1989. That experience starts with people holding on to the square and allowing for the emergence of a conflictual space. This act of self-enactment marks the beginning of any counter-space. On the square, however, this counter-space tends to develop its own dynamic. The representational space of the square “overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects,”⁸⁷ by turning the question over the nature of the space on the square into a political one. Commonly seen as the most challenging aspect of space production to grasp, the representational space is here understood as the aspired and actual enforced means of power that were sought on the square by the protests – power, which, in a paradox way, is present and yet unreachable on the square. Lefebvre, and later those trying to operate with his theory, saw the mirror as a fitting example for understanding the representational aspects of space production. “It [the mirror] transforms what I am into a sign of what I am [, it] reproduces and displays what I am – in a word, signifies what I am – within an imaginary sphere which is quite real,”⁸⁸ writes Lefebvre. To understand the dynamics on the square during the protests, this transformative power of the mirror can be taken as a model. On the square, the body of a person becomes a protester by the mere fact that he or she steps onto it. During the global moment of 1989, being on Tiananmen Square or Nikolaikirchhof meant that one was displaying him- or herself as being in opposition. In that sense, the move onto the square opens up an “imaginary sphere” of power that is present – yet remains unreal. It is real because power is experienced. It remains imaginary because that sign of the protesting body on the square engenders, primarily, confusion. There is no master-signifier to interpret protests forming on the square unequivocally. In consequence, protests on the square can produce a space to disrupt order, but not necessarily to replace it. In its imaginary realm, the seized square is a space out of control and develops as such. Not only does it break with the control of the state and its police over the square, as a representational space, the seized square may even break with the symbolism and purpose ascribed to it

 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 38.  Lefebvre, Production of Space, 38.  Lefebvre, Production of Space, 185.

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by those who initiated protests. This quality in space production is what not only makes protests in China and Germany relatable in 1989, but which also allows for comparing protests thirty years ago with more recent protests, such as those in Frankfurt in 2012. The confusing sign of protests on the square has real impact, while at the same time operating in a quite unreal moment of decontrol. Instead of a trade union or a party, it is a place that brings collective action together in what are otherwise highly heterogeneous protest formations. On the square, individual motives for dissident turn into political acts closely followed by a transnational audience. The unorganized nature of this collective action, however, does not allow for the positive shaping of a new agenda. Because protests seizing the square are informal and chaotic in nature, they remain incapable of transforming any centrality of the city according to their own terms. Instead, the square develops its own chaotic dynamics and remains vulnerable to instrumentalization by a few. In that sense, the representational space of the square 1989 is indeed an “unregulated activity of poesis.”⁸⁹ The end of this process, the representational dynamic of the seized square, is dependent on the actions of the police and the military. They may first shutter the spatial practices, and finally, also the representational space of protests. However, the lack of an appropriate response to the representational space may also determine the end of a regime. Either way, the representational space can only provoke such responses, not define them. It ends on the terms laid out by those responding to its introduced de-control. For 1989, the capacity of the square to function as a mirror allowed for individual acts of dissent to turn into politics within the global moment. Only in direct response with the disruptive point in time did the appropriation of the square become as penetrative as it did. Engendering a rupture through spatial practices that translated into the de-controlled dynamic on the square, the square held a particular form of power that is unreal. The square held power since power was experienced and described along the moment of 1989. At the same time, this power did not translate into unifying agendas, which would then allow the determination of outcomes of the global moment in 1989. In that sense, it is only a mirrored power, an illusion of power projected into the real. The push for making a difference in this exceptional moment was a push into a future that remained unwritten. The actual outcomes of the introduced

 Jenny. Bauer “Thirdings, Representations, Reflections. How to Grasp the Spatial Triad.” In Perspectives on Henri Lefebvre. Theory, Practice, and (Re)readings. Jenny Bauer and Robert Fischer (eds.). Berlin (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 209.

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de-control of the square could not be anticipated by those gathering on the squares – nor by those trying to police it.

Representation of space The final analytical dimension concerning the space produced on the squares in 1989 is the “representation” of them. This angle of analysis deals with the “conceptual space, the space of scientists.”⁹⁰ It has already been critically discussed for its tendency to frame the squares in 1989 within the larger narrative – or “theory” – of modernization and national development. As shown, the “representation” of space within history has proven to reify the nation state as a natural spatial framework. Problematically, this obscures transnational developments and does little to explain the synchronicity of protests in 1989. In response to this nation-state bias, the literature available is revised to provide a global history of the origins of protests. In doing so, the squares in 1989 are represented in a new, and hopefully, more suitable narrative for the global era. “Placing the global in the lead and at the center of attention implies a fundamental shift of perspective,”⁹¹ Jan Nederveen Pieterse stresses in his advocating of global sociology. A global representation of the squares is hence only obtained by departing from disciplinary trajectories that would stress national framings, and by synthesizing those findings of different fields that would allow for a comparative discussion of the squares in 1989. However, the transgression of field traditions through a global perspective should not lead to a complete abandonment of established perspectives that are key to understanding the events in 1989. A global representation of the events in 1989 needs to “combine fine-grained detail with a broad perspective,”⁹² meaning that global similarities leading to and materializing in the occupation of the squares have to be contrasted with the local qualities of the events under scrutiny.⁹³ Instead

 Lefebvre, Production of Space, 38.  Jan P. Nederveen. What is Global Studies? Globalizations, 10:4 (2013): 505.  Ezra Manela. The Wilsonian Moment. Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. Oxford (Oxford University Press, 2009), 8.  Hence adopting the comparative methodology for history writing asking for similarities and differences as discussed by Osterhammel, Jürgen. Transkulturell vergleichende Geschichtswissenschaft. In Geschichte und Vergleich: Ansätze und Ergebnisse international vergleichender Geschichtsschreibung. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (ed.). Frankfurt: Campus, 1996, 271– 313; Mjoset, Lars. Versuch über die Grundlagen der Vergleichenden historischen Sozialwissenschaft. In Vergleich und Transfer. Komparatistik in den Sozial- Geschichts – und Kulturwissenschaften. Hartmut Kälble and Jürgen Schriewer (eds.). Frankfurt: Campus, 2003, 167– 220; Haupt, Georg and Jü rgen Kocka.

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of “keeping national preoccupations at the forefront,”⁹⁴protests on the squares in 1989 need to be addressed with a multi-centered and multi-layered epistemology that stresses global entanglements while at the same time remaining apt for local contexts. The comparison of two events in China and Germany will provide two centers of attention for local contexts, while, on a global level, discussing shared experiences and entanglements of protests. In consequence, a global representation of the squares in 1989 will not replace writings that have so far been published on 1989 altogether. Disruptive world events such as those manifesting on the squares in 1989 are always “charged with a multitude of complementary meanings through their incorporation into political and cultural movements operating on a less-than-global scale.”⁹⁵ Notions of personal struggle or national history thus do not lose their validity as interpretations. But what is at stake is the common nominator of the events in China and Germany that cannot be captured by universal theory nor by maintaining epistemic divisions through national timelines. The global perspective on 1989 that is instead to be developed here seeks to complement the existing literature with reflections on the global entanglements of events in 1989 that were at hand and have thus far been underexplored. But instead of replacing all written history on 1989, the global representation discussed here aims to moderate between overstretched nationalistic claims and reductivism for the sake of theory building. A genuine global representation of protests on 1989 situates the squares within the transnational developments of their time while at the same time accepting that they stood at the center of regional or even national interests. Such a global representation will, of course, hardly lead to a theory formulation as aspired to by comparative sociology through case selection and hypothesis testing. First of all, the “global” of 1989 does not mean it was a universal moment. In some parts of the world, it did not matter. Zinecker established this for Colombia,⁹⁶ and countless other examples of places and people not affected by 1989 could probably be raised instantly. Hence, a SpaceTime of 1989 cannot aim to reconstruct a universal space. Secondly, as pointed out by Sachsenmaier, it should be “needless to say [that] the pluralistic character of global history and the growing quest for multiperspectivity will hardly allow for a resur-

Comparative History. In Comparison and History. Europe in Cross-National Perspective. Debora Cohen and Maura O’Connor (eds.). London: Routledge, 2006, 23 – 39.  Nederveen, Global Studies, 506.  Conrad et al, eds, Competing Visions, 16.  Zinecker, Heidrun. Where 1989 Didn’t Happen: The Case of Colombia. In Engel et al eds, 1989, 397– 418.

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gence of monopolizing theories and grand frameworks of explanation, which are supposed to fit all local cases equally and unequivocally.”⁹⁷ Instead, through the critical reflection on the shared yet different space and time of protests, a heterogenous SpaceTime for 1989 can emerge. As argued, this space and time can be captured, theoretically, as a global moment that manifested on the squares. The following analysis takes the three above described aspects of space production to explore secondary literature and the available sources that document the events on the square. Though each analytical aspect of space focuses the attention on particular qualities of the seized square, the lived, conceived, and perceived space are each inseparable sides of the same phenomena. Together, the three sides for analysis allow to reconstruct a specific mode of space production that was at work in Leipzig and Beijing in the global moment of 1989, and which furthermore can be observed in other protests on the squares in the early twentyfirst century.

Narrating the SpaceTime of 1989 in Beijing and Leipzig The double meaning of SpaceTime on the squares in 1989 is defined by the global moment that is manifest within the production of counter-spaces on the squares. Methodologically, the analysis of the squares is left to four concepts that are inseparably bound up with each other. To make sense of time in such distant cities as Leipzig and Beijing, the concept of the global moment sheds light on transnational origins and global outreaches as well as cross-references of protests. These insights into the shared time on the squares is complemented by a triad of spatial concepts for analysis. Spatial practice, representational space, and the representation of space are each interwoven with the other as they are with the concept of the global moment of 1989. Together, these concepts inform the idea of a SpaceTime that was produced in 1989 on the squares. This SpaceTime is not divided by national or cultural identity, nor does it aspire to be universalistic. It offers, instead, a path to reconstruct the counter-space produced on the squares in Beijing and Leipzig.

 Sachsenmaier, Global Perspectives, 6. See also the same line of thought for critical theory in a global age in Rehbein, “all we can hope to achieve are constellations that encompass more or fewer objects, relations, and familiarities.” Rehbein, Boike. Kritische Theorie nach dem Aufstieg des Globalen Sü dens. Antrittsvorlesung. 18 January 2010. https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/handle/18452/ 2390 (29 March 2020), 20. Own translation: “Alles, was wir leisten kö nnen, sind Konstellationen, die mehr oder weniger Gegenstä nde, Relationen und Familienä hnlichkeiten umfassen.”

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Since the analytical concepts do not allow for a separate discussion of the different aspects, the following analysis of the SpaceTime in 1989 is only narrowly structured after each concept introduced. The narration presented here of the SpaceTime and its political nature in 1989 stresses certain aspects of interest according to the following chapters but does not exclusively discuss one concept alone, nor does the previous discussion of a spatial dimension exclude its return in a later chapter. Nonetheless, the following Chapter II, “Towards the Global Moment of 1989,” focuses on the global origins of protests in China and East Germany and thus offers a global representation of them. Chapter III, “The Global Moment of 1989 in Leipzig and Beijing,” further stresses global entanglements of protests and sheds the first light on the role of the square in the global moment. Finally, Chapter IV focuses on the spatial analysis, and discusses the three dimensions of space production on the squares, stressing spatial practices, and the chaotic dynamic of representational space in 1989. Together, the three chapters allow the SpaceTime production to be traced by protests seizing the square in 1989. As the produced SpaceTime on the squares in 1989 marked a turning point not only for national histories but also for global transformations, the presented analysis allows conclusions to be reached on the history of globalization as seen from the square. Furthermore, protests in China and Germany 1989 serve as lessons for considering the study of more recent protests and their entanglements with global transformations. These reflections are found in the final chapter, “Lessons from 1989 for 2011 and After.”

II Towards the Global Moment of 1989 Transformations beyond national developments led to a shared global moment and the consequent production of counter-spaces on the city squares in Leipzig and Beijing. To understand the synchronous outburst of discontent on Tiananmen Square and in Leipzig, the entangled transformations in China and Germany leading to the crisis must be reconstructed. The shared SpaceTime of 1989 in China and Germany has origins on global and regional levels, leading to a moment in which questions of a new order arose and were fought out on the squares. At its core, the argument here is that both socialist states underwent a comparable transformation from being a militarized society at the time of their founding in 1949 to becoming two republics facing the pressures of accelerating globalization in 1989. Going through comparable rhythms in the twentieth century, the 1980s proved to be a decade of decisive developments for both regimes. Though comparable nation-border transcending dynamics increasingly challenged them, the experienced reality of these developments was quite different. Global changes in economics and security relations increasingly undermined the international order both socialist regimes had been founded in. Additionally, civil society tended to transgress national borders in their visions of an interconnected future. In line with the discussion of the “annus mirabilis” of 1989 by Odd Arne Westad,¹ there are three aspects of global transformations to consider in order to understand the rise of discontent in Germany and China by the end of the decade. Exploring similarities and differences in the way both socialist regimes adapted to economic globalization in the 1980s, the shifting parameters of the Cold War, and how people came together to form a critical civil society shows how global transformations were responded to distinctively. The reconstruction of such significant developments on a global scale can only be reductionist here. Nevertheless, a general idea of the global origins of discontent is crucial for understanding the rise of the SpaceTime on the squares in 1989.

 Westad, Odd A. Conclusion: Was there a Global 1989? In Lawson et al eds, The Global 1989, 271– 281. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682601-003

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II.1 Economic Globalization during the 1980s After a period of nationally-oriented and state-led economics in the post-war era, economic globalization accelerated in the 1980s. Growing trade and bordercrossing investments marked the end of the Keynesian welfare state as well as the Soviet developmental state as dominant drivers of the world economy. Furthermore, the US dollar became a floating currency, the gold standard was abandoned, and the US left the Bretton Woods agreements, giving rise to a more flexible and mobile finance system that went on to distribute investments more globally. Whether labeled as the “liberal revolution,” “Reagan-Thatcherism,” or “neoliberalism,” the fact that trade and finances increasingly crossed national borders from the late 1970s meant the emergence of a new financial world order with implications for production and hence livelihood. Basic indicators in the United Nations Development Report reflected the global turn in economics, as Nayyar pointed out: “The stock of direct investment in the world economy increased from $68bn to $636bn in 1980 and $6258bn in 2000.” According to his analysis, global exports also grew over 300 percent in the second half of the twentieth century, while international financial markets exploded when it came to foreign exchange, bank lending, financial assets, and government bonds.² But while some states like China actively shaped this new era of economic globalization, others like the GDR failed to come to terms with the new dominant development trends in the world economy,³ meaning, effectively, that the post-war order with Moscow and Washington as bipolar international centers eroded. New centers of importance emerged with the shift to transnational trade and finance. Besides the common references to the United States and Britain as advocates of renewed economic globalization from the 1980s on, China also emerged with its own plans for economic reform in an accelerating world economy. After a period of inward-oriented development strategies under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP reorganized its strategies to engage in world trade from the end of the 1970s. Reforms in the agrarian sector and the establishment of special economic zones along the coastline of China laid the groundwork for an export-oriented and foreign-investment-fueled development strategy, which was already in full swing by the late 1980s.  Deepak Nayyar. Globalization, History and Development: a Tale of two Centuries. Cambridge Journal of Economics 30:1 (2006): 141.  For a comparative study, see Bernstein. Thomas. China’s Reforms Compared to Those of Mikhail Gorbachev. In China’s Reform in Global Perspective. John Wong and Bo Zhiyue (eds.). London: World Scientific Publishing, 2010, 263 – 297.

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In East Germany, accelerating economic globalization caught party leaders off guard. The “rust belt” of Eastern Europe became increasingly uncompetitive, while global market prices for the export of fossil fuels plunged in the 1980s. Soviet economies thus began feeling the pressure from the globalizing economy. This economic decline in the Soviet Union left dependent satellites like the GDR without the formerly taken-for-granted consumer markets in the East. Also, it made them increasingly dependent on debt-financed domestic consumption. While economic performance in the United States, Western Europe, and China gained momentum with globalizing trade and finance, Soviet states were increasingly outcompeted to the point of crisis.

Economic Reform in China In China, the development path laid out by the Communist Party during the 1980s was a reformist one. It took off from the Third Plenum of the eleventh Communist Party Central Committee in 1978,⁴ shortly after Mao’s death and the consequent removal of the most radical elements from the party cadres. Not entirely abandoning China’s revolutionary legacy, reformists were eager to gradually turn from formerly centralized economic planning to more decentralized, privately owned, and increasingly foreign capital-sponsored business. By the end of the 1980s, China performed much better economically than before. Achievements under Deng Xiaoping read as follows: In 1978, the average per capita income of urban residents was 317 yuan and that of peasants was only 134 yuan. A decade later, in 1988, those figures were 1,119 yuan and 545 yuan, respectively. In 1978, national income stood at 301 billion yuan; by 1988, it had risen to 1,153 billion yuan. In the same period, foreign trade expanded from U.S. $20.6 billion to U.S. $80.5 billion.⁵

This impressive economic transformation during the 1980s would have been impossible without the commitment of party leaders to economic reform. The driving figure of reform in the 1980s was Deng Xiaoping, who took over as the central leading figure in the party after Mao Zedong’s death. In contrast to

 For a general discussion, see Qian, Yingyi. The Process of China’s Market Transition, 1978 – 1998. The Evolutionary, Historical, and Comparative Perspective. In China’s Deep Reform. Domestic Politics in Transition. Lowell Dittmer and Guoli Liu (eds.). Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006, 229 – 250.  Joseph Fewsmith. Dilemmas of Reform in China. Political Conflict and Economic Debate. Armonk, London (Armonk, London: An East Gate Book, 1994), 3.

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Maoist supporters of the Cultural Revolution, who were still labeling the West as an imperialist threat, Deng proved to be far from hostile to ideas on capitalist production. In a keynote speech to the Central Committee in 1979 he laid out his plan to learn from their Western antagonists in order to pursue economic growth in China: Capitalism already has a history of several hundred years, and we have to learn from the people of the capitalist countries. We must make use of the science and technology they have developed and of those elements in their accumulated knowledge and experience which can be adapted to our use. While we will import advanced technology and other things useful to us from the capitalist countries – selectively and according to plan – we will never import the capitalist system itself, nor anything repellant or decadent.⁶

Putting his words into practice, party officials were encouraged to meet with successful entrepreneurs and experts from abroad.⁷ Student exchange programs were set up, and “it was reported that between 1978 and 1986, over 40,000 Chinese have gone to more than seventy different countries to pursue their studies.”⁸ As the most attractive destination, the United States saw an increase of Chinese students applying for student visas from 1,330 in 1979 to 13,414 in 1987.⁹ In return, more foreign intellectuals were welcomed in China as well. The most prominent being Milton Friedman, who was invited to Beijing in 1988.¹⁰ As an advocate of the “Chicago School,” he had already informed the premises of liberal reforms under Reagan and Thatcher. However, to implement, or rather, re-implement private ownership in a collective and state-owned system, reformers around Deng needed to break with the highly loaded discourse of what socialism ought to mean. Thus, the most fundamental transformation under Deng Xiaoping was the successful introduction of a pragmatic view of economics. As Deng championed a period of economic deliberation, even Marxist economists increasingly accepted the idea that China was no longer a planned economy, but a commodity economy. Consequently, leading  Deng Xiaoping. Uphold the Four Cardinal Principles. In Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping. The Bureau for the Compilation and Translation of Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin Under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in China (ed.). Beijing (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1979), 177.  Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 455.  Leslie N.K. Lo. Chinese Education in the 1980s: A Survey of Achievements and Problems. In Cheng, China: Modernization, 599.  Leo A. Orleans. Chinese students in America Policies Issues and Numbers. Washington D.C. (Washington D.C.: National Academy Press, 1988), 88.  Along with 5,000 foreign scholars coming to teach in China from 1978 to 1985 alone, see Lo Chinese Education, 557.

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figures, such as the head of the Chinese Academy for Social Sciences, noted that within a commodity economy “under a socialist system” value production was a leading principle – thus, accumulation for profit became an acceptable motive.¹¹ After the turmoil of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution under Mao, this reformulation of economics meant a great deal. It broke with the time of terror, where “capitalist” mindsets and matters of unconscious beliefs could result in a death sentence. Making profits an acceptable motive allowed reformers to move the economy towards marketization and global integration. Within production, initial reforms in the early 1980s focused on agriculture. When Deng came into power, it was still organized according to Mao’s romanticized ideal of a hard-working cooperative, the “Dazhai.” Moving away from collective production as propagated massively throughout the Great Proletarian Revolution and cutting state-guaranteed prices was a tricky issue. Deng managed to avoid an open e´clat by first letting reforms replace the most restrictive legacies of Mao’s Dazhai idealism on the provincial level only.¹² Accompanied by positive evaluations of scholars and reform-oriented party officials,¹³ land reform could slowly transfer more and more land from collective ownership to private use – though it was not yet fully deemed “private property.” Once the principle of collective production was undermined by more favorable results coming out of private production, the pace of privatization in agricultural production was staggering. From 1978 to 1981, 45 percent of farming land was taken out of cooperative production, and production increased by about 20 million tons of grain.¹⁴ Such rapid growth in production after the abolition of Mao’s principles of agricultural development eased the way for further reforms in the countryside as well as in other production sectors. With the outcomes of agrarian reforms speaking on behalf of the changes, Deng and his supporters turned to the financial and industrial sectors. Knowing his active engagement would most likely lead to confrontation within the CCP, Deng pursued a rather passive strategy. Instead of implementing the reform him Ma Hong. ‘China-style’ socialist modernization, and issues of economic restructuring (1979). In Chinese Economists on Economic Reform – Collected Works of Ma Hong. China Development Research Foundation (ed.). New York: Routledge, 2014, 1– 45; Ma Hong. A Commodity Economy as it can exist under the Socialist System (1984). China Development (ed.), Collected Works, 112– 142.  For a more thorough discussion, see Oi, Jean. The Fate of the Collective after the Commune. In Chinese Society on the Eve of Tiananmen. The Impact of Reform. Deborah Davis and Ezra Vogel (eds.). Harvard University Asia Center, 1990, 15 – 36; White, Tyrene. Political Reform and Rural Government. In Davis et al, eds, Chinese Society on the Eve of Tiananmen, 37– 60.  Fewsmith, Dilemmas of Reform; Gu, Cultural Intellectuals.  Fewsmith, Dilemmas of Reform, 48.

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self, he allowed Zhao Ziyang to rise as a strategic figure within the party. Zhao had first successfully implemented more profit-oriented reforms in Sichuan and later toured China as Deng’s informal voice pushing to quadruple China’s gross domestic product by the year 2000.¹⁵ Still, for this second phase of reforms, a particularly exceptional level of groundwork was needed to allow for industrialization using Western capital in a way not compromising the Maoist legacy. Special economic zones came to play a vital role in navigating between reform and the socialist heritage. In delineated territories close to the sea, global capitalism was to be contained in order to learn about it.¹⁶ With generous parts of sub-provincial regions as laboratories, industrialization and foreign investment could be attracted within special economic zones without coming into direct conflict with more conservative party cadres. Fujian and Guangdong were at the helm of this experiment, two provinces that had already been granted more independence from 1979. Close to the foreign capital as well as with foreign expertise from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, by 1980 these two provinces hosted the first four special economic zones. Industrial output in these special zones performed strikingly well, jumping “from only Renminbi 5.5 billion in 1985 to Renminbi 49.5 billion in 1990.”¹⁷ They succeeded in attracting direct foreign investments, which were produced in more flexible policy settings and developed “allencompassing areas […] industry, commerce, agriculture, and housing construction.”¹⁸ Consequently, by the end of the 1980s, the concept of special zones spread over the whole coastline of China, serving as early examples of the export-oriented development strategy in China of the decades to come.¹⁹ By the end of 1988, both pioneering provinces, now hosting the most productive economic zones, were made fully responsible for their own finances. Instead of needing to comply with central economic planning, these regions now paid a fixed amount of money to the government in Beijing and gained relative independence in political decisions.²⁰

 Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 45 – 56.  Ng, Norman Y. T. From Special Economic Zones to the Coastal Open Cities: A Strategy for Modernization of China. In Cheng, China: Modernization, from page 498 on.  Wu Jinglian. Understanding and Interpreting Chinese Economic Reform. Mason (Mason: Thompson South Western, 2005), 297.  Kate Hannan. China, Modernization and the Goal of Prosperity: Government Administration and Economic Policy in the Late 1980s. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 332.  Amiti, Mary and Caroline Freund. The Anatomy of China’s Export Growth. In Policy Research Working Papers, The World Bank Development Research Group, 2008. https://elibrary.world bank.org/doi/abs/10.1596/1813-9450-4628 (29 March 2020).  Wu, Chinese Economic Reform, 301.

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By reforming production in some places while maintaining state-led development in others at the same time led to growing tensions towards the end of the 1980s. On the one hand, industrialization on the coast engendered a wave of migration throughout China: “Between 1980 and 1987, thirty-five million left their villages to work in factories, join rural construction teams, or travel daily as itinerant peddlers in city markets.”²¹ Furthermore, Deng’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics,”²² faced one particularly strained economic hybridity: “The two price system.” Prices that were fixed to achieve certain development goals set by the party collided with new, market-led prices. This enabled a particular form of corruption, “because nearly every good has more than one price, illicit income can be made by merely by transforming the status of the good.”²³ In combination with high inflation rates and radical price reforms, this new form of corruption did not bode well for the political climate during the late 1980s. In fact, it led to an open dilemma: Either all prices would need to be fixed through the market or corruption would prevail. Together with rising inflation – up to nine percent in 1984 – and reports of corruption, smuggling, and moral decay among the political leadership, there were plenty of reasons for critique from more conservative party leaders. As a consequence of these tensions, Chen Yun and a more control-oriented bloc in the party intervened and applied pressure on reformers to slow down their initiatives. Reformers under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping had to confront severe criticism from the more conservative-oriented party bloc with Chen Yun and Li Peng at their top. Not only could Deng not push for the abandonment of the two-price system anymore, but he was also pressured to withhold other ambitious reforms for China. Conservatives stepped into the place of reformers, trying to moderate the harm created by overly aggressive reform. They succeeded in bringing down inflation from 11 percent in 1988 to four percent in 1989.²⁴ But the price of such “conservative” moderation of economics in China was high. It was accompanied by unemployment and overall insecurity, translating into social unrest. Party conservatives thus also launched an “AntiBourgeois Liberalization” campaign that further strengthened the divide between reformers and party conservatives, and also put pressure on the intellectuals and students interested in political reforms.

 Davis, Deborah. Urban Job Mobility. In Deborah et al, eds, Eve of Tiananmen, 85.  Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 465.  Barry Naughton. Growing out of the Plan. Chinese Economic Reform 1978 – 1993. Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 230.  For an overview of cycles of inflation in China, see Wong, John. China’s Three-Decade Reform: An Economic Perspective. In: Wong et al, eds, China’s Reform, 56.

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With an antagonistic bloc within the central party leadership due to the reformist path taken throughout the 1980s, Deng’s sudden push for a swift reform to abandon the dual price system in 1988 turned out to be highly destructive. Growth rates at the end of the decade accelerated again, “at an annual rate of between 7 and 9 percent,” while “double-digit inflation had begun to cripple the urban economy. Monthly inflation averaged more than 10 percent during the summer.”²⁵ In such a vast and ambiguous moment of economic reform, the push for yet another price reform by Deng, announced through an article published in the People’s Daily on August 19th, resulted in widespread panic. As Zhao Ziyang also “refused to slow the economy and instead accelerated an export drive,”²⁶ reformers had created a challenging economic environment towards the end of the decade, particularly in the cities. Wang Hui, sociologist, and participant of the protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989, summarizes the economic environment at the brink of protests in 1989 as follows: In 1989, the volume of the gap created between the two types of prices under this dual system (that is “rent”) reached upward of 3.5 trillion yuan, representing roughly 30 percent of that year’s gross national product. […] Second, in the urban areas, income levels among different strata began to become extremely polarized; the workers’ “iron rice bowl” came under urgent threat as incomes went down; […] unemployment […] was […] already recognized as a trend that especially affected workers in state owned enterprises. Third, due to the emergence of adjustments in the taxing structure and the marketization of power [energy], and similar phenomena, the composition of commercial stratum was undergoing changes in which the recently won advantages of individual entrepreneurs were being drastically reduced. Fourth, reforms in housing, health care, salaries, and other social benefits were not promoted extensively, while inflation threatened any sense of social security.²⁷

Protests in 1989 were hence forming at a time of economic insecurity. But not due to a lack of reforms in the socialist economy, but very much because of them. Rising inflation, in particular, made everyday business in Beijing more difficult, as reforms intervened in the life of the entire urban population. Also, longsubsidized prices for houses became subject to market reforms. Rises in wages could not hold up to the tame yet still accelerating rates of inflation in the late 1980s. Consequently, in 1989, Naughton notes a real wage drop of five percent within urban areas.²⁸ As discussed before, another source of growing dis-

 June Grasso, Jay Corrin, and Michael Kort. Modernization and Revolution in China. From the Opium Wars to the Olympics. Fourth Edition. (London: M. E. Sharpe, 2009), 232.  Grasso et al, Modernization and Revolution, 232.  Wang, The Year 1989, 16 – 17.  Naughton, Growing Out of the Plan, 253.

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content was the staggering levels of corruption. Lu Xiaobo described the changing quality of corruption that came with reforms as a change from “non-economic corruption to economic corruption.”²⁹ Public discontent, inflation, and corruption set the stage for the protests on Tiananmen Square in 1989. To summarize, during the early and mid-1980s, skepticism and optimism about reforms brought severe implications for the political life of China. Gradual reform and integration into global markets through special economic zones allowed for the necessary adjustments, especially in the industrial production sectors. At the same time, the centrally organized, socialist understanding of economics continued to play an important role, keeping reforms in check and thus blocking too rapid liberalization. The CCP set an example of how to state-manage the globalization of economics in the 1980s by splitting into two blocs of reformers and conservatives that would challenge each other. In consequence, “China’s economic reforms also expedited movement toward a new order,”³⁰ offering a viable alternative to the liberal, Western reform agenda and socialist development campaigns in Europe. Even though China’s path to a new order was far from being a “shock therapy,” the reformation of Maoist economics increasingly fed into oppositional sentiment due to the negative side-effects suffered by an increasing number of the population. By reforming the socialist development project, corruption, rising inflation, unemployment, and growing socio-economic pressure, especially on the urban population, rose.

Economic Stagnation in East Germany In contrast to the dynamism of China’s reforms and discontent, the situation in East Germany was one of stagnation. Once a socialist role model for economic performance, East Germany’s economy faced a growing gap in production and domestic consumption compared to the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). This gap widened from the late 1970s on, proving unbridgeable by 1989. No longer one of the best performing national economies, nor a developing country, the GDR in 1989 has been described as an “outdated industrial economy,” which “in

 Lü Xiaobo. Cadres and Corruption. The Organizational Involution of the Chinese Communist Party. Palo Alto (Stanford University Press, 2000), 192.  Nancy B. Tucker. China as a factor in the Collapse of the Soviet Empire. Political Science Quarterly, 110:4 (1995): 518.

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terms of development lagged behind the FRG by 20 – 25 years.”³¹ The GDR had faced economic crises before, but the dynamics during the 1980s led to an ever more difficult economic reality. It found itself in a self-enforcing cycle of stagnation and loss of legitimacy due to comparatively lower living standards compared to their Western competitor. Already by the end of the 1970s the first decisive changes in the economic sector of the GDR had been made that led to subpar performance during the 1980s. With Honecker in power, economics was fused into a broader understanding of social politics that was now supposed to, for better or worse, secure the legitimacy of the ruling system. Kopstein coined the term “campaign economy” to describe the later stage of economics in the GDR, where living standards rather than economic parameters were used to evaluate economic developments.³² Such a focus on consumption levels held the doubtful advantage of using imports or propagandist praise to make up for the overall decline in production outputs. Furthermore, Honecker decided to nationalize private enterprises or force them to implement central planning strategies.³³ These centralizing reforms, in contrast to the path taken in China, influenced the logic of how enterprises would invest and spend their resources. Because now the principle of “the more you need for production, the more you can ask for support” replaced profitability,³⁴ many of the once revenue-producing sectors with well-working export businesses became less productive and less competitive. Rhetorical imperatives to increase labor productivity with ever more rigid planning procedures supplanted investments into productive sectors. Even if workers were responsive to motivation campaigns from the top-down, their most committed socialist spirit could have hardly made up for the aging production sector and inefficient organization of macroeconomic resource distribution.³⁵ In times of diminishing productive investments, high spending on unproductive sectors such as housing and pioneering industry sectors was particularly problematic. The state-owned airplane fleet or the forced development of the mi-

 Jan Priewe and Rudolf Hickel. Der Preis der Einheit. Bilanz und Perspektiven der deutschen Vereinigung. Frankfurt (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1992), 70. Own translation: “[D]as in Bezug auf die BRD einen Rü ckstand von 20 – 25 Entwicklungsjahren hatte.”  Kopstein, Economic Decline, 131– 154.  Kotkin, Uncivil Society, 48; Also, see Andre´, Konsumversprechen, 158.  Kotkin, Uncivil Society, 157.  On the working conditions in 1989, see Voss, Peter. The Goals of the Revolution. In Origins of a Spontaneous Revolution. Karl-Dieter Opp, Christiane Gern, and Peter Voss (eds.). University of Michigan Press, 1996. Especially from page 5.

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croprocessor industry, for example, display how innovation still had the goal of granting prestige, rather than ensuring effectiveness and meeting demand. From 1986 to 1989, the East German state pumped 14 billion Marks³⁶ to catch up in highly integrated circuit technology, thereby disregarding the needs of other production sectors for reinvestments. The result of this strategy was a non-compatible microprocessor industry and rising disinvestment in the other production sectors.³⁷ In 1989, a closer examination of the great efforts in the microtechnology industry revealed that production costs were four times higher in the GDR compared to the world standard. Its products were also not competitive on the technological level,³⁸ and it needed no less than three billion Marks more of subsidies per year.³⁹ Moreover, the bureaucratic organization of investments implied a rent-seeking culture retarding the efficiency of investments.⁴⁰ The struggle for investment resources in the GDR turned increasingly complex,⁴¹ developing a logic of decision-making typical for economies dominated by bureaucratic investment alignment. These developments had two significant implications for production in the GDR: it was not able to match the consumption levels of those living in West Germany, as it was not able to compete with the production of investment goods sold on the world market. As marketization and export production increased worldwide,⁴² industry in the GDR became uncompetitive within the globalizing economy of the 1980s. The special economic zones in China being only one example of this development. Secondly, the GDR grew increasingly dependent on

 Steiner, Konsumversprechen, 171.  Schü rer estimates that in between 1975 and 1988 attrition rates rose from 47.1 % to 53.8 %, see Schü rer, Gerhard. Schü rer Krisen-Analyse. Deutschland Archiv 10 (1992): 1114.  “Lot sizes in the GDR microelectronics industry were below international (western) standards by the factor of 10.” Ulrich Voskamp, and Volker Wittke. Industrial Restructuring in the Former German Democratic Republic (GDR): Barriers to Adaptive reform Become Downward Developments Spirals. Politics & Society 19:3 (1991): 346.  Voskamp and Wittke, Industrial Restructuring, 346.  On the theoretical discussion of rent-seeking in the GDR see Elsenhans, Hartmut. Aufstieg und Niedergang des realen Sozialismus. Einige politö konomische Anmerkungen. Comparativ 8:1 (1998): 122 – 132.  Kopstein, Economic Decline, 52; On the expansion of bureaucratic administration in economics: Steiner, Konsumversprechen, 160.  For a good summary, see Thomas, Caroline. Globalization and Development in the South. In Global Political Economy. John Ravenhill (ed.). Oxford University Press, 2005. In particular from page 328.

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imports, triggering public indebtedness to foreign as well as domestic lenders.⁴³ Public debt, rising from 5.2 billion US dollars in 1975 to 20.6 billion in 1989, became the most important economic factor leading to the crisis of the East German state.⁴⁴ Available resources for investments consequently fell in 1982 and 1986 below the level of 1981,⁴⁵ reinforcing insufficient production levels to compete with the output costs of Western economies. Particularly from 1986 onwards, accumulation thus stagnated, and investments into the productive sector dropped further from 16.1 percent to 9.95 percent in 1988.⁴⁶ In the end, consumption levels could only be sustained by buying products from the enemy, financed through public debt, or, as was increasingly the case, by not offering demanded consumption goods in the first place. The “campaign economy” culminated in socialist propaganda and misleading incentives for production that together led to rising debt. Following the logic of economics as a holistic, all-inclusive basis for social satisfaction, political leadership in the GDR tried to mask these shortcomings in production with social programs such as subsidies for housing, price stabilization, education, healthcare, sports programs, and recreation. The costs of these social programs were on a significant rise during the 1980s, with an estimated increase of seven percent per year from 1986 to 1988.⁴⁷ The massive security sector, with its costly surveillance programs and repressive omnipresence, must also be considered here, even though no numbers are available for discussion. Public spending on these “social programs” was an additional burden on the aging and increasingly ineffective production sector, but was meant to maintain acceptance of party rule in times of diminishing economic performance. Finally, facing the untenable situation in 1989, Egon Krenz reasoned during the tenth summit of the Central Committee on 8 November that overcoming the economic shortcomings required dedicated work (“harte Arbeit”) for the next 10 to 15 years, as well as less consumption while increasing production.⁴⁸ Schürer, the economist in charge of suggesting reforms at the time, even tried to put the prospect of austerity into num-

 Steiner, Andre´. Die DDR Volkswirtschaft am Ende. In Die DDR als Geschichte. Fragen – Hypothesen -Perspektiven. Jü rgen Kocka and Martin Sabrow (eds.). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009, 113 – 129.  Maier, Charles S. Vom Plan zur Pleite. Der Verfall des Sozialismus in Deutschland. In Kocka et al, eds, Die DDR als Geschichte, 110.  Maier, “Vom Plan zur Pleite,” 110.  See, Schü rer, “Schürers Krisenanalyse.”  Schü rer, “Schürers Krisenanalyse.”  Egon Krenz, quoted in: Hertle, Hans-Hermann. Staatsbankrott. Deutschland Archiv, 10, (1992): 1082.

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bers, and his vision exposed nothing less than a dilemma: to reverse the path of rising public indebtedness, a cut in living standards of 25 to 30 percent was needed. This cut, in his own conclusion, would make the GDR “ungovernable” (“unregierbar”).⁴⁹ Yet another aspect of developments fostered the decline of living standards in the GDR: the quest for energy supplies and its global and ecological implications. Forced through agreements with the Soviet Union to buy raw oil and gas at a price significantly higher than the collapsing world market in the 1980s, the once-profitable refining of raw energy resources turned into a loss.⁵⁰ This, together with the decreasing share of foreign currency reserves induced by the economy’s incapacity to compete at an international level for export shares, led the GDR leadership to the somewhat desperate attempt to decrease its imports of natural gas and oil by relying more heavily on brown coal exploitation within its own territory. The dirty business of surface mining, however, fostered a further loss in quality of life for many living close to the polluted fields. Though official numbers were kept secret, the massive pollution during the 1980s could be seen and felt by the population without any special education on the issue.⁵¹ The city of Leipzig, in particular, played an unfortunate role here, as by the late 1980s it was surrounded by surface mines exploiting brown coal. These brown coal mines engendered dissatisfaction in those living in the region since they were heavily polluting the air.⁵² With dirt in the air, polluted water on the ground, and housing in decay,⁵³ Leipzig was one of the many cities in East Germany where the overall economic and infrastructural situation led to growing dissatisfaction. Not able to consume on the levels of their Western antagonists, faced with dirty air and water, and witnessing their city in decomposition, material reasons for dissatisfaction in Leipzig were plenty, and every day they became more difficult to ignore. Though the full scale of economic developments was probably little known by those gathering on the streets in 1989, a sense of economic stagnation was evident for everyone solely by the appearance of the town, with its halffilled shops and the once so proud fin de siècle buildings that were deteriorating.

 Schü rer, “Schürers Krisenanalyse.”  Schü rer, “Schürers Krisenanalyse,” 117.  Opp et al., Origins of a Revolution, 53.  For a summary of problems with the ecological environment at the time: Priewe et al, Der Preis der Einheit, 43. See, also, the documentary by Peter Wensierski. Leipzig 1989, 1989. Particularly from minute 2 and minute 5 onwards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhMUVAbvzi8 (29 March 2020).  Schü rer, “Schürers Krisenanalyse,” 1113.

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The widening gap of living standards compared to the West was also no secret to anyone who watched Western television programs or maintained contact with relatives and friends in West Germany. Promises of socialist welfare were fading. Imports for consumption and public social programs were necessary for the socialist regime in order to maintain their legitimacy in the face of the Western alternative but tempered profitable investments into the production sectors and came at the cost of growing public debt. The economic basis of the GDR grew increasingly anachronistic, as it held on to strategies of the socialist past. It was, in fact, outdated with the acceleration of economic globalization in the 1980s. The socialist parties in China and East Germany coped with the changing global economic environment quite differently. China’s leadership decided to overcome the worst manifestations of poverty. New political leaders like Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang introduced wide-ranging reforms that integrated the Chinese economy into world trade. Reforms turned the old economic order upside down, giving rise to unseen growth rates and accumulation of wealth, especially for those benefitting from industrialization programs, but also sharpening disparities as well as corruption. In contrast, the Communist Party in the GDR held on to established routines and modes of production, which proved, in the end, to be unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the “campaign economy” of the GDR faced bankruptcy in political and economic terms. The comparison of Chinese and East German economic developments during the 1980s shows that the changes in that decade were not so much a question of how fit the socialist party was to lead and global economics per se, it was about the strategies chosen by the two respective ruling parties in a world economy benefiting those willing to actively promote border-crossing financialization and production. The effectiveness of previous nationally oriented economic campaigns came to an end with economic globalization in the 1980s. The CCP managed not only to engage but to co-create the global economic order that was on the rise, while also paying the political price for reform.

II.2 The End of the Cold War In addition to the erosion of the economic basis, the dismantling of the international order during the Cold War put further pressure on the socialist regimes in China and East Germany. Again, this transformation on a global scale had different regional implications. These implications cannot be seen, however, if 1989 is merely understood as the end of a rivalry between the East and West in a black

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vs. white plot.⁵⁴ The Cold War was, instead, a complex bricolage of interests, dominated by two interventionist regimes.⁵⁵ Under the universal banner of justice, socialist interventions in the war against fascism and in decolonization spread Marxism-Leninism across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Equally, the interventionist regime of liberty under the leadership of the US supported various insurrections around the world.⁵⁶ But with first China and then later the Soviet Union refraining from interventions in the 1980s, the world order once dominated by the interplay of these interventions came to an end – with vital implications, especially for East Germany. For the moment of 1989 to take place in Europe, the decline of the Soviet Union as an interventionist military actor during the 1980s was a crucial development. As the Soviet Union embraced cooperation instead of confrontation with the US and Western Europe, the new paradigm labeled “glasnost” set the stage for the uprisings of 1989 in Europe. As Kocka noted: “However further analysis may modify our understanding of the events, in the second half of the 1980s the Soviet Union stopped putting its military might at the disposal of the governments under its influence as a substitute for legitimacy, as it had in 1953 in the GDR, 1956 in Hungary, 1968 in the CSSR, and as late as 1981 in Poland.”⁵⁷ With Gorbachev’s new will for normalization of transatlantic relations, dissident movements could grow within the Soviet empire. While in earlier periods, any too bold action against the SED leadership would end with Soviet military intervention, the late 1980s were increasingly freed from that threat, as the Soviet Union refrained from intervening. The new path of glasnost may have set the context for the synchronous emergence of protests around the central regions of Europe, but the CCP had never been dependent on the intervention of the Soviets. In fact, since Deng Xiaoping had already sought to normalize relations with the US as early as 1978. Gorbachev’s vision of a coming global age as a “process of the emergence of a mutu-

 Gerovitch, Slave. Writing History in the Present Tense: Cold War-era Discursive Strategies of Soviet Historians of Science and Technology. In Simpson (ed.), Universities and Empire, 189 – 228.  Encyclopedia of Global Studies. Helmut K. Anheier and Mark Juergensmeyer (eds.). Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2012, 222– 228.  Westad, Odd A. The global Cold War: Third World interventions and the making of our Times. Cambridge University Press, 2005.  Kocka, Vereinigungskrise, 14. Own translation: “Wie immer die Ursachenanalyse nach genauerer Kenntnis der Vorgä nge einmal zu modifizieren sein wird, in der zweiten Hä lfte der 80er Jahre hö rte die Sowjetunion auf, mit ihrer militä rischen Macht den Regierungen und den Staaten in ihrem Einflußbereich als Legitimationsersatz zur Verfü gung zu stehen, wie 1953 in der DDR, 1956 in Ungarn, 1968 in der CSSR und noch 1982 in Polen.”

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ally-connected and integral world,”⁵⁸ would have hardly irritated Deng’s reformist path. But the Chinese leadership was skeptical about the changes coming under the banner of “perestorika.” After all, the CCP already underwent a revision of party paradigms, while remaining careful not to endanger central party rule. Beijing’s skepticism concerning the implications of Moscow’s terms for the revision of Soviet rule was supported by East German party leaders, who were also becoming alienated by the fast-changing Europe of the 1980s. For a short period, then, the changing tides of time brought both socialist regimes together in an alliance of skeptics of Soviet leadership in Moscow.

China and East Germany in the International Order after World War Two The ending of the Cold War was not of crucial importance to the CCP. Though sharing beliefs in “a” world revolution and the justice of the socialist idea, Communists in China were not followers of Moscow’s lead, especially in military terms. Their divergence became apparent during the 1960s especially, with deStalinization under Khrushchev endangering Mao’s legacy. The question of how to memorize Stalin’s heritage caused a rift between the supposed comrades, the consequent Sino-Soviet split even brought the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China to the brink of war by 1969. In what could be called a Cold War within communist lines, relations between Beijing and Moscow were reserved at best, and openly confrontational at worst. It is then of little surprise that perestroika under the leadership of Gorbachev were met with reservation.⁵⁹ Unrest in Poland, as well as the prospect of elections, caused the reformers under Deng Xiaoping to keep their distance from the political reforms that were increasingly spreading around Europe. As a consequence, by the late 1980s, China held a quite particular position in the ending of the Cold War. After having supported the CCP from the very beginning in 1921,⁶⁰ Moscow’s hold on the Chinese communists increasingly loosened during the course of the civil and, later, the Cold War in Asia. Due to the fact that Stalin’s interests tended to run against the revolutionary insurrection by the CCP, the relationship be-

 Gorbachev, Mikhail. Excerpts of the Address by Mikhail Gorbachev. 43rd General Assembly Session. 1988. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Address_to_the_43rd_U.N._General_Assembly_ Session (29 March 2020).  Wilson, Jeanne. “The Polish Lesson:” China and Poland 1980 – 1990. Studies in Comparative Communism, 23:3 – 4 (1990): 259 – 279. See, especially from page 260.  Ishikawa Yoshimoto. The Formation of the Chinese Communist Party. New York (Columbia University Press, 2012), 363.

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tween Beijing and Moscow was already fraught to begin with. But it was not until the historic speech delivered by Khrushchev and the subsequent insurrections in Poland and Hungary in 1956 that Mao openly contravened Moscow’s leadership in the socialist world.⁶¹ The revisionism of supreme leadership through the party secretary, the open questioning of the importance of class struggle, and diverging takes on the need for anti-imperialist leadership led to what came to be known as the Sino-Soviet split. According to Lorenz Lü thi, this split “helped to determine the second half of the Cold War in general, and influenced the course of the Second Vietnam War in particular.”⁶² Meaning that US military presence in Asia at the time implied the question of how the diverging interests of both powerhouses in the region, the Soviets, and the People’s Republic, could be mediated. Even after China underwent its own period of questioning supreme leadership and radicalized idealism after the death of Mao, the split between Moscow and Beijing endured. Moscow may have been able to define the conditions of the Cold War for Europe, but it certainly was not able to determine under what conditions China was to integrate into a post-Cold War world order. In contrast, the ruling regime in Berlin was strongly dependent on terms laid out by Moscow. This dependency was already apparent four years after the founding of the republic itself. In June 1953, the enforced socialist transformation from the top down faced its first serious challenge. Urban workers, the class that was supposed to carry out socialist ideals for a utopian future, were revolting on the streets. That revolt was shut down by the Red Army swiftly. The price of the 17 June uprising was the death of dozens.⁶³ Several hundred were furthermore sent to prison, and two sentenced to death.⁶⁴ Criticism of the then acting central secretary of the SED Walter Ulbricht was silenced. Thus, the uprisings, in the end, led to the further fortification of the party leadership. The uprising and its subsequent suppression with Soviet tanks were the last signs of a dissenting public in the GDR for decades to come.⁶⁵ Even with the relative relaxation of sanctions and surveillance after Stalin’s death and the consequent protests gain-

 Chen Jian. Mao’s China and the Cold War. The University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Especially pages 145 – 163.  Lorenz Lü thi. The Sino Soviet Split. Cold War in the Communist World. Oxford (Oxford University Press, 2008), 1.  Ahrberg, Edda, Hans-Hermann Hertle, Tobias Hollitzer (eds.). Die Toten des Volksaufstandes vom 17. Juni 1953. Mü nster: Lit, 2004.  Schö ne, Jens. Volksaufstand. Der 17. Juni in Berlin und der DDR. Berlin: Berlin Story, 2013. Numbers given on page 121.  Schrö der, Richard. Vor dem Sturm. Die unnormale Normalitä t der DDR. In Henke (ed.), Revolution und Vereinigung, 47– 63.

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ing momentum in Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, the streets in East Germany stayed calm. In fact, the only alternative left, in the eyes of many, was fleeing the country altogether. Consequently, from 1950 to 1961, about 1.3 million people between the ages of 20 and 50 fled the GDR,⁶⁶ ultimately leading to the erection of a wall between the Eastern and Western territories of Germany. The Iron Curtain cemented East Germany’s status as belonging to Moscow. Moscow also played a decisive role in bilateral ties between Berlin and Beijing. In the first relatively cooperative post-war period, the diplomatic and economic exchange grew across the Eurasian continent – much to the benefit of relations between East Germany and China.⁶⁷ But the warmth in these bilateral relations cooled once Moscow and Beijing diverged politically. De-Stalinization in East Germany came at the price of cutting ties with the CCP. As Nikita Khrushchev fostered a more daring discussion of the legacy of Stalin, unrest in the Soviet satellites, and in particular in Poland and Hungary, was set off. The questioning of Walter Ulbricht’s rule by students, scientists, and journalists with regard to his personality cult and Stalinist methods was indicative for Beijing to seek distance to the German-Soviet leader.⁶⁸ Brief and revised after 1956, this period of de-Stalinization in Europe had led to a split between Moscow and Beijing, which instantly translated into the end of any official relationships between China and socialist Europe until the late 1970s. Only after Mao’s death did relations between socialist Germany and the People’s Republic of China warm up once again. From 1981 onwards, Brezhnev and Honecker’s strategy towards the People’s Republic in China changed, and two speeches given at their respective party summits in 1981 reflected rising ambitions to normalize relations. On the initiative of the East German political leadership, trade relations between East Germany and China grew the fastest compared to other Soviet states during the 1980s.⁶⁹ While China’s foreign trade relations were dominated by the US, Japan, and West Germany, the bilateral trade was of significant importance to East Germany. Hoping, for example, to finally find a market for their expansive investments in microchip technology,⁷⁰ economic

 Malycha, Andreas and Jochen Peter (eds.). Die SED. Geschichte einer deutschen Partei. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2009. Numbers on page 125.  Meissner, Werner (ed.). Die DDR und China 1949 – 1990. Berlin Akademie Verlag, 1995. See, especially, pages 63 – 67.  See Herzberg, Guntolf. Anpassung und Aufbegehren. Die Intelligenz der DDR in den Krisenjahren 1956/1967. Berlin: C. H. Links, 2006. Page 88 and after.  Meissner ed., Die DDR und China, 350p.  Seen from today’s view, with China producing microelectronics for the entire world, certainly an irony.

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treaties were promoted actively by socialist leaders coming from Berlin to Beijing during the 1980s. These improving relations between East Germany and China reflected the overall pattern of Chinese foreign politics that was interested in situating China in a changing world order.

The Chinese-German “Anti-Reformist Alliance” during Glasnost and Perestroika When the Cold War in Europe slowly ended, the military grip on Moscow’s satellites dissolved as well. Still, in 1982, the year that the Soviet party leader Brezhnev died, the leadership interludes by Andropov and Chernenko were defined by the USSR’s intent to sustain the “military-technological parity with the USA won by Brezhnev […] even at the expense of the popular standard of living.”⁷¹ But with the US economy under Reagan achieving economic superiority in the 1980s, this idea of renewed Soviet military aspirations faded by necessity. The new Soviet leader, Gorbachev, consequently formulated a more moderate approach, which entailed the new doctrines of glasnost and perestroika. Most importantly for Europe, the Brezhnev doctrine that had legitimated Soviet army interventions in Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War came under increasing scrutiny. Interventions by the Soviets in a fast-changing Europe at the time became increasingly unlikely, as the new Soviet leader sought transparency and cooperation, or “glasnost.” East Germany found itself in a quickly changing Europe by the end of the 1980s, but party cadres were nevertheless adamantly against embracing reforms. While the European Union welcomed former military dictatorships transitioning into liberal democratic regimes in Southern Europe under its wing, also in Eastern Europe, the formerly militant stance against critical movements eroded. Hungary and Czechoslovakia responded increasingly positively to demands for reform from below, as did Poland after ending martial law in the mid-1980s. But reforms in the Soviet satellites under the new paradigm of perestroika alienated the party leadership in Berlin. With its particular need for legitimacy in the face of the Western example,⁷² the party in East Germany refused to accept any need for political reform. In fact, their reluctant stance on the question of political re-

 Robert W. Service. Comrades! A History of World Communism. Cambridge (Harvard University Press, 2007), 418.  On the unique needs of the Eastern German Socialist Unity Party, see Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft.

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form was frequently cited as a driver for the sudden upheaval in 1989.⁷³ While Europe was transforming, East German elites clung to an increasingly anachronistic state apparatus, which, furthermore, lacked the former military support from Moscow. Likewise, the Chinese leadership refrained from embracing the reformist path as taken in Europe. Converse to the course taken by Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping transformed the CCP into a vehicle through which political and economic reform in China could be enforced. Five full paragraphs added to the party’s constitution outlined the course of action to ensure discipline within the party.⁷⁴ Furthermore, control over the military was handed over to the top party leadership, stressing the need for obedience and oversight by the party.⁷⁵ Only through the consolidation of firm party discipline, as per the apparent reasoning, could Deng Xiaoping manage to turn the party into the organizational tool he needed to implement his liberally inspired visions for economic reform. Thus, “perestroika” took place in China during the 1980s, albeit in a different way than in Europe. As Vogel put it, reformers in China had “understood what many Western economists who took institutions for granted did not: that it was vitally important to take time to build national institutions with structures, rules, law, and trained personnel adapted to the local culture and conditions.”⁷⁶ Neither stagnating in isolation nor following Moscow when it came to reforms that led to increased political pluralism, Chinese communists responded in their own ways to the needs of a changing world order. China deliberately diverged from the reforming Soviet bloc by the end of the 1980s, and presented its own take on the much-needed reforms. As shown by Wilson, the Solidarnos´c´ movement in Poland warned Chinese communists of the dangers that came with a mobilized workers’ movement.⁷⁷ A situation which reformers in China sought to avoid. Framed as the “Polish Lesson,” Deng Xiaoping observed the transformations in Eastern Europe with skepticism and drew his own conclusions for reform in China. In particular, the Soviets’ plans for “semi-free elections” in the late 1980s were but further proof of the divergence in interests between the Moscow-led reforms in Europe and the Beijing

 Süß, Walter. Staatssicherheit am Ende. Warum es den Mächtigen nicht gelang, 1989 eine Revolution zu verhindern. Berlin: C. H. Links, 1999; Kotkin, Uncivil Society; Kowalczuk, Endspiel, 270.  Both statues of the party as used in the 1980s are in Simons, William and Stephen White (eds.). The Party Statutes of the Communist World. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1984.  Saich, Anthony J. The Statute of the Communist Party of China. In Simons et al, eds, The Party Statutes, 83 – 114.  Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 475.  Wilson, “‘The Polish Lesson,’” 260.

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approach to reform.⁷⁸ It was feared that worker unions and elections would set an example that could endanger party control – the foundation for reforms in China. Far from being ignorant of the changes in the West, the leadership in Beijing observed the changes from afar with suspicion and adjusted their own course accordingly. Party leaders in East Germany worked for a renewed partnership with their Chinese comrades since they were similarly irritated by the course taken in Moscow. For a brief period, the academic, cultural, and economic exchange between China and East Germany was hence on the rise in the 1980s.⁷⁹ This political effort even culminated in the visit of top East German party officials to Beijing in 1986 and 1989. With reforms in Central Europe underway, leaders in China and East Germany shared an interest in not following Gorbachev’s new dicta of glasnost and perestroika. Consequently, they became what Zhong labeled the “AntiReformist Alliance”.⁸⁰ Thus, when protests formed in 1989, they confronted two socialist regimes that were seeking to avoid perestroika as laid out by Gorbachev. But without any reforms and without the military enforcement of rule by the Soviets in East Germany, conservative party leaders in Berlin were heading into problems. The CCP, never dependent on Soviet military power, was rather more apprehensive of the terms of perestroika than the implications of glasnost and the ending of the Cold War. If anything, the CCP sought to bring the People’s Army under even closer supervision to ensure its power. In the period of socialist reinvention during the 1980s, cross-references of party leaders and interdependencies influenced the way political reforms of the time were envisaged in China and Germany, respectively. The socialist SED was confronted with reforming and integrating into Europe while at the same time also losing the former military back-up from Moscow. Not interested in following Moscow’s lead when it came to political reform, party leaders in Germany sought alliances beyond the Soviet bloc – as they did with China. The communists in China, in turn, were an example of a socialist project that developed quite independently from Moscow’s interests. With glasnost and perestroika leading to further alienation in political terms, reforms under Deng Xiaoping developed their own unique way of responding to the changing world order in the 1980s. Whilst de-radicalizing Maoism and opening up in eco-

 Mary E. Sarotte. China’s Fear of Contagion: Tiananmen Square and the Power of the European Example. International Security, 37:2, (2012): 162.  For a detailed discussion of renewed relations, see Zhong Chen. Defying Moscow, engaging Beijing: The German Democratic Republic relations with the People’s Republic of China 1980 – 1989. Dissertation. London, 2014; Also, see Meissner ed, China und die DDR.  Zhong, “Defying Moscow, Engaging Beijing.”

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nomic terms, party discipline in China was strengthened, and political reforms in Europe were met with suspicion. In conclusion, when dissent gained momentum by the end of the decade in Leipzig and Beijing, it faced rather conservative socialist regimes in a global climate of change. When discontent challenged both regimes on the squares, the party leadership needed to find a response that would reflect the changes in the international order. Such a response, however, was harder to find for the SED than in an already engaged CCP.

II.3 Rising Global Civil Society The most critical global transformation for the global moment in 1989 was the emergence of an increasingly transnationally operating civil society. In many ways, 1989 can be seen as a transnational expression of state-skeptic movements that embraced the idea of an interconnected world society towards the ending of the twentieth century.⁸¹ While wars and military insurgencies dominated the first half of the twentieth century on behalf of the consolidation of the nation state, political conflicts in the second half increasingly became more civil and also more state-skeptical. Already from the 1970s on, state-oriented movements were in decline, while transnational organizations and means of civil resistance grew. This change in the aims and goals of dissenting movements around the world is especially important on order to understand the political nature of the seized square in 1989. The uniformity of socialist regimes came under pressure worldwide as heterogeneous movements questioned the legitimacy of their rule. The global moment of 1989 did not mark the sudden appearance of a globally oriented civil society. Already since the 1970s and 1980s, state-skeptic actors became increasingly dominant in what Akira Iriye framed as the growing global civil society. The primary mode of action for this growing political alliance was the organization of interests in transnational organizations: “Both intergovernmental organizations and international nongovernmental organizations, already impressive in the 1960s, grew phenomenally during the 1970s. According to the Unions of International Associations, the former increased from 280 in 1972 to 1,350 by 1984, and the latter from 2,795 to 12,686 during the same period.”⁸²  Steger, Manfred. The Rise of the Global Imaginary. Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror. Oxford University Press, 2008.  Akira Iriye. Global Community. The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World. Berkeley (University of California Press, 2002), 129.

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This growth of nongovernmental organizations took place in capitalist welfare states at the same time as it also increasingly took over in socialist societies – though under different circumstances. Official organizations founded in the 1970s operated mostly from the legal sanctuary of Western states. Yet, the growth of global civil society especially came to undermine the legacy of Leninist-style parties throughout the 1980s.⁸³ Organizing in what could be called pockets of civil society, people criticized, in particular, the militant nature of party rule in both the GDR and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Global civil society from abroad and from within started to contest the monolithic state power of socialist parties, as they were increasingly perceived as anachronistic. In China, universal claims by socialist leaders were questioned in the 1980s by students, coming together in the relatively autonomous campuses. There they formulated new visions for China’s future. But other than during the Great Proletarian Revolution just a decade before, students and intellectuals refrained from taking direct militant action and were not led by one central figure like they were in 1966 to 1976. While intellectual criticism in China grew in its skepticism towards the legitimate rule of the one-party system in the 1980s, it did not pursue the guerrilla or paramilitary strategies that were popular in China in the preceding decades. Some of the party leaders, on the other hand, still had a general interest in the students’ embracing of liberal thought, as economic reforms were already underway. In East Germany, the rule of the SED was also coming under scrutiny by civil actors. As a satellite of the Soviet empire, no protest could so far question the rule of the party. Especially after the unrest in 1953, critical discussions on the ruling elites were policed and suppressed vigorously. The overarching police state still defended party rule in East Germany at the beginning of the 1980s, but people started to question the legitimacy of the Socialist Unity Party’s rule in the spiritual communities under the roofs of churches. Peace movements and solidarity movements with the insurrection in Nicaragua allowed for the voicing of discontent. This limited space for the formation of civil society in East Germany endured, even when Soviet states bordering East Germany gradually made the transition towards pluralism. Meanwhile, East German elites were still holding on to the police apparatus that had secured the rule of the party so far.

 Examples for Asia are the worker unions in South Korea or the insurrectionary “People’s Power” in the Philippines in the 1980s.

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Origins of National Movements in the Twentieth Century in China and Germany In the first half of the twentieth century, nationalist movements were eager to consolidate rule over national territories. It is important to understand that both socialist regimes in China and Germany were outcomes of militant struggles over the nation state in the first half of the twentieth century. The ruling parties were products of wildly violent struggle to consolidate rule, decades after the fall of regimes that had still been ruled by emperors. As imperial modes of rule were in crisis on a global scale by the beginning the twentieth century,⁸⁴ political crises in Germany and China shared the militant nature of movements that sought to establish a consolidated nation state. The militant nature of social movements and their interest in national affairs corresponded with violence many experienced on the front lines of unprecedented warfare at the time. Social unrest and crisis of rule were accompanied around the globe with not one but two World Wars. Industrialized warfare between communists, fascists, and anti-fascist alliances reflected the grim zeitgeist of the first half of the twentieth century in China and East Germany. The violent culture of the battlefields translated into militant regimes ruling over the nation state. Once in place, they tended to rule by using violence and extreme practices such as torture and murder. Homogeneity and central leadership, military organization, and well-structured public performances were the common attributes of socialist regimes that came into power to represent the will of the “nation.” In China, it was the outbreak of the Second World War that allowed the communists to rise to power in the first place. Having failed to get a hold on the urban centers in the time of its initiation, the communist movement in China had turned to the countryside. In the civil war-driven period of the 1930s, communists in China were forced to seek refuge in “border regions, where different administrative zones met, inhibiting coordinated counterattacks by the forces of the state.”⁸⁵ On the brink of defeat, communists in China experienced an unforeseen comeback in the late 1930s and early 1940s. From the margins of the countryside, the communist movement regrouped during the Long March to become the partisan force that could challenge the republic under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. Focused on fighting back the Japanese offensive instead of hunting down the Long March undertaken by the peasantry under the lead of  Geyer, et al, World History. Also, see Osterhammel, Jürgen. Geschichtswissenschaft Jenseits des Nationalstaats. Studien zu Beziehungsgeschichte und Zivilisationsvergleich. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001.  Spence, Search for Modern China, 385.

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Mao,⁸⁶ Chiang Kai-shek allowed the communists to consolidate their role as the ideal militant force to defend China’s future. The Second World War allowed the communists to fortify their military on the countryside and were able to win over the sympathy of the anti-imperialist Chinese public.⁸⁷ The militant nature of the communists in China was a response to colonialism and civil war, fostering nationalist sentiment.⁸⁸ As a movement to revive the nation through the idealism of Mao’s reading of Marxism, the CCP came into power as a military force led by an insurgent peasantry. Mao’s central role in the movement that had first fought against the foreign occupation of Japan and later against the nationalist leadership in Nanjing overshadowed the communist party in China for decades. After founding the Chinese People’s Republic in 1949, every decision and all propaganda went through him.⁸⁹ Criticism from within the party was barely tolerated. When the critique of the Great Leap Forward campaign emerged and challenged Mao’s supreme role, mass movements formed in his support formed. The “Red Guards” in China were militant in nature and highly responsive to the claims of the aging leader. With Mao as an iconic figure at the helm, young students and urban intellectuals sought to establish a radical “new” culture against any Western or class-corrupting influence.⁹⁰ Mao’s Great Cultural Revolution in the 1960s mobilized once again the uniform masses to push the party from control and leave little of the supposedly sovereign leadership in charge. This militant mobilization shaped the view of protests by many cadres in China in the years to come. Particularly so in the case of Deng Xiaoping. Europe also underwent a war-driven first half of the twentieth century. Social movements such as workers’ unions and election rights movements adapted procedural forms learned in military training, which marches and uniformity in the streets resembled. The National Socialists in Germany, in particular, represented this highly militant uniformity. The dreadful history of German elites dur-

 Bianco, Lucien. Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915 – 1949. Stanford University Press, 1971.  Zarrow, Peter. China in War and Revolution, 1895 – 1949. London: Routledge, 2005.  See, also, Pons, Silvio. The Global Revolution. A History of International Communism. 1917 – 1991. Oxford University Press, 2014.  For interesting reflections on Mao as a populist leader, see Pye, Lucien. Mao Tse-Tung’s Leadership Style. Political Science Quarterly 91:2 (1976): 219 – 235; Townsend, James. Chinese Populism and the Legacy of Mao Tse-Tung Asian Survey 17:11 (1977): 1003 – 1015; For a discussion of Mao’s philosophical thought, see Starr, John Bryan. Continuing the Revolution. The Political Thought of Mao. Princeton University Press, 1979.  For a broad discussion of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, see Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. A History of the People’s Republic. Third Edition. New York: Free Press, 1999. In particular, pages 291– 371.

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ing the Second World War easily translated into an astonishing motivation to fully implement the ideas and organizational framework brought by the Soviets. Maier pointed out that “as a ‘party of the new type,’ the SED was to be controlled by its cadres; Stalin’s Short History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and his interpretation of Leninism became the holy texts.”⁹¹ However, though authoritarian ideals endured in the regime that used to follow Nazi rule, analysis of both the regimes should not be reduced to this aspect alone. Commonalities in German fascism and socialism were indeed apparent,⁹² but the socialist regime that came into power after the Second World War was far from having the predatory, hate-fueled character of the Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP). The SED, instead, reflected the concerns and interests of its new socialist patron in Moscow. The interests of the Soviets were challenged only four years after the founding of the GDR. After the uprisings in 1953 and its subsequent suppression by the Red Army, the public of the GDR was policed to an extent previously unheard of in history: “East Germany’s infamous State Security Service (Stasi) managed to produce files on 6 million people, more than one-third of the country’s total population (16.4 million).”⁹³ Between 1952 and 1964 alone, the number of agents working for the state security system doubled to a figure of 30,000 “Unofficial Collaborators.”⁹⁴ With 91,000 staff members on hand (one Stasi police officer per 180 East German citizens) the security ministry had not only built a control apparatus larger than the Gestapo of Nazi Germany but was capable of monitoring nearly any activity opposing the state.⁹⁵ The infamous Stasi, the “Sword and Shield of the Party,” spent considerable time policing even the literature that was published. From 1964 on, a whole department was deployed to ensure that the official party line was reflected in literature written in East Germany, which divided the literati scene into those who reaffirmed the party’s interests, and those who became subject to surveillance and “operative grinding” (i. e., the discrediting and imprisoning of writers).⁹⁶ Such practices of direct intervention in the

 Charles, Dissolution, 12.  Heydemann, Goünther and Oberreuter, Heinrich. Diktaturen in Deutschland – Vergleichsaspekte. Bonn: Bundeszentrale fü r politische Bildung, 2003; Haury, Thomas. Antisemitismus von Links. Hamburger Editionen, 2002.  Kotkin, Uncivil Society, 37.  Andreas Malycha and Peter J. Winters. Die SED: Geschichte einer deutschen Partei. Munich (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2009), 125.  Kotkin, Uncivil Society, 53.  Fricke, Wilhelm. Der MfS und die Schriftsteller. Deutschland Archiv 11 (1992): 1130 – 1139.

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cultural sphere of East Germany were widespread, infiltrating theater, music, and film.⁹⁷ This uniformization from the-top down left little space for dissenting views to be discussed publicly in East Germany. The face of socialist regimes in China and East Germany can be read as reflections of the violent history they emerged from. The zeitgeist of the time was shared throughout the Eurasian continent: uniformity, homogenizing ideas on society, and the supreme position of the chosen leadership. Fascism had brought these ideals to their extreme in Germany, leading to the occupation of East Germany by the Soviet alliance, which then installed a militant regime. In China, civil warfare and Mao’s rise to power was no less violent. The mindset of warfare still persisted in the Great Proletarian Revolution that Mao unleashed upon the still young socialist republic. Crucially, these militant legacies in China and East Germany were rendered increasingly outdated with accelerating globalization in the 1980s.

Pockets of Transnational Civil Society in China and East Germany at the End of the 1980s Towards the end of the second half of the twentieth century, consolidated militant regimes around the globe were contested by civil protests reaching out way beyond national borders. More state-skeptic and globally oriented movements emerged. From the cracks of an increasingly interconnected world society, protests emerged that would not conform to the violent practices prevalent in the first half of the twentieth century. As Mary Kaldor noted, the 1980s marked a period in time when “old” movements interested in capturing the state were increasingly replaced by “new” social movements interested instead in modifying the parameters of rule itself.⁹⁸ Due to the continuing repression of dissent in both regimes, these new movements in Germany and China were first consolidated within the limited reach of subcultures. In Germany, it was the church that offered just enough liberty to allow critical gatherings voicing the overall growing discontent. In China, the campuses of Beijing were where new dissident voices gathered. There, the universal claims of justice and socialism by the ruling parties in Germany and

 See Bispinck, Henrik. Kulturelite im Blick der Stasi. Bundeszentrale fü r politische Bildung. 26 October 2012. https://www.bpb.de/geschichte/zeitgeschichte/deutschlandarchiv/146198/kul turelite-im-blick-der-stasi?p=all (20 March 2020).  Kaldor, Global Civil Society, 78 on.

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China was increasingly questioned, as discontented people found each other in these niches of society. The overbearing police state in East Germany was increasingly undermined by subversive actions and groups questioning the ruling elites. This questioning was a slow process with little force in the beginning. Besides the massive surveillance, the emergence of civil society in East Germany was further troubled by the fact that dissenters sought to leave the country altogether.⁹⁹ The fact that any institutionalized civil movement outside the state was practically unheard of in the GDR also left a growing civil society in East Germany with not many places to turn to but the churches¹⁰⁰ – the logical culmination point for the formulation of pluralistic demands in the 1980s. Evaluating documents reflecting the demands of church leaders in the 1980s, Sigird Meuschel states that “the churches pressed for legal frameworks for travel applications, for transparency and for the right to appeal the rejection of travel applications. […] The Federal Synod issued statements on questions of internal societal dialogue, and ecumenical conferences articulated catalogs of human and civil rights in the name of ‘justice as an inner social quest.’”¹⁰¹ The churches were hence one of the very few places able to carve out a relatively independent sphere for discussing liberal ideas within the SED regime. Aware of the reforms taking place around them, East German dissidents likewise opted to demand reforms within the state by voicing their critiques from the relatively open spaces of the church. After an extended interplay of cooperation and confrontation, the relationship between church and state turned increasingly confrontational by the end of the 1980s.¹⁰² This dynamic, which strengthened in 1987 and 1988, could be called, according to sociologist Detlef Pollack, a push

 Pfaff, Steven. Exit-Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany. The Crisis of Leninism and the Revolution of 1989. Duke University Press, 2006.  Knabe, Hubertus. Neue Soziale Bewegungen im Sozialismus. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 40:3 (1988): 551– 569.  Meuschel, Legitimation und Parteiherrschaft, 312: Own translation: “Die Kirchen drä ngten auf gesetzlich geregelte Reisemö glichkeiten, Begrü ndungspflichten der Behö rden und Einspruchsrechte der von Negativentscheidungen Betroffenen […]. Die Bundessynode ä ußerte sich zu Fragen des innergesellschafltichen Dialogs, und ökumenische Versammlungen formulierten im Namen der “Gerechtigkeit als innergesellschaftlicher Aufgabe” Menschen und Bü rgerrechtskataloge.”  See Hartweg, Frederic. SED und Kirche. Eine Dokumentation ihrer Beziehungen. NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1995.

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for activation and mobilization of people in East Germany.¹⁰³ In particular, the community in Leipzig that settled at the Nikolaikirche came to play a central role in the decisive year of 1989. While other cultural spheres were monitored closely and eventually sanctioned, the church in the GDR turned out to be the community where those with oppositional ideas could gather relatively undisturbed. It is thus fair to say that the local face of the global trend for non-state groups questioning the legitimacy of rule in the GDR could be found within the churches. There, new groups formed under the abiding eye of the German police state. In China, the global rise of civil society was also mirrored within pockets, which were found primarily on university campuses. Already by the end of Mao’s rule, spontaneous public unrest on Beijing’s central square in 1976, the so-called Tiananmen Incident, indicated the changes in civil society that were to come. With the death of former premier Zhou Enlai, students came together on Tiananmen Square to mourn publicly. Supporting Deng Xiaoping in his pursuit of the “Four Modernizations,” Zhou Enlai’s death engendered demands for alternatives to Mao’s project of constant revolution. At its inner core, the conflict displayed the disagreement with the supreme leader Mao and increasing support for the reformer Deng, who however was by then still dismissed as a “capitalist roader inside the Party.”¹⁰⁴ The Great Hall of the People was besieged, a command post torched, and wreaths laid to honor Zhou Enlai. But in contrast to the militant Red Guard movement from just a decade before, the new student movements started to express moderate visions for individual liberties and freedom of choice as inspiring ideals.¹⁰⁵ Often translated as “democracy,”¹⁰⁶ demands for “minzhu” at the beginning of the reformist path were, however, only secondarily driven by a liberal demand for open elections and individual rights.¹⁰⁷ It was rather the drive to be part of political deliberation than the replacement of the party rule that grew as a demand amongst students.

 Pollack, Detlef. 2009. Wir sind das Volk! Sozialstrukturelle und ereignisgeschichtliche Bedingungen des friedlichen Massenprotestes. In Henke (ed.), Revolution und Vereinigung, 178 – 197. Also: Sü ß, Staatssicherheit am Ende, 194.  Teiwes, Frederick C., and Warren Sun. The First Tiananmen Incident Revisited; Elite Politics and Crisis Management at the End of the Maoist Era. Pacific Affairs 77:2 (2004): 211– 235.  Rosen, Stanley. The impact of Reform Policies on Youth Attitudes. In Davis et al, eds, Eve of Tiananmen, 283 – 305.  Nathan, Andrew. Chinese Democracy. University of California Press, 1985. Especially pages 87– 106.  For a discussion of the concept of “minzhu” during the 1980s in China, see Lei Guang. Elusive Democracy. Conceptual change and the Chinese Democracy Movement, 1978‐79 to 1989. Modern China 22:4 (1996): 417– 447.

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In the following decade, more and more demands for pluralism coming from the growing civil society on the campuses of Beijing became public. As a new generation of intellectuals rose in the 1980s, students translated texts from the West and discussed matters of philosophy and politics more broadly than before.¹⁰⁸ To open applause, the new role model for intellectual claims for political reform, Fang Lizhi, formulated the growing skepticism of the Marxist utopia at Beijing University in 1985, stating: “Of course, our goal should be the improvement of society, but it shouldn’t be some Utopian dream a million years down the road.”¹⁰⁹ Lizhi’s quote exemplifies that the 1980s marked a shift of ideals away from the radical Maoism that still dominated campuses well into the 1970s towards a whole set of new ideas that were enthusiastically adopted by a small, yet growing group of scholars.¹¹⁰ Additionally, students became increasingly interested in world affairs and notions of liberalism. The latter also had to do with the fact that ever more Chinese students were able to study abroad – in the United States especially: “Chinese students became by far the fastest growing community in North American universities. In the United States alone, their numbers increased from 2,770 in 1980 to 33,390 in 1989, multiplying by over twelve times.”¹¹¹ In consequence, literature and ideas from the West circulated the dissident arenas on campus. In consequence, China’s opening of its doors in the 1980s ultimately also affected ideals held within the pockets of civil society. In what became known as the “Cultural Fever” of the 1980s, intellectuals and students reconsidered ideals of socialism and its militant legacy and engaged with more liberal ideas. On both sides of the Eurasian continent, then, the global growth of civil societies working for citizen rights and the transnational exchange was well-reflected. Though there was an overall increase in critiques of party rule, two pockets in particular served as focal points for the discontent of the time. In East Germany, this pocket was found within the churches. People coming together there could voice demands for civil rights and express dissident views of the party rule. In

 A discussion of this new intellectual environment can be found in Gu, Cultural Intellectuals. See also Wang Jing (ed.). High Culture Fever: Politics, Aesthetics, and Ideology in Deng’s China. University of California Press, 1996.  “The Social Responsibilities of Today’s Intellectuals.” Speech by Fang Lizhi. Transcript printed in: Sources of Chinese Tradition: From 1600 Throughout the Twentieth Century. Theodore Bary and Richard Lufrano (eds.). Columbia University Press, 2000, 516 – 517.  Madsen, Richard. The Spiritual Crisis of China’s Intellectuals. In Davis et al, eds, Eve of Tiananmen, 252; See also He Li. Debating China’s Economic Reform: New Leftist vs. Liberals. Journal of Chinese Political Science 15:1 (2010): 1– 23.  Dingxin, The Power of Tiananmen, 135.

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China, the overall global trend for civil society found its representatives on the campuses. There, a new generation of intellectuals came together to discuss liberal strategies for the future of China. Former Maoist ideals faded, while students discussed liberalism and were able to connect to world society through China’s new open-door policies, engendering learning from abroad. Civil society in both countries was not limited to these pockets, but it was from there that those seizing the square could mobilize in 1989.

II.4 Globalization and its Local Discontents in 1989 From the comparison of changes in economics, turning tides in the Cold War, and the means and ways of civil society, it is clear that the impacts of and responses to transformations on a global scale differed in socialist Germany and China significantly. The most indicative examples of the different handling of global challenges were the economic agendas in both regimes. While China under Deng Xiaoping embarked on a path of rigorous reforms, the German Democratic Republic under the leadership of Erich Honecker tried to hold on to increasingly outdated production schemes and social programs financed by growing foreign debt. The parameters of the end of the Cold War were different for China and Germany as well. Rulers in the GDR depended on signals coming from Moscow for most of the twentieth century. Glasnost and perestroika, however, alienated the political elites in socialist Germany. At the same time, Gorbachev’s agenda left them without the reassuring interventionist support of the Soviet Army. Conversely, the Chinese position in the Cold War was far more independent from Moscow’s leadership. These differences notwithstanding, Beijing and Berlin shared a suspicion of the political reforms pursued in Moscow. Which even led to a short-lived axis of the two reform-skeptic socialist regimes. Lastly, the aspect of a growing, state-skeptical civil society in both regimes corresponded with the worldwide growth of non-governmental organizations and the critique of state power. In China, as in the GDR, civil society actors found their pockets of dissent, where critical discussions on the political leadership were fostered. China’s pocket of civil society was more flexible and welcomed than in the GDR, but both were equally interested in reaching beyond their limits for mobilization by the end of the decade. These differences can only lead to the conclusion that the crises of 1989 happened for very different reasons in China and Germany. The synchronicity of protests may thus only be understood by considering the shared experience of global transformations, which demanded locally specific responses. It was not “one”

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globalization with similar effects that put the regimes in China and Germany under pressure; rather, different modes of coping with globalization processes brought with them their own paradoxes. At the center of transformations stood questions about the future of the ruling socialist parties in the changing world order. Seizing the square in 1989 meant producing a SpaceTime, where the transitional period of an eroding old order and an emerging new order could be addressed.

III The Global Moment of 1989 in Leipzig and Beijing Global transformations led to a shared moment of discontent in China and East Germany. Initially, discontented people found each other in their respective pockets of civil society on the campus in Beijing and the church in Leipzig. In 1989, they turned to the squares to become visible to an audience at home and across the globe. The seizure of the squares gave protests a space to mobilize for, and observers around the world a place to refer to. The squares turned into places to quote and report from, and finally, also a place to support. At the same time, party cadres in China and Germany were well aware of activities on the square. Throughout the global moment, pressure on ruling cadres in Beijing and Berlin grew to the point that a reaction became necessary. In Beijing, initial gatherings of protesters on Tiananmen Square developed into a state affair, as students undermined the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev with hunger strikes. Their refusal to leave, even under the threat of martial law, served as a powerful image of occupied Tiananmen. When party hardliners cleared the square violently with the world watching, observers around the world were shocked – also in Leipzig. There, turnouts on Nikolaikirchhof were a repetitive gathering, slowly undermining the police state from its hidden pocket of civil society. Though humble in its claim to the square, protests turned Nikolaikirchhof into an issue of international diplomacy by the summer of 1989. In the fall, long-time party secretary Honecker had to step down because of the events in Leipzig, and his fellow top party leaders followed him soon after.

III.1 Reaching Out from the Pockets of Civil Society From the perspective of Leipzig, the global moment overthrowing the one-party rule had built up slowly since 1988. In a time when the socialist republic was felt to be stagnating while neighbor countries proved much more promising in their outlook on the future, people together found a way to contemplate the situation in the churches. One opportunity for voicing their dissent was the yearly demonstration to commemorate the death of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two communist martyrs from the violent conflict on the streets in 1918 post-World War One Germany. Mourning the death of two communists in Berlin on 17 January was a socialist tradition in the GDR, and some of the most active dissidents sought to voice their discontent in January 1988. But shortly before the demonhttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682601-004

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stration was to take place, key activists from Leipzig were detained and expelled from the GDR. An intervention by the German police state which kicked off the dynamic that led to the global moment of 1989. The agents of the global moment of 1989 in Leipzig began realizing their critical potential from January 1988 on. Against the backdrop of the yearly Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht commemoration, dissidents spoke up openly about their discontent with the ruling regime of the GDR. Tensions led to the expulsion of outspoken activists shortly before the demonstration was to take place on 15 January. In what was later called a “steam boiler-strategy,” (“Dampfkesselstrategie”)¹ police intended to take pressure off the streets by allowing troublemakers passage to West Germany – echoing how the steam valve of a kettle is used to release pressure. It proved to be a fatalistic strategy, however, as it mobilized new political activists solely interested in accelerating the processing of their “application to emigrate.” (“Ausreiseantrag”)² A growing number of newly mobilized activists came to the organizational meetings in the churches, hoping to be the next ones to be expelled. Yet, the police state of Germany did not by then anticipate that it had fed into growing mobilization efforts by the church community, which by 1989 would become uncontrollable. Against the intentions of the police, the “steam boiler-strategy” further engendered the desire to criticize the political leadership in the GDR. As a growing number of people perceived the situation in the socialist country to be desperate, the West became the destination point for those hoping for a better future. Rolf Sprink from Leipzig captured the dilemma of the time in an article published in the samizdat. ³ Convinced that it was time to take action against the socialist system he describes as a failure, he also addresses the problem in simply leaving westwards: “There are not many left who could withstand the repugnance of this country and the temptations of capitalism. It drives us mad that our precious – maybe most precious – years are trickling by, that we are passing them in res-

 “Steam boiler-strategy” refers to a practice used by police sending known troublemakers abroad to calm down opposition within the own borders. It is a term framed by those observing police behavior with an interest due to their involvement in oppositional activities.  If citizens of East Germany were to leave the country towards the West, they had to apply for a paperthat would allow them to do so. Usually, these applications to emigrate were only granted to those considered loyal enough to the socialist regime so they would not only leave but also return to the GDR. The “steam boiler-strategy” undermined this formerly exclusionary practice. It turned leaving the country from a privilege into a sanction.  Within the “samizdat” marginalized opinions were made public. It consisted of self-printed magazines, distributed silently among interested people.

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ignation, amid garbage, tired and without happiness.”⁴ Sprink openly wrote about fading hope and the promises of the West that, in the end, undermined the efforts of those who still believed in reforms. But such reflexive thoughts on the dangers for reform were on the margins of events at the time. Most importantly, the strategy by the police led to more people joining protest activities. When word spread how easy it might be to follow the expelled activists in their path to the West, more and more people joined the pockets of civil society in the churches. An article printed in the samizdat titled “The Rosa Luxemburg Affair” set out how the numbers of participants for the demonstration held in January increased drastically with the first expulsion of activists in early 1988. After the leading figures of the activist group “initiative for peace and human rights” (“Initiative Frieden und Menschenrechte”) were deported to the West, more people than ever joined the critical activists. Anticipating that their “applications to emigrate” could be approved much quicker when showing up to protest, they sought to use the Rosa Luxemburg march for their purposes.⁵ Consequently, rising numbers of people protesting made the formerly inward-oriented activist groups in the church more visible. From early on, this increased visibility of discontent with the ruling regime also fed into solidarity and shared visions for alternatives. As more and more people got arrested before, during, and in the aftermath of the Rosa Luxemburg demonstration of 1988, transnational camaraderie grew, particularly in Central Europe. Letters stating solidarity with the expelled activists were written by political leaders such as Vaclav Havel,⁶ and printed in the Soviet Union magazine Sputnik. Also, on a more local level, people questioned authorities over their course of action. Leipzig, the second biggest city in East Germany after Berlin, was hit particularly sharply by a new spirit on the rise. According to contemporary witness Christoph Moitzer, 1988 marked a “fresh-start sentiment.” (“Aufbruchsstim-

 Printed in a popular samizdat magazine called Kontakte. Wie Standhalten? December 1988. Own translation: “Es sind nicht viele übrig geblieben, die den Widerwärtigkeiten dieses Landes und den Verlockungen des Kapitals standhielten. Wir werden verrückt bei dem Gedanken, daß kostbare, vielleicht die kostbarsten Jahre unseres Lebens verrieseln. Daß wir sie in Resignation zubringen, im Müll und Gestank, müde und glücklos.” The samizdat material quoted here is located at Archiv Bürgerbewegung Leipzig (ABL). Material with no index numbers is quoted as “Only on request.” ABL: Only on request.  Samizdat Umweltblätter. Die Rosa Luxemburg Affäre. February 1988, 1– 15. ABL: Only on request. See also contemporary witness Frank Stellentin on the motivations of new participants during the interview he gave to the ABL in 2008. Transcripts of the here quoted interviews are all available in the archive ABL: Only on request.  Umweltblätter, Rosa Luxemburg Affäre, 7. ABL: Only on request.

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mung”)⁷ Whilst people opted to leave the country, the samizdat discussed the need for reforms, and people in Leipzig sought a forum to discuss these most recent developments. They found it within the Nikolaikirche.

The Society of the Nikolaikirche Churches in the GDR served as the known sanctuary for dissent. In Leipzig, it was the Nikolaikirche in particular where the newly mobilized could seek refuge. Ever since 1981, people gathered there to pray and have discussions every Monday. Political engagements reached from solidarity work for Nicaragua to calls to preserve the natural environment. For so long, the meetings had a rather private atmosphere. By the end of the 1980s, a mere three to six people attended these so-called peace prayers. After the demonstration on 17 January 1988, this changed decisively. The events and new hopes drove so many people into the church that it was filled up to the last bench.⁸ One of the crucial reasons why meetings on Mondays could grow as rapidly as they did in 1988 had to do with an especially daring pastor who headed the Monday prayers. From summer 1987, pastor Christoph Wonneberger scoured the bars and the art scene in Leipzig to find and invite those interested in oppositional meetings to the Nikolaikirche. He even went on to teach himself how to print posters for this purpose, even though this medium was only allowed with official permission. Most importantly, Wonneberger introduced a bottom-up organizational structure for the Monday prayers, so that each week another “grassroots group” (“Basisgruppe”) could introduce their issues and ideas.⁹ Thus, the prayers at Nikolaikirche offered plenty of opportunities to discuss the events in 1988. The fertile groundwork laid by Wonneberger met the mobilization effect of the “Rosa Luxemburg Affair” in early 1988. If, in 1987, the meetings had the character of private chats in the parish house, they turned into something much more extensive and uncontrollable after 15 January 1988. Gisela Kallenbach, a frequent attendee of the prayers, remembered how the meetings in 1987 “were on the

 Christoph Moitzer in an interview given to the ABL in 2008: Only on request.  For a view of the new dynamics from the perspective of the state, see Freunde und Feinde. 46 Staatliche Einschätzung, 114– 118; Friedele, Fischer. Untitled letter on the 24th of October 1988 addressed to Magirius, ABL: Only on request. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports on the repercussions of the happenings in Berlin within the churches in the GDR on the 30th of January 1988: Weiterer Prozess gegen drei Mitarbeiter der ‘Umwelt-Bibliothek’ in Ost-Berlin.  A contemporary account of the events can be taken from an interview with Christoph Wonneberger given to the ABL in 2008, ABL: Only on Request.

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brink of dissolving, with only three persons attending. […] And then it all started, when those in custody [in Berlin] were allowed to leave the country, […] and at that time every Monday more and more were coming, so we needed to use the church.”¹⁰ Spurred on by a “fresh start sentiment” and a newly gained belief that political engagement could pave the way to the West, by early spring 1988, the small gatherings on Mondays evolved into a political meeting big enough to fill the whole of Nikolaikirche. Furthermore, as the pastor was willing to allow those hoping for their “applications to emigrate” to speak up just as much as he welcomed other marginalized voices to the church, opposition in Leipzig now had a place and date to meet: Mondays at five, in the Nikolaikirche. ¹¹ However, already by summer 1988, the limits of the loose arrangement under the leadership of Wonneberger were reached. The autonomy of the “grassroots groups” became an increasingly problematic issue for higher church officials. The primary pastor of Nikolaikirche, Christian Fü hrer, and the superintendent of Leipzig’s churches, Friedrich Magirius, started to intervene and join the meetings on Mondays.¹² By then, both were also frequent guests at the local police station, invited to report on the events.¹³ Feeling increasingly anxious about what was happening under the roof of their church, they agreed to cooperate with state authorities to moderate the events. Their take on the new developments was arguably less open-minded than that of Wonneberger. What followed was a rollback on behalf of the church. Christian Fü hrer first decided to pause the Monday prayers for summer break and to “rethink the current subject matter of the prayers.”¹⁴ Then, once Wonneberger was out of town for his vacation, Magirius wrote a letter informing him that his term as head of the Monday prayers had ended. In the face of a spiritual crisis, so the letter explained, the only help a church could offer was “the liberating message of Evangelism.”¹⁵ A similar letter was sent out to the community of Nikolaikirche,

 The 2008 ABL interview with Gisela Kallenbach further substantiates this reconstruction of events. ABL: Only on request.  A point that has been discussed in greater length by Geyer et al, Nikolaikirche, Montags um fünf.  Samizdat: Die Mücke. Was war los in Leipzig? March 1989. Available in the archive of the Robert Havemann Gesellschaft (RHG): PS 075.  The meetings were documented and printed as historical sources in: Freunde und Feinde, Stasi Information 31, 83 – 85; Freunde und Feinde, Staatliche Gesprächsnotiz 44, 110 – 111.  Pastor Fü hrer in a letter to Wonneberger, 6 June 1988. ABL 1.24.15.  Superintendent Magirius in a letter to the society of Nikolaikirche ABL 1.24.18; See also the interview with Wonneberger by the ABL. https://www.archiv-buergerbewegung.de/index.php/ zeitzeugen/62-wonneberger-christoph (29 March 2020).

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citing apparent discontent by some concerning the recent nature of the Monday prayers. The letter to the community came with an introduction of a new policy for the Monday meetings. “Personal matters” were no longer to dominate the institution, since its real focus should be the path of “holy conciliation.”¹⁶ Within the new church policy, the “grassroots groups” were no longer allowed to organize the meetings. Agenda and speeches were now set by one single person: Christian Fü hrer. The church’s response to the latest developments under its roof was thus nothing less than a full retreat. Where Wonneberger had opened Nikolaikirche to dissenting views and outright opposition in Leipzig, Führer and Magirius had sought to shut it down by the end of summer 1988.

Occupying Nikolaikirchhof A year earlier, Magirius and Führer’s new policy might have been accepted, and the situation in Leipzig could have been settled. But by the end of 1988, the dynamic that had taken over the Monday prayers could not be shut down so easily. Activists were adamant in not letting go of the most significant place they had to share their critical views, leading to an open confrontation with the church leadership. By the fall of 1988, their enduring appetite for stating their dissent finally broke the “wall of silence” that had dominated public space since 1953 by using the square in front of the church to protest. Leipzig’s hardened oppositional spirit of 1988 was already reflected in the several letters addressing the issue of Wonneberger’s forced leave over the summer break. Several written complaints made their way to the church officials in response to Fü hrer’s note regarding the plan to take over the organization of the prayers.¹⁷ The “grassroots groups” urged the church authorities – all the way up to Bishop Johannes Hempel in Dresden – to keep the Monday prayers in their self-organizing form. The church, so the general tenor of the letters conveys, was needed to deal with individual problems, but was also needed to give the several groups organized around it a “public space.”¹⁸ In the view of those writing the letters, the changes initiated by Fü hrer and Magirius did not just concern the question of the activists’ interests. Rather, it was a matter of having the chance  Magirius, Letter, ABL 1.24.18.  First of all, a letter by Pastor Wonneberger himself ABL 1.24.24; followed by an open letter of the Basisgruppen, ABL 1.24.19; Another letter written by the Basisgruppen was sent to Bishop Hempel in Dresden, ABL 1.24.26.  Explicitly formulated in a letter signed by several activists from Leipzig: ABL 1.24.28

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to discuss and change the socialist reality within the GDR.¹⁹ Furthermore, a joint letter from the “grassroots groups” to Magirius stated that by reducing the autonomy of the Monday prayers, the church would take away a crucial forum for a critical public interested in not only discussing matters of national reach but even those of global importance.²⁰ In a preview of what was to come, activists related their own struggle with the future and criticism of the GDR and the role of the church in socialism. Criticism of the new top-down organization of the Monday prayers was severe, but the church nevertheless stuck to the plan it had posted during the summer break. When Christian Fü hrer and Magirius finished preaching in late August 1988, they outlined the conditions under which the Monday prayers were to be held from now on.²¹ People in the church sought to talk back and discuss the matter, but Fü hrer was not interested. Instead of hearing what the people in his church had to say, he ordered the organist to play music. When no word could be heard in the church due to the music,²² one attendee of the prayers turned to the organ and cut its power cable.²³ During these hectic events, the split between the church and dissident activists became apparent, and Christian Fü hrer urged attendees to leave. In the heat of the moment, Fü hrer even verbalized the newly-felt schism within the church community, as he shouted to the people leaving: “They are not our kind.”²⁴ These developments in the prayers in the fall of 1988 came as a shock to many, with the samizdat reporting on the issue in a lengthily article.²⁵ The occupation of the Nikolaikirchhof in the following week was an outcome of the conflict taking place within the church. It was a response to the fact that the formerly open space of the Nikolaikirche was now closed to the ideas and hopes formulated during the first half of 1988. As the once-open space in the Nikolaikirche was shut down, the society that had met on Mondays in the church needed to take over the space just in front of it: the Nikolaikirchhof. Consequently, the first speech held on the little square in front of the church reflected the dis Several individual letters and petitions were written by “Basisgruppen” in Leipzig: ABL 19: 1.24.19; 1.24. 26; 1.24.27; 1.24.30.  A letter signed by the “Basisgruppen” to Magirius. ABL 1.24.19.  A copy of the content of the prayers can be found in Freunde und Feinde, 69 Friedensgebetstext, 140; Freunde und Feinde, 70 Friedensgebetstext, 141.  The events were documented in the Samizdat Umweltblätter, Leipziger Friedensgebete abgewürgt, September 1988, 4. Available at ABL: Only on request.  Umweltblätter, Friedensgebete, 4. ABL: Only on request.  The prayer was transcribed, protocolled, and published in Freunde und Feinde, 70 Friedensgebetstext, 142.  Umweltblätter, Friedensgebete. ABL: Only on request.

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appointment about the role of the church and the new handling of the Monday prayers.²⁶ The small square in front of the church served as a substitute for the public space the church was not willing and able to provide any more. More precisely, the Nikolaikirchhof’s very first role as a site for protesters to gather was to provide a space where the role of the church in fostering the “wall of silence” was questioned. On the following Mondays, the new directive of the church leadership was subsequently criticized on the square. At the same time, the open protests made the critical community visible to a broader public. Those unwilling to let their pocket for dissent go created a new place to meet and discuss. Due to the shutdown of the prayers, the critical community from the church migrated in front of it. There, they dared to speak out publicly in the fall of 1988. The Mondays following the first demonstrative use of the square in front of the Nikolaikirche started to push the boundaries of what could be done and said on Nikolaikirchhof. Participants wrote and read out speeches, or handed out leaflets.²⁷ On 19 September, two people with cameras even provoked the ever-observing secret police, the Stasi. ²⁸ Empowered by the anonymity within the group, two participants started to take pictures of police units close by themselves.²⁹ Others dared to address topics such as the ruling elites’ affinity towards Ceaușescu’s despotic rule, or the worsening environmental situation in the GDR.³⁰ Topics such as the reunification of Germany,³¹ or the end of socialism altogether, however, were not yet openly formulated issues at the time. Though reformist agendas in Eastern Europe were present within the discussions, they were not necessarily embraced as the optimal solution for the situation in Germany. For example, several authors of a timely article in the samizdat came to conclude that “the current economic reforms that are being implemented with different emphases and different outcomes in the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic in Poland, the People’s Republic in Bulgaria and in Czechoslovakia come fifteen years too late.”³² Without a clear vision of what the protests

 A copy of the speech can be found under the title Erklärung. ABL 2.2.20.  Several leaflets from that fall document the outreach by activists: Freunde und Feinde, 99 Basisgruppenerklärung, 172– 73; Freunde und Feinde, 104 Flugblatt, 176 – 177; Freunde und Feinde, 119 Flugblatt, 194– 195.  See Freunde und Feinde, 122 Stasi Informationen, 197– 200.  Documented by the Stasi and printed in Freunde und Feinde, 90 Stasi Informationen, 165.  Observations by the Stasi, see Freunde und Feinde, 122 Stasi Informationen, 198; Also, at RHG: PS 075.  Very explicit on that matter is Moitzer, interview, saying: “Reunification was until the end of ‘89 actually not a category.”  Samizdat: Umweltblä tter, Das Reformgeschehen in einigen realsozialistischen Lä ndern, November 1988. Available at ABL: Only on request. Own translation: “Die gegenwärtig mit verschie-

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would lead to, participants of the Nikolaikirchhof occupation in 1988 could hardly anticipate the later impact of their activities. The actual demands formulated in front of the church might today sound rather humble, but were nevertheless unsettling to the ruling elites: We demand that the government of the GDR stops the criminalization and marginalization of those who think differently, those who honor the dignity of the individual. We demand a public debate that includes all social forces, and that admits critique and self-criticism on all issues facing this country.³³

Fittingly, the new initiative founded at the Nikolaikirchhof that formulated these demands was named the “Initiative for the renewal of the GDR.” On 24 October, when activists’ demands were read out in front of the church, the square developed into a forum of its own format. Big blocks from a construction site right next to the square were used as a stage,³⁴ and, for the first time, banners were displayed, stating: “We remind them of those who were forced to leave; We remind them to tell the truth; We remind them to act accordingly.”³⁵ All of this developed spontaneously after participants of the Monday prayers had been exiled from their church. There was no call for action to do so, nor any leadership within the group telling people to join. Instead, Nikolaikirchhof was a place to meet for those who were still interested in a public forum for oppositional views. The creation of such a space, of course, displeased the state. Police started to take people on the square into custody.³⁶ Hefty fines were given for “knowingly having disrupted the socialist collective life of citizens,”³⁷ to intimidate anyone participating in the protests. The question over the presence on the public space of Nikolaikirchhof was thus opened by the end of 1988 and became only more pressing by 1989.

denen Akzenten und unterschiedlichen Ergebnissen in der UDSSR, in der VR Polen, der VR Bulgarien und der CSSR anlaufenden Wirtschaftsreformen kommen 15 Jahre zu spä t.”  Freunde und Feinde, 104 Flugblatt, 177. The flyer was signed by the “working group justice.” (‚Arbeitskreis Gerechtigkeit‘) Own translation: “Wir fordern die Regierung der DDR auf, die Kriminalisierung und Ausgrenzung von Andersdenkenden, die die Würde des Einzelnen achten, zu beenden. Wir fordern einen öffentlichen Dialog aller gesellschaftlichen Kräfte, der Kritik und Selbstkritik einschließt, über alle Problemfelder dieses Landes.”  Described in an interview with Frank Stellentin by ABL 2008: Only on request.  The messages of the banner were documented at the police station after the protests and printed in Freunde und Feinde, 98 Vernehmungsprotokoll, 170 – 171.  Activists, in turn, presented letters of solidarity, see Freunde und Feinde, 99 Basisgruppenerklärung, 172; “Erklärung,” ABL 2.2.20.  Frank Stellentin quoting the charges against him in a letter to the Schutzpolizei: ABL 1.24.42.

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The first occupations of the square in front of the church resulted from a new wave of mobilization, which had started with the expulsion of GDR citizens before the Rosa Luxemburg demonstration on 17 January 1988. This wave was widely commented on by dissidents in Eastern Europe. It fitted into the overall reformist context of the time. Trying to silence the rising opposition in the church, state police pressured church officials to shut the Monday meetings down. But by the end of 1988, it was apparent the actions taken did not result in what authorities had hoped for. Taking away the forum within the church, the society of Nikolaikirche became more visible than before. Seizing the square in front of the church turned contentious voices public. At the same time, the question over the freedom to speak up within the church and in public was slowly and skeptically connected to the systemic questioning of socialism itself. These processes laid the groundwork for the global moment of 1989 in Leipzig, and on the Nikolaikirchhof in particular.

Beijing Campuses in 1988 and Early 1989 A protest-prone mix of discontented people had also found each other in China towards the end of the 1980s. Reforms under Deng Xiaoping had made life, particularly in the city, complicated. This gave students on the campuses in Beijing a growing audience for their criticism of the party leadership. Reviving their traditional role as questioners of rule since the May Fourth Movement in 1917, students in China tested the limits of criticism. With inflation and corruption on the rise, their critical views of the party consolidated further. Within the relatively safe space of Beijing campuses, critical perspectives on recent developments in China, as well as in other parts of the world, were discussed. In what became known as the “Cultural Fever” of the late 1980s, foreign literature started being translated and discussed in evening events at the universities, consolidating the pocket of civil society in Beijing. Though still limited in their reach, the groundwork for escalating protests was laid around the campuses of the capital. Students in Beijing had often been the critical voice within China throughout the 1980s but became decisively more explicit in their criticism towards the latter part of the decade. However, early movements like the “Democracy Wall” at Tiananmen in 1979,³⁸ and the protests in 1986 wherein students had a violent confrontation on Tiananmen Square in support of liberal economic reforms, already

 Nathan, Chinese Democracy.

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alarmed more conservative party leaders.³⁹ They responded to the emerging liberal sentiment with an “Anti-Bourgeois Liberalization.” The campaign put advocates of liberal reforms under severe pressure by the late 1980s, as conservatives feared a wholesale “Westernization” of students and intellectuals. It culminated in the removal of the reform-oriented general secretary of the CCP at the time, Hu Yaobang. As a leading figure in the party for the better part of the reformist era, Hu Yaobang was maybe the most important public figure embodying the hope not only for economic but also for political reforms in China. Thus, his removal fed into the discontent of students at the time. As Andrew Nathan noted: “In retrospect, the purge of Hu Yaobang in January 1987 was a major turning point.”⁴⁰ With Hu Yaobang out of office and critical intellectuals like Fang Lizhi expelled, the opposition on the campuses experienced the first negative interventions from the party against liberal reform. But such actions by the more conservative party cadres only engendered further discontent. The exact developments leading to the occupation of Tiananmen Square in 1989 are difficult to reconstruct, as there is a lack of documents and analyses of early events. But from the general picture, it becomes clear that the campuses turned into what Zhao labeled as “ecosystems” for protests in 1988 and 1989.⁴¹ Or, as key activist Chai Ling later put it more poetically in the homage to her home university in Haidian, Beijing: “Beida (Beijing Daxue) – [was] the birthplace of modern-day student movements, the place that nurtured our youth, cultivated our love, and enriched our minds.”⁴² This critical youth culture on the campuses also nurtured a strong protest scene: “The number of applications for street demonstrations, mostly from students, swelled in 1988 – though most applications were rejected.”⁴³ Student attitudes towards the party system became increasingly critical, and democratic reforms on the campuses were demanded and more frequently granted. With the highest density of universities in China, Beijing’s Haidian district had consequently turned into a melting pot for dissident views by 1989.

 Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 576 – 591.  Andrew Nathan. China’s crisis: Dilemmas of Reform and Prospects for Democracy. New York (Columbia University Press, 1990), 180.  Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 239 on.  Chai Ling. A Heart for Freedom. The Remarkable Journey of a Young Dissident, Her Daring Escape, and Her Quest to Free China’s Daughters. Illinois (Illinois, Tyndale, 2011), 163.  Stanley Rosen. Political Education and Student Response: Some Background Factors Behind the 1989 Student Demonstrations. In Chinese Education. Problems, Policies, and Prospects. Irving Epstein (ed.). New York (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991), 4.

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At the same time, China opened its doors to the world’s most informed voices about liberal worldviews. New, more liberal, newspapers became available, and students could inform themselves more broadly than before: “In the late 1980s another group of marginally ‘oppositionist’ publications began to appear – the newspaper World Economic Harald (Shanghai) and the magazines Eastern Chronicle (Beijing and Nanjing), Research on the State of Nation (Beijing and Changsha), The Thinker (Shanghai), and The New Enlightenment (Shanghai).”⁴⁴ With such new sources of information at hand, Munro’s claim that “student demonstrations in Paris, the anti-Moscow riots in Kazakhstan, the first ever multiparty elections in Taiwan, and Aquino’s ‘people power’ revolution in the Philippines, must all have offered suggestive models to the young Chinese interested in democracy”⁴⁵ is likely to be an appropriate depiction of the international outlook of students at the time. This critical environment on the campuses remained rather informal. Though official student organizations did undergo a process of democratic reforms throughout the 1980s, they remained, in the end, an organ of the party rule in China.⁴⁶ However, despite their own ties to the party apparatus, the organizations did sponsor and organize critical conferences held on campus more frequently. In what Zhao labeled “conference fever,” discussions and gatherings were sponsored by student-controlled agencies such as the Youth League and the Department of Youth. Before 1989, [t]he Department of Youth in major Beijing universities seldom turned down any proposed conference organized by students or intellectual elites.⁴⁷ […] The most famous of these was Wang Dan’s Democracy Salon and its precursor the Caodi Salon (the Salon on the Lawn) organized by Liu Gang. Many members of the intellectual elites, including Fang Lizhi, Li Shuxian, Xu Liangying, and Wu Zuguang, held talks in the salon. Even the American ambassador and his wife participated in one of their gatherings. Salons and study groups trained many student activists and were the major organizational base for the coming student movement. Many of the student leaders at Beijing University, such as Wang Dan, Liu Gang, Feng Congde, Yang Tao, Xiong Yan, and Guo Haifeng, were either active participants

 Perry Link. Evening Chats in Beijing. Probing China’s Predicament. New York (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1992), 231.  Robin Munro. Political Reform, Student Demonstrations and the Conservative Backlash. In Reforming the Revolution. China in Transition. Robert Benewick and Paul Wingrove (eds.). Basingstoke (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988), 71.  On the role of student organizations in the Chinese University system by discussing the most influential Student Organization based at the Beijing University, see Francis, Corinna-Barbara. The Institutional Roots of Student Political Culture: Official Student Politics at Beijing University. In Epstein (ed.), Chinese Education, 394– 415.  Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 115.

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or organizers at the Caodi Salon and the Democracy Salon. Several of my informants, all active participants of the 1989 Movement, were frequent patrons of these two salons.⁴⁸

It is thus not true that “there was nothing resembling Solidarity or the Catholic Church in Poland, or even a banned group like the African National Congress in South Africa”⁴⁹ in China. But rather than being dependent on a group or party, the oppositional mindset had a location. The campuses and the student organizations resembled the formation of global civil society in China during the late 1980s. It was the everyday culture on campus that reflected the oppositional mood of the time. “Without much coordination, dissident activities, including conferences and salons, big-character posters, and small-scale demonstrations and petitions, mushroomed from 1988 to 1989.”⁵⁰ Just how far these activities depended on the formal organizational structures and were carried out by persons who were party representatives is not possible to say. After his analysis of the protest culture in the campuses, Zhao concluded that it was not so much an established network than a mere location that fostered opposition in Beijing: “During the late 1980s dormitory rooms were the primary location where nonconformist ideologies spread and achieved dominance.”⁵¹ This indicates that the pocket of civil society in Beijing was bound to a place rather than an organization, allowing students to speak and act more freely inside than outside the campus walls. Anticipating criticism due to the shaky grounds on which reforms were implemented, international developments and their implications for China were observed with suspicion from the top party cadres. This became clear, for instance, in the state banquet hosted by Li Peng on the occasion of an official visit by US President George H.W. Bush. The visit had already been cast in an unfavorable light because Bush had hosted the critical figure Fang Lizhi at the US Embassy for dinner just the evening before.⁵² On the topic of the changing Europe at the time, Li Peng then made his point of view very clear by saying that “the PRC [People’s Republic of China] would not welcome the kind of labor problems that Poland is experiencing with Solidarity.”⁵³ In the continuing discussions with Deng Xiaoping and Zhao Ziyang, equal concerns of the top Chi-

     

Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 137. Link, Evening Chats in Beijing, 232. Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 136. Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 113. Sarotte, China’s Fear. Quoted in Sarotte, China’s Fear, 164.

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nese leadership about the developments led by Gorbachev in Moscow were shared.⁵⁴ However, while political reform was rejected at the top level of Chinese leadership, student activities addressed the same matter with growing hope for political change. The petition movement in Beijing formulated its interest in democratic reforms frequently in the first months of 1989.⁵⁵ The consequent rejection of political reform from the top, together with the growing pressure from below developed into a dangerous mixture by spring 1989. With news, visitors, and literature from the West feeding into oppositional mindsets among the students, the critical potential of Beijing’s civil society grew in the late 1980s. In their traditional role as critical intellectuals, students enjoyed the freedom to discuss and express dissent within their campuses. But with the economic pressure at hand, and the developments in Europe and other regions around the world present in minds and on the news, dissenters started pushing against the limits of campus life by the end of 1988. State leaders in China were, in the meantime, well aware of the dangers that Western examples offered concerning political reform. Yet, none of those actors expected what was to come following the death of Hu Yaobang in April 1989.

Leipzig and its Political Crowds in 1989 Meanwhile, in early 1989, pressure on church officials in Leipzig grew from both sides: the state and the dissidents on the streets. In response, activists and church authorities reached a new agreement on how to proceed after the winter break. From January on, the “grassroots groups” were again allowed to organize the prayers. They were less independent than before, but the main driver for protesting in front of the church was gone. Still, the shared experience of being able to use the Nikolaikirchhof to protest was kept alive. Experiencing a spontaneous break with the norm of silenced opposition in the GDR in the fall of 1988 gave the society of the Nikolaikirche enough confidence to develop the momentum that carried public protests in 1989 to the next stage of escalation. Having dared to speak up publicly, and unwilling to remain silent, the heartened society of Nikolaikirche prepared a call for action on 15 January 1989. In the previous year, events in Berlin had triggered the new wave of political mobilization. Now, in 1989, the anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht’s deaths was to be remembered right there in the city of Leipzig. The newly found-

 Sarotte, China’s Fear, 164.  Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 137– 138.

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ed “Initiative for the renewal of the GDR” took the lead in mobilizing the protests. After their successful occupation of Nikolaikirchhof the previous fall, the group members now knew what it meant to break with the will of authorities ruling over public space. They were also determined to take their protest a step further to demand free speech and do so “boldly.”⁵⁶ As is evident from this leaflet distributed in Leipzig’s city center, the oppositional tone had sharpened. Importantly, what the group for the renewal of the GDR demanded was not just a call for free passage to the West; the authors of the call had an explicit interest in renewing the socialist state from within, noting and criticizing the party’s apparent lack of will for dealing with the demanded reforms. The response of party leaders to the call for action from Leipzig was a plain one. Not concerned with the changes that were already afoot in Hungary and Poland as well as those under Gorbachev in Moscow, police in Leipzig took a harsh stand against protests.⁵⁷ A wave of arrests hit the society of Nikolaikirche in the preparatory phase of the protests on 15 January. However, it merely amplified the discontent of those willing to protest. Activists who were not incarcerated formed a big public protest right on the central market square in Leipzig. Slowly, the people gathered on the square started to walk, and even though police engaged them, the protesters did not capitulate. Again, the response by the local police was swift. They pulled the first rows of demonstrators into their trucks and took about 12 people into custody.⁵⁸ But all this did not break the oppositional spirit that had grown in the urban center of Leipzig. Even worse for the state authorities, letters of solidarity from abroad trickled in. In an open letter signed by solidarity groups in Poland and Czechoslovakia, the authors urged the international community to pressure Berlin to respect human rights and democracy. In their letter, the increasingly transnational character of the struggle in Leipzig was expressed directly: In particular, we address the governments in Hungary, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. We urge to [share] all basic information with the independence movements in Poland, Hungary, the USSR, the Soviet Union, complemented with a call expressing our solidarity with our German friends, who together with all of us demand human rights and democracy in this part of Europe.⁵⁹

 From the leaflet calling for action, printed in RHG: PS 075, 9.  The correspondence between state police and church officials in Leipzig can be found in Freunde und Feinde, 113 Staat-Kirche Briefwechsel, 187– 188.  Numbers can be found in Freunde und Feinde, 139 Basisgruppenerklärung, 205.  RHG: PS 075, Anhang, 18. Own translation: “Wir wenden uns besonders an die Regierungen Ungarns, der Sowjetunion und Jugoslawien. Wir bitten, die Grundinformation ü ber die Repression in der DDR allen Initiativen und Organisationen der unabhängigen Bewegung in Polen,

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Protests in Leipzig had turned into a European affair by early 1989. Though still barely noticed in the West, people in Central Europe followed the events in Leipzig more closely and saw a shared struggle. As a consequence of growing support from abroad, protesters in Leipzig increasingly understood that their protests had an importance beyond national borders. International support for their actions even had a direct effect: “Due to the national and international solidarity,”⁶⁰ activists in Leipzig stressed, several activists were released from prison shortly after 15 January. The globally shared moment of protests and discontent was taking off, as various motives for discontent synchronized the efforts of protesters to rally for change in Central Europe. “Times have changed,” wrote a contemporary witness in another piece circulating in the samizdat. “After arrests and investigations against those declaring their political will, there is now no more embarrassing silence nor whispering behind doors.”⁶¹ Repression by police was no longer taken as a given but was criticized internationally. After the events in early 1989, solidarity with oppositional activities in the GDR was so significant that the prime minister of Sweden reminded Erich Honecker himself of the need to respect human rights in the aftermath of the police raids in Leipzig.⁶² Meanwhile, the society of Nikolaikirche made use of the square to call for solidarity with those in custody. Crowds now frequently formed on Nikolaikirchhof, criticizing the state. From spring on, people repeatedly occupied the square. Mostly in the form of public gatherings after the prayers, but also for more spontaneous rallies.⁶³ Thus, by the end of June, Leipzig’s city center – and Nikolaikirchhof in particular – was identified as the crucial center for the formation of opposition by both state authorities and protesters.⁶⁴ Police were now present on the square with several units every Monday, and were learning that their presence alone would not hinder protesters from gathering right under their watch. The oppositional spirit in Leipzig had gained international attention by the spring of 1989. Solidarity and news spread around the reforming socialist regimes in the East, while Honecker was reminded that he could not repress oppo-

CSSSR, Ungarn und der Sowjetunion mit dem Aufruf, daß sie ihre Solidarität mit den deutschen Freunden ausdrucken, die sich zusammen mit uns allen fü r die gemeinsame Sache Menschenrechte und Demokratie in diesem Teil Europa einsetzen.”  Statement printed in Freunde und Feinde, 130 Basisgruppenerklärung, 205. Own translation: “Aufgrund einer breiten nationalen und internationalen Solidarität […] aus der Haft entlassen.”  Samizdat: Kontakte, Solidarity Letter by Brigitte Moritz. February 1989. ABL: Only on request.  Call for action, RHG: PS 075, 13. Quoting Leipziger Volkszeitung (LVZ) 24.1.1989.  Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Festnahmen nach Gottesdienst in Leipzig, 31.05.1989.  LVZ, Was trieb Frau A.K. in das Leipziger Stadtzentrum? 15.06.1989.

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sition by any means he saw fit. People in Leipzig also increasingly connected their struggle to foster a critical public voice with the question concerning the system of rule itself. Voices made their way through the underground press of the samizdat. Also, the society of Nikolaikirche insisted that it was crucial to remain critical in the wake of reforms within the socialist countries in Europe. Most importantly, activists now experiencing support from abroad gained a new self-confidence, which broke through the former “wall of silence.” These translocal and slowly growing factors for protests on Nikolaikirchhof were the preconditions for what was to come in the summer and in particular in the fall of 1989. However, the hopes for reforms were tarnished by events taking place far away: on Tiananmen Square in China.

III.2 Chasing the Moment in 1989 By summer, protests in Beijing and Leipzig started to refer to one another more directly in the intensifying global moment of 1989. References and influences became more observable as students in China discussed reforms in the West, and people meeting in Leipzig for the first public turnouts were well informed about the reforming East. Furthermore, diplomats and high-ranking party officials started to discuss and consider the events unfolding worldwide. These translocal developments reached an initial climax on 4 June. While political reforms in Poland led to a remarkable outcome in the elections,⁶⁵ Chinese party leaders responded to protests on Tiananmen with a violent crackdown. Both events marked two extremes of the outcomes that would manifest in the moment of 1989. But while changes were at hand, activists in Leipzig and elsewhere could not yet anticipate the range and magnitude of their impact.

Beijing Spring In China, reform was the dominant topic in 1989. The party leadership in Beijing was now anxiously following the developments in the West. In early 1989, dissent in China was now shared among intellectuals and workers alike. A mixture of growing international pressure for political reforms, economic pressures, and

 For a discussion of the global 1989 in Poland, see Hadler, Frank. The Polish 1989: The First Break in the Wall after a Decade of Struggle for State Solidarity. In Engel et al, eds, 1989, 63 – 80.

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intellectual critiques of the party cadres were setting the stage for the “Beijing Spring” in the global moment of 1989. By 26 February, an alliance of over 20 intellectuals issued a public statement via a Hong Kong newspaper, which situated China within a world trend for change. It urged the government to act against problems that reform had brought about: “The general direction of development is in conformity with the people’s opinions and the historical trend of the world […] however, the reform is facing serious hindrances in its progress: the corruption trend, the rampant ‘bureaucrat speculation,’ price hikes, the fact that people become lax in spirit.” Besides reforming the education sector and fighting corruption, “political structural reform” was also demanded. Students asked openly for “freedom of speech and freedom of press,” and referred to the May Fourth Movement as a movement for the Enlightenment and a historical role model for 1989.⁶⁶ But intellectuals and students were not the only ones becoming outspoken about their discontent. An extensive report on the situation of workers stressed the negative consequences of reform, highlighting unemployment due to the cutback of state-owned production. The workers’ “iron rice bowl” was felt to be under threat, as “the interests of the workers [were] hurt.”⁶⁷ These factors made the environment of 1989 an explosive mixture that was ready to erupt. Discontent was acknowledged by the party leadership as well. Prime minister Zhao Ziyang commented on the latest developments by pointing out two “extreme” viewpoints that were, according to him, ultimately endangering reform in China. On the one hand, there were still Maoist blocks within the party, interested in centralized control and which were likely to undo the marketization efforts realized throughout the last decade. But on the other hand, there were also those pushing for reform too far and too quickly: “People with this viewpoint advocate the importation from the West of multi-party and parliamentarian politics […] these people are not promoting the reform, but providing an excuse to reverse the reform and stir up social unrest.”⁶⁸ The latter part of Zhao’s statement is indicative of the danger that was inherent in the growing dissent at the time: an all too rigorous demand for political restructuring would give party conservatives in

 Intellectuals’ Open Letter to Leaders, February 26th, 1989. Ming Pao (Hong Kong) reprinted in Oksenberg, Michel, Lawrence Sullivan, and Marc Lambert (eds.). Beijing Spring, 1989. Confrontation and Conflict. The Basic Documents. London: Routledge, 1990, 169. Hereafter “Beijing Spring.”  Xiao Bingchen and Shi Yunfeng. Pastoral or Pitfall: A Report about the Problem of Unemployment in China. April 1989. Reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 15, 67.  Zhao Ziyang, Zhao Ziyang at a Meeting with Bush’s Beijing Television Service. 26 February. Transcript in Beijing Spring, 171– 173.

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Beijing the excuse to undo liberal efforts already achieved by 1989. Facing criticism from conservatives within the party as well as suffering dissenting views from below at the same time, the prime minister saw reforms in China to be a fragile state by early 1989.

The Death of Hu Yaobang Dissent in Beijing and other cities in China finally erupted with the death of Hu Yaobang. The former general secretary represented the liberal front of the party and he had just been driven out of office due to the “Anti-Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign” launched by conservative state elites. His sudden death turned him into a symbol for the more progressive party line many students at the time supported. Hence, images of him started to appear around the campuses, especially in Beijing, and student organizations agitated for public turnouts. His death also bridged the gap between the rather elitist demands made on the campuses with the dissatisfaction of the wider population in Beijing. Student organizations understood very well that this was their chance to agitate for mass protests beyond their campus. After the first period of rather spontaneous get-togethers to mourn the death of Hu Yaobang on the campuses and on Tiananmen, newly organized student bodies pushed for more massive demonstrations in Beijing. Coming together under an organizational umbrella called “Autonomous Student Union of Beijing Universities and Colleges,” (“Gaoxiao Xuesheng Zizhi Lianhehui”) “ASUCUB,” from 15 April on,⁶⁹ students walked in large formations from the campuses to the central square at Tiananmen. Video material shows the overall festive character of these protest marches.⁷⁰ At times coming from several campuses around the city, the protesters met on the central square, where the Great Hall of the People was besieged. Initial demands concerning more liberties on the campuses of Beijing were complemented by requests for an official pardon of Hu Yaobang.⁷¹ Protests formed in units, often carrying a banner of their institutional affiliation

 Corinna-Barbara Francis. The Progress of Protest in China: The Spring of 1989. Asian Survey 29:9 (1989): 903.  Video Material uncut and with footage of over two hours on Tiananmen protests in Beijing 1989. Available at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam (IISH): V2/343 (Part I).  Various photographs taken from the posters hanging at the campuses of Beijing document the political mourning of Hu Yaobang by students, see: IISH: PHO BG A35/0392 to A 35/0484.

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and stating their home universities.⁷² Yet, these marches were just the first wave of the Tiananmen protests that were now underway. Because protests remained unacknowledged by the party leadership, activities became more audacious by the end of the month. On the night of 20 April, after another demonstration march to Tiananmen, a group of about 3,500 students proceeded to the Zhonghanbai gate.⁷³ Behind the gate lay the homes and offices of party leaders like Li Peng, and students tried to break through it, demanding a “dialogue” (“duihua”) with the party. That night, however, the demand for dialogue was met with police clubs. The shutdown of protests at the gate triggered a growing wave of mobilization in the days to come. Subsequently, on 22 April, students were mobilized even further for the official burial of Hu Yaobang and gathered to march to the square in spite of its closure. With high-ranking party leaders present in the Great Hall of the People, police shut down the square in front of it and were not supposed to let anybody pass. Nonetheless, once the protest march arrived at Tiananmen, there was no violence needed to push through the police lines. As the activities on Beijing’s central square hardly went unnoticed, the conservative block of the Communist Party under the leadership of Li Peng issued a comment on the student movement, calling it a “chaotic disturbance.” (“dong luan”) In the first official reaction to the protests published in the People’s Daily, the party made it clear that protests on the square would be met with national censure: “This struggle concerns the success or failure of the reform and opening up, the program of the four modernizations, and the future of our state and nation.”⁷⁴ But by downplaying the legitimacy of the protests, the article fueled – rather than moderated – the discontent that manifested at Tiananmen. This first official response by the government provoked students further. Their self-organized media, such as the campus radio station, stepped to the fore and countered the official line on the protests: “We are very angry after reading the People’s Daily editorial. The government leaders are so decrepit and muddleheaded that they simply cannot be tolerated […]. A movement of ten thousand students is not the activity of a ‘handful’ or ‘small group’ of people. Moreover, we have not been manipulated from behind the scenes by someone. We can fully

 IISH: V2/352. Also documenting these practices on 16 May 1989 around Tiananmen was a Cable News Network (CNN) television news group coming to the square for the coverage of Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing, see the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNEW1Uh0lz0 (29 March 2020).  Film material documenting the events at the gate that night: IISH: V2/352.  People’s Daily. Editorial. 26 April 1989. Transcript by the Longbow Group of the editorial can be found online http://www.tsquare.tv/chronology/April26ed.html (29 March 2020).

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represent our own wishes.”⁷⁵ Several leaflets and statements from the time document the desire to have the official image of the square protests re-framed as a revolutionary struggle in line with the socialist republic’s history. The day following the publishing of the editorial, students in Beijing organized a demonstration march on Tiananmen. Again, the walking masses pushed right through police lines blocking the entrances to the square.⁷⁶ Though the official state funeral for Hu Yaobang was over, students seized the square, which now became the scene of manifest dissent. After the demands of students were not met and the death of Hu Yaobang had already attracted many to gather publicly, Tiananmen square became the site of protests for the weeks to come. As Calhoun put it: “The ‘Beijing Spring’ of 1989 […] was intensively focused on Tiananmen Square. It seized that location, incorporated its material symbols into a new drama, [and] packed a million protesters into its confines.”⁷⁷ Once the square was filled with discontent that was not going away, the Chinese government took an interest in a more balanced approach towards the protests. After days of protests and negotiations, students and party officials agreed on having two sessions on 29 and 30 April to discuss the students’ demands. Party leaders agreed to meet student representatives and have a dialogue to hear what they had to say. But the public dialogue between students and lower-ranking party officials that was broadcast on national television did not lead to an end of student protests. Talks even turned counterproductive, as the long monologues of party members were felt by the students to be lecturing.⁷⁸ Thus, the dialogue on television was quickly followed by another massive demonstration to Tiananmen on the symbolic date of 4 May.

Tiananmen as a Global Arena On 4 May, the symbolically loaded anniversary of the movement of 1919, students on Tiananmen Square regrouped and reached out to audiences abroad, as cameras present from all over the world captured the occupation of Tiananmen Square in real-time. With a speech on China’s modern history, they proclaimed:

 Broadcasting station of Beijing National University. Transcript printed in: China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 44, 118.  Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 152.  Craig Calhoun. Tiananmen, Television and the Public Sphere: Internationalization of Culture and the Beijing Spring of 1989. Public Culture 2:1 (1989): 55.  Copy of a leaflet criticizing the “dialogue” as farce can be found at IISH: PAM 0188, suowei ‘duihua hui’ de zhenxiang.

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“Our goal is only one: realization of modernization of China. […] Democracy, science, freedom, human rights, and legality are the shared idea [sic] of our hundreds of thousands of college students’ struggle.”⁷⁹ Well aware of the reforms that were taking place in Central-Eastern Europe, students openly connected their own struggle with the larger movement at the time: “We feel that the road taken by the Eastern European nations of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia is the only way socialist countries can be saved from serious crisis. Let us be straightforward: Only if China steers step by step in the near future onto the road of development like the Eastern European countries can a highly democratic, developed country be successfully established.”⁸⁰ What exactly students meant by referencing such ideas and developments from around the world, however, is open to interpretation. There were not exclusively positive views of the West that informed students in 1989. As a poster on the campus of Beijing university stated, changes at the time were not limited to Europe, but reached all areas of the world: If we look at the present world, it is not difficult to find two major trends: political pluralization and privatization of ownership: the achievements of ‘open’ political reform in the Soviet Union, the legalization of ‘Solidarity’ in Poland, the acceptance of a multi-party system in Hungary, the privatization of ‘socialist’ India, and the adoption of private ownership in socialist countries in Africa, […] all these provide powerful evidence of these two trends.⁸¹

His broader vision of a changing world also implied that the West was not seen as an ideal fixed point. It had flaws, too: “The United States has become prosperous, but it has not fully and scientifically solved the problems of the whole society.”⁸² Global perspectives among the protesters were hence not exclusively reliant on Western standards; they sought more generally successful strategies for the future of China in a changing world. The enduring protests on the square were also not necessarily an anti-communist movement, but were interested instead in considering alternative pathways for China: “There are democratic socialist countries like Sweden, but we never admit that they practice socialism. Hungary’s political agenda now in-

 ASUCUB, Let’s cry out to awaken the young Republic. May Fourth Declaration. 4 May 1989. Printed in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 65, 166.  Wang Dan quoted and published in a campus publication New May Fourth, reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, The Star of Hope Rises in Eastern Europe, 47.  Poster, To the Students of Beijing University. Printed in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 68, 169.  China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 68, 169.

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cludes discussions on the multi-party system, and Poland is talking about pluralism.” Moderate reforms of socialist countries and the liberal model of Sweden were discussed as available ideals that could inform reforms in China. But the Maoist styled party was perceived as unfit for the new world: “A reform wave has swept the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics (USSR), Eastern Europe, and, in Asia, China and Vietnam. The reforms announce the failure of past socialist efforts.”⁸³ From these statements posted at Tiananmen in May, it can be seen that the processes in Europe and elsewhere were taken as inspirations for further changes in China, which would nevertheless need to have their own unique characteristics. For such changes to happen, protesters were convinced they would need to continue seizing the square: “Deng Xiaoping put forward proposals to reform the political system, but he lacks the wisdom and courage of George Washington […] so as to establish a good democratic tradition.”⁸⁴ Consequently, protesters on the square felt that they were charged with the task of overcoming the reluctance of political leadership in China, as had been achieved by other movements already in Europe: “We will have our own victory. How can they only think of the Hungarian Incident, the Prague Spring, Polish History? We maintain: now is the time of awakening.”⁸⁵ The global moment of 1989 was thus well reflected on Tiananmen. It entailed a worldview that was aware of global changes and situated China within it. This global perspective was not limited to European developments. There were also Asian examples of reform, where social movements had paved the way for political changes as well: “We should never pin our hopes on factional struggles within the party and uncertain enlightened leaders. This can be learned from the struggles in Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, and South Korea.”⁸⁶ Despite the high aspirations of protesters, their global outreach, and the contextualization of the protests, the Beijing Spring lost momentum in mid-May. Students divided into those satisfied with the party and open to dialogue and those that remained skeptical of any dialogue, which they felt to be a stunt that was

 Yang, The Socialist Multiparty System in China. Poster reprinted in: China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 80, 208.  Handbill, A Professional Revolutionary of Beijing Normal University. Reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 57, 154.  Handbill, Chinese Senior Students on Tiananmen Square. Reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 211– 212.  Anonymous, Reflections on the Student Movement. Reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 164, 334.

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staged only for the cameras.⁸⁷ The bulk of the students wanted to return to lectures, but some pushed for the continuation of protests.⁸⁸ Under the leadership of Chai Ling, a group of radicalized students began a hunger strike on Tiananmen Square just the evening before the arrival of the reformist leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. With the Sino-Soviet summit at hand, Chinese the skeptics among students had unprecedented access to foreign media through Western broadcasting stations. Thus, the summit gave protests on the square the chance to relay their ideas to an imagined West. After decades of precarious relations, Deng Xiaoping dedicated himself to normalizing relations with Soviet leaders, and the welcoming of Mikhail Gorbachev to Beijing on 16 May was supposed to highlight his achievements.⁸⁹ This unique situation gave leverage to the radicalizing protests on Tiananmen. Leader of the hunger strikers occupying the square was Chai Ling, who pointed out that the escalation of protests occurring at the same time as the visit was no coincidence: “Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, and a political reformer, was scheduled to arrive in Beijing on 15 May. If we launched a hunger strike to coincide with Gorbachev’s visit, we would give the Chinese leaders a reason to engage with us.”⁹⁰ When foreign journalists arrived on 16 May to cover the summit, they found themselves documenting the beginning of the hunger strikes on Tiananmen. Thus, the square was transformed into a central global stage to capture the attention of audiences abroad.⁹¹ The images delivered from the main square in Beijing were as unexpected as they were sensational to Westerners. As Nancy Tucker put it: “News media from around the world converged on Beijing to mark this historic reconciliation [Gorbachev’s visit]. What the television cameras actually broadcast were pictures of a tent city in the main square.”⁹² In the weeks of the enduring occupation in May, several statements by the protesters criticized Chinese journalism and began favoring foreign journalists. Chinese journalists were devastated at learning about this favoritism. Thus, with the beginning of the hunger strike, they started to claim solidarity with the protesters: “On the night of May 13, when our cameramen went out to the square to film the hunger strikers, students shouted, ‘China Central Television (CCTV), get out!’ Hearing this broke our hearts, causing pain and shock. Any

     

IISH: PAM 0188, ‘duihua hui.’ Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 154. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 590. Chai, A Heart for Freedom, 126. CNN, Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing. Tucker, “China as a Factor,” 515.

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news reporter with a conscience must feel sad at being a propaganda tool. We can’t keep silent no longer. We firmly support the students.”⁹³ Still, as they never really managed to shed their image as party propagandists, protesters on Tiananmen Square started circulating their own New Tribunal. Furthermore, judging from the interaction between protesters and journalists on the square, contemporary witness and sinologist Geremie Barme´ concluded that “the foreign media enjoyed a privileged place in the whole process.”⁹⁴ With growing interactions between more independent and foreign media, mobilization to Tiananmen Square became less dependent on a specific group to gather support for further protests. The initial mourning gave student activists the chance to channel the discontent present in Beijing and turn it into a more populous movement criticizing state elites. With protest marches to Tiananmen from their campuses, students called for more involvement and attention to be paid to their discontent. Protesters at Tiananmen and foreign journalists also formed a mutually beneficial alliance that had not been seen before in China. Camera teams, hooked up to satellite networks to report in real-time on the events in China, allowing protesters to speak directly to a world audience. Given the tense timing of Gorbachev’s arrival, state leaders at the Sino-Soviet summit could not keep the situation uncommented upon. As the leading figure of reform in the Soviet Union, Gorbachev underlined the historical importance of the processes underway, saying to Chinese television cameras that “both the Soviet Union and China are carrying out reforms. These reforms are of great significance to our two countries, and even to the entire world.”⁹⁵ The world scale of the events was now manifest for party leaders and for protesters alike. Yet, as Gorbachev also made clear just a day later, forceful reforms and changes were not to be understood as a transformation from socialism towards liberalism: People in the West, who show tremendous interest towards perestroika, the reforms in China and similar processes in other socialist countries, are wondering to what extent these processes represent a development of socialism, and to what extent they constitute a retreat from it […] we are convinced that socialism can and, indeed, will ensure the harmonious combination of economic and political democracy, social protection of man and his freedom.⁹⁶

 Reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 83, 214– 215.  Geremie Barme´. Beijing Days, Beijing Nights. In Unger (ed.), Pro-Democracy Protests, 49.  Beijing Television Service, Zhao Ziyang Meets Mikhail Gorbachev. Transcribed in: Beijing Spring, Doc 34, 260 – 264. Quote on page 261.  Gorbachev’s speech in Xinhua (Beijing) 17 May 1989. Transcribed in: Beijing Spring, Doc 35 Gorbachev Speaks on Reform Issues, 267.

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Zhao Ziyang added to this vision of enduring socialism on national television that day: “I believe that Chinese citizens can enjoy genuine democracy and freedom under one-party leadership.”⁹⁷ Though supportive of student protests, Zhao was equally reluctant to view the multi-party system as the fitting mode of reform for China: “We are not for the multi-party system as practiced in the West nor for the establishing of new parties.”⁹⁸ Sympathetic to the cause of the students, Zhao knew that the damage to the party was already too grave to have any hope that party conservatives would support the political reforms he and others had sought. The éclat surrounding the Sino-Soviet summit put party officials in a tight spot. Realizing this, politicians and Chinese intellectuals sympathetic to the protests urged the hunger strikers on Tiananmen Square to leave the square so the official state reception for the high-ranking guest could take place. Since people on the square were unwilling to leave, the state visit could not tour the national symbols of Tiananmen and the Great Hall of the People. Instead, a much smaller event needed to be improvised at the airport.⁹⁹ In consequence, the first early supporters of protests were alienated by the growing radicalization on the square. Moreover, their main supporter from within the party, Zhao Ziyang, was increasingly unable to protect the crowd on the square from the hardliners around Li Peng. Knowing the danger that was becoming imminent, Zhao again tried to convince the protesters on the square to disperse. The day after Gorbachev left, he was filmed by Chinese journalists on his last visit to the square. Speaking directly to the crowd using a small megaphone, he said: “This situation in Beijing simply cannot go on anymore. This city of ours, the capital of China, is facing more and more grave situations every day. You comrades have all good intentions to do something good for your country, but this strike which has happened is out of control.”¹⁰⁰ His final intervention proved to be of little success. Protests proceeded, and hostility against the protests on the square grew within the party. By the end of the day, Deng Xiaoping declared martial law in order to mobilize the military against those on the square. The channels to the party were closed after martial law was declared. Most notably, the main protector of protests from within the party, Zhao Ziyang, was

 Transcript of the speech by Zhao Ziyang on the occasion of Gorbachev’s visit in Beijing, 16 May 1989, can be found in Beijing Spring, 263.  Beijing Spring, “Speech 16 May,” 263.  Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 595.  Speech on Tiananmen on 18 May 1989, broadcast by Beijing Television Service 22:30 GMT and transcribed in Beijing Spring, “Doc 43 Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng Visit Fasting Students at Tiananmen Square,” 288 – 230.

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removed from his position and placed in custody.¹⁰¹ But Beijing students also started to withdraw from the square and joined classes on campus again. In their place came provincial students joining the protests, as well as the workers’ unions, which were now increasingly present. Student leader Chai Ling noted the following concerning this last period of the occupation: As the intensity of the movement died down a bit, and local Beijing students began to drift away out of disillusionment or fatigue, these provincial students formed the main student presence on the Square. Many were in Beijing for the first time. I heard reports that during the day, some of these students walked the Great Wall, toured the Forbidden City, circled the Temple of Heaven, and then returned to the Square at night to eat free food and sleep.¹⁰²

With such movement on the square, a coordinated retreat was not possible. At the same time, protests also faced the danger of being stripped of their political character. Chai Ling remembered a student asking, “So what are we hoping for? What can we achieve?” The swift response from another student was: “What we are actually expecting is a crackdown.”¹⁰³ A banner posted on Tiananmen on 25 May still articulated the belief that a decisive moment for China was at hand: “It’s about time, my fellow Chinese. Let us break our chains and become free human beings. Let us rise and free our country from the vicious cycle of its history.”¹⁰⁴ This break from the cycle of national history, however, was increasingly unlikely to happen. By the end of May, fewer people stayed on the square,¹⁰⁵ and after the party had removed Ziyang from office, the pressure for reforms within the party also faded. Donations from Hong Kong activists¹⁰⁶ and a renewed hunger strike by famous figures such as Liu Xiaobo and rock singer Hou Dejian kept protests alive.¹⁰⁷ However,

 Zhao Ziyang. Prisoner of the State. The Secret Diary of Premier Zhao Ziyang. New York (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 53.  Chai, Heart for Freedom, 162.  Chai, Heart for Freedom, 165.  Essay on a Banner on Tiananmen 25 May 1989, reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 291.  For instance, participant Tsao Tsing-yuan reports that: “By May 27, a week after the declaration of martial law in Beijing, the student movement seemed to be losing momentum,” See Tsao Tsing-yuan, “The Birth of the Goddess of Democracy.” In Wasserstrom et al, eds, Popular Protests, 140.  FAZ 27. 5.1989, reprinted in Cremerius, Ruth, Doris Fischer, and Peter Schier (eds.). Studentenproteste und Repression in China April – Juni 1989: Analyse, Chronologie, Dokumente. Bonn: Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik, 1991, 338.  Declaration of the Hunger Strike on 2 June 1989, reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 349.

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they encountered a protest that was merely a shell of the earlier massive movement.

The Night of 4 June as a Global Event The violent raid on Tiananmen Square might have gone unnoticed by foreign media if it was not for the Sino-Soviet summit. What the central leadership of the party underestimated in their decision to mobilize the military was the fact that by June, Tiananmen Square was already widely perceived to be a global affair. For some, it was even setting an example for the new world: “The students’ hunger strike on Tiananmen square has turned Tiananmen into a symbol of China’s freedom, a symbol of Chinese democracy, and the great solidarity among the people of the capital has transformed Beijing into a new flower of the contemporary free world.”¹⁰⁸ The global outreach of enduring protests on Tiananmen Square was also reflected by setting up a “Great Global Chinese Protest Day” for 28 May, which was mostly carried out by the provinces in China that had caught a glimpse of dissent within regional capitals.¹⁰⁹ When the military was mobilized to raid Tiananmen Square, it engaged the neural center of a national movement that was firmly rooted in a global setting. The first attempt by the military to raid the square was caught off-guard when Beijing residents blocked the route to the city center. Troops were still instructed not to shoot. Thus, residents and students in Beijing could address the soldiers directly, urging them not to act against the people they had sworn to protect.¹¹⁰ After a two-day standoff, the still unarmed troops withdrew to the outskirts of Beijing. At first, the army’s withdrawal seemed like a victory for the protest movement. But though there were reports of soldiers and even commanders questioning their orders from the party,¹¹¹ the main chains of com-

 Leaflet printed by the Tiananmen Square Defense Guard, available at IISH: PAM 00278. Own translation: “Xueshengmen zai tiananmen jueshi de zhanglie xingwei yijing shi tiananmen guangchang chengwei zhongguo ziyou de xiangzheng! zhongguo minzhu de xiangzheng! shoudu quanti renmin shengyuan xuesheng de weida zhuangju yijing shi beijing chengwei dangdai shijie ziyou minzhu de xindianfan, xinbangyang.”  Zhang Liang, Andrew J. Nathan, Perry Link. The Tiananmen Papers. New York: Public Affairs, 2001, 315.  A Statement to the Soldiers, by the Autonomous Students’ Association of Beijing Normal University, reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 114, 272.  “Seven Senior Army Leaders State Their positions.” Reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 132, 292; Open letter from a soldier, “From the bottom of our Soldiers’ Hearts – Kindhearted Soldiers from the Third Battalion of the Central Security Guard,” reprinted in China’s

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mand remained functional. In response to the failed initial enforcement of martial law, Deng Xiaoping and the party hardliners around Li Peng gathered further support from military leaders in the provinces and mobilized no less than 150,000 armed troops to clear the square by 4 June. Ezra Vogel, furthermore, showed how socialist leaders installed a new generation of party cadres for the aftermath of the raid on Tiananmen, as they anticipated themselves being discredited by their actions.¹¹² After much preparation and party realignment, the last call of the party in regard to the square was the violent crackdown now to be enforced by all means. Some of those remaining on Tiananmen Square even deemed violence a desirable end to the protests. While troops were shooting their way through Chang’an Avenue, the speaker system on Tiananmen Square was used to encourage the remaining protesters to stay: “Students! We must on no account quit the square. We will now pay the highest price possible for the sake of securing democracy in China. Our blood shall be the consecration.”¹¹³ Similar statements can also be found in written leaflets distributed on Tiananmen shortly before the eviction, as well as in the fatalistic statement in an interview given shortly before that night by Chai Ling: “[W]e must use our blood and our lives to call on the people to rise up.”¹¹⁴ Several similarly fatalistic statements on the night of the military intervention are documented, reflecting a radicalized mindset that was present by the end of the occupation of the square. With fatalism among the protesters, and the hardliners gaining the upper hand in the party, in the early morning of 4 June, things took a violent turn. Beijing residents and workers ran into the avenues leading towards Tiananmen to stop military troops from entering the city center. When stones flew, and Molotov cocktails hit military vehicles, the situation escalated – costing hundreds of lives. Most of the dead were protesters, but some serving in the military died that night as well. Due to restrictions in information, the number of deaths is open to debate. Ezra Vogel calculated some several hundred dead, and Timothy Brook estimates, after a thorough consideration of the available material, a num-

Search for Democracy, Doc 106, 262; Letter from a soldier from the Beijing military region, “A Moving Story: The Removal from Duty of Commander Xu of the thirty Eighth Army.” Reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 169, 340.  Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 616 – 639.  ASUCUB on the night of June 4th as remembered by Robin Munro: China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 190, 405.  Chai Ling in an interview documented in Gordon, Richard and Carma Hinton. The Gate of Heavenly Peace. Boston: Longbow Group, 180 min, 1995. Transcript online: http://tsquare.tv/ film/transcript_complete.php (29 March 2020).

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ber above two thousand.¹¹⁵ Amnesty International numbers the dead that night at approximately one thousand.¹¹⁶ Sharply diverging numbers from these estimates are to be met with caution. Whatever the number, the deaths at Tiananmen shocked participants and observers of the protests around the world alike. Repercussions from the violent crackdown on Tiananmen were global, and diplomatic responses were not lacking either. Among the most critical voices were Western European governments, which condemned the use of military violence to shut down the protests. As a noteworthy divergence, the US government under Bush Sr. refrained from condemning the Chinese leadership too strongly, worrying about harming diplomatic ties between the countries.¹¹⁷ A third form of reaction could be found on the diplomatic level: support. The governments of North Korea and Cuba had supportive words for the violent suppression of protests. Most sympathetic were Nicolae Ceaușescu in Romania and Honecker in East Germany, as both faced growing discontent at home. If the protests on Tiananmen had caught the world’s attention, the crackdown had affected world leadership by triggering diplomatic reactions reaching from San José in Costa Rica to Pyongyang in North Korea. But since the crackdown of the protests was broadcast live and around the world, reactions were not limited in the least to diplomatic statements. In fact, the presence of network media using satellite technology to cover the military intervention on Tiananmen Square live marked a global event in itself. As Craig Calhoun pointed out, “[t]he ‘China story’ was front page news for weeks – perhaps the single most sustained visibility of any Third World country ever in the press of Western Europe and the United States.”¹¹⁸ However, in its most misleading representation of protests, international attention translated into what Richard Madsen called the “Liberal Myth.”¹¹⁹ The portrayal of protests on Tiananmen Square as a liberal movement for democracy dominated the headlines and ignored the diversity of demands and the generally unquestioned leading role of the communist party. It was the overseas Chinese communities in particular who came to foster narratives of 1989 as a traumatic experience for the

 Vogel, “Deng Xiaoping,” 616 – 639; Brook, Timothy. Quelling the People. The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement. Stanford University Press, 1991. See pages 151– 170.  Amnesty International. Annual Report, 1990, 66. https://www.amnesty.org/download/ Documents/POL1000031990ENGLISH.PDF (29 March 2020).  For a more detailed discussion of American responses to the Tiananmen protests, see Sarotte, “China’s Fear,” 172.  Calhoun, “Tiananmen, Television, and the Public Sphere,” 58.  Madsen, China and the American Dream; Hermann, Battlecries, 230; Calhoun, “Tiananmen, Television, and the Public Sphere.”

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Chinese soul in search of democracy. Many of them were former activists from Beijing.¹²⁰ Fang Lizhi, already a protagonist in the year leading up to the Beijing Spring, gave voice to the feeling shared widely after the violent clash on Tiananmen Square. It was the feeling that China had taken a step back from a development that would, in the long run, be inevitable anyhow: “The world at large also needs a democratic China. Today, the human race lives within a common civilization, united by the mutual exchange of news, knowledge, and culture. It is no longer possible to keep China’s affairs separate from those of the rest of the world.”¹²¹ As socialist countries transformed in 1989, China was perceived as a reluctant patient refusing healing medicine. Events on Tiananmen Square in the spring of 1989 constituted the first turning point of the global moment of that year. Immediate reactions to the violence in Beijing within the context of the tumultuous changes in Central Europe was further evidence of the global reach of the events: “In the midst of growing agitation in Eastern Europe, protests in Beijing proved inspirational. Young people staged a ‘solidarity strike’ at the PRC Embassy in Hungary to show that from Beijing, via Warsaw to Budapest, the same processes are taking place.”¹²² Actions in solidarity were also taking place in Berlin, where Tucker documented a comment by an activist saying that “it was the recent democracy movement in China that provoked our determination and action against Stalinism.”¹²³ Up to the protesters in Leipzig, the waves of Tiananmen broadly and strongly reached the watching world. Struggling for explanations, the Chinese leadership also stressed the global setting within which Tiananmen took place. Some days after the crackdown, party hardliner Yao Yilin pointed out to the Central Committee that if we had yielded, China would have taken the road that Poland did. […] We must on no account take the Polish or the Hungarian road that [the] American Dulles designed in the 1950s for the gradual transformation of communist countries. […] Without the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system, it is impossible for China to exist in the world as a genuinely independent state!¹²⁴

 Among the most famous activists pursuing an academic career after the protests at renowned universities: Wu’er Kaixi, Chai Ling, Wang Hui.  Fang Lizhi. China’s Time will Come. Journal of Democracy 2:3 (1991): 51.  Tucker, “China as a Factor,” 519.  Tucker, “China as a Factor,” 519.  Quoted in Shambaugh, David. China’s Communist Party. Atrophy and Adaptation. University of California Press, 2008, 43. See, also, Vogel, Deng Xiaoping, 626 for an interview with Jiang Zemin saying the same.

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Deng Xiaoping was also quick to relate the local events to the changing global environment, saying in a speech to the leading figures of the party on 28 June: “This storm was bound to come sooner or later. This was determined by the major international climate and China’s own minor climate.”¹²⁵ Quotes from the party and observers from abroad in the direct aftermath of the protests underline the entanglements of events and the global changes that had manifested on Tiananmen Square.

III.3 Towards the Fall of 1989 The date of 4 June marked a first climax of the global moment of 1989, as the violence on Tiananmen Square took place on the very day Solidarność in Poland won 92 seats in the first round of elections. But events did not stop there. Several struggles around the world culminated in the following summer months, as refugees from East Germany occupied West German embassies in Warsaw, Prague, Hungary, and Berlin, demanding free passage to the West. Reformers in Africa gained the upper hand in parliaments and on the streets, pushing for the abandonment of Marxist-Leninist dogma and laying the groundwork for overcoming apartheid in South Africa.¹²⁶ And though news from China shocked protesters around the Soviet bloc, protests in Czechoslovakia gained their own momentum, ignoring warnings of a possible Chinese response in Prague by leading figure Vaclav Havel.¹²⁷ “The magic lantern”¹²⁸ was felt in Germany in particular. The “fresh start sentiment” (“Aufbruchsstimmung”) was now shared among residents in the East and observers in the West alike: “Perestroika in the Soviet Union, the start of reforms in Hungary, a pluralistic party system in the Polish Sejm, not to mention a non-communist, catholic head of government – these turbulent developments have also broken dams in the GDR,”¹²⁹ wrote a West Ger-

 Deng Xiaoping in a speech of 9 June 1989, quoted in Suettinger, Robert. Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of U.S. China Relations. Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2003, 14.  Engel, Ulf. Africa’s 1989. In Engel et al, eds, 1989, 331– 348; Saunders, Chris. 1989 and Southern Africa. In Engel et al, eds, 1989, 349 – 362.  Oldrich, Tuma. The fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. In Engel et al, eds, 1989, 119 – 124.  Ash, T. Garton. The Magic Lantern. The Revolution of ’89 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague. New York: Random House, 1990.  Spiegel, Die Geduld ist am Ende, 1989/41, 19. Own Translation: “Perestroika in der Sowjetunion, der Aufbruch zu Reformen in Ungarn, eine pluralistische Parteienlandschaft im polnischen Sejm, dazu ein nicht-kommunistischer katholischer Regierungschef – die stürmische Entwicklung hat auch in der DDR erste Dämme brechen lassen.”

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man journalist at the end of September 1989. But just how fast these dams would break could not possibly be anticipated yet. The German police state that had secured the rule of the party was under severe pressure in the summer of 1989, as opposition in Leipzig had strong public turnouts. Already from spring on, particularly on 15 March and 8 May, activists used Nikolaikirchhof as the starting point for their protests.¹³⁰ In their struggle to maintain control, police sought to address those who were opting to leave westwards directly. They planned to undermine the protests by attracting potential participants with an absurd offer. Those who agreed to not participate in the demonstration would be allowed free passage to the West by the summer.¹³¹ This meant, in fact, that the “steam boiler-strategy” (“Dampfkesselstrategie”) of the previous year had become a bargaining tool for the police. What was once a threat was now an incentive to take away supporters of the opposition in Leipzig by offering free passage to the West. But neither ignorance nor the more active push into exile helped to calm dissenters. Those who were indeed primarily interested in free passage to the West started to leave by summer 1989 for Budapest anyway.¹³² There was thus little incentive to cooperate with state authorities on the matter. The summer of 1989 also proved that protests in Leipzig had gained enough momentum to proceed without the “leavers” (“Ausreisewilligen”). About 500 people alone participated in a demonstration for preserving the river “Pleiße” on 4 June. Several artists and activists turned the streets of Leipzig into a circus, teasing the police by saying that they wanted to “revive Leipzig’s city center” on 10 June.¹³³ But with police denying people in Leipzig “what for Budapest, Leningrad, Warsaw, and Prague already is common: free self-organization,”¹³⁴ the conflict over public space only grew further. Whether or not the protests would take place was not even the decisive question anymore. It was only the question of the timing and nature of the next action to be taken that was puzzling police. After 4 June, the growing hope for reforms by the active opposition in Leipzig was confronted with two opposing responses to the global summer of unrest. On the very same day that Solidarność won the first Polish elections they were allowed to participate in, disturbing images from China reached spectators in the West. The global moment of 1989 had reached a critical juncture. It was

 FAZ, Festnahmen bei Demonstration in Leipzig, 14 March 1989.  So claims the anonymous author in: Umweltblätter, Pleißegedenkmarsch, July 1989, 8 – 11. Available at Available at ABL: Only on request.  On the flow of emigrants to Budapest 1989 see Süß, Staatssicherheit am Ende, 141– 176.  Umweltblätter, Pleißegendenkmarsch, 9.  Umweltblätter, Pleißegendenkmarsch, 9.

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now clear that there was a real possibility of a violent crackdown as a response to the demanded reforms. On the other hand, Poland had shown on that same day how insistent activism could lead to much desired political reforms. A sentiment of decisiveness thus became apparent within the thoughts formulated in oppositional writing. Reform was now the leading topic among those in opposition. A group calling themselves “Arbeiterkampf” (in relation to the Marxist vocabulary of the “workers’ struggle”) wrote the following in a piece circulating in the samizdat of East Germany shortly after the crackdown of protests in Beijing: “It seems as if this first experimental form of socialism is not salvageable, so it would be most convenient to transform it without larger conflicts and massacres, so as to gain a relatively good position for a new beginning. The worst-case scenario would be for the Chinese solution to become an example.”¹³⁵ The tenor was clear: Socialism, as it was, could not prevail, and reforms were needed. But pushing for political reforms too relentlessly could end in bloodshed, as the tanks on Tiananmen Square had made clear. Yet, the warning news from China did not temper the spirit of opposition in the GDR that summer. On the contrary, the news from Beijing triggered a wave of solidarity.¹³⁶ In Leipzig, the Chinese letters “minzhu” signaled solidarity from a banner displayed on a large demonstration on the occasion of a Church Day on 9 July. Around 2,500 people rallied through the city, carrying the minzhu banner right up front. It was a provocation that came to an abrupt end, as police took the Chinese democracy banner away to dispose of it quickly. Chinese exchange students marched to the embassy in Berlin with support from locals,¹³⁷ and the samizdat reported at length on the crackdown of protests on Tiananmen Square.¹³⁸ Rather than being intimidated by the Chinese example, people felt the imminent urge to comment on what they felt was injustice at the Gate of Heavenly Peace.

 Samizdat: Umweltblätter, China ist nicht fern, September 1989, 19. Own tanslation: “Es scheint, daß diese erste experimentelle Form des Sozialismus nicht zu retten ist, so daß es am zweckmäßigsten wäre, wenn sie sich ohne große Konflikte und Massaker transformieren und damit die relativ gü nstigen Bedingungen für einen neuen Anfang offenlassen würde. Die schlimmste Variante wäre, daß das chinesische Beispiel Schule macht.” Available at ABL: Only on request.  Handbill, Trommelfeuer für China, ABL 1.20.6; ABL 1.20.2  Reporting on the activities: Umweltblätter, China ist nicht fern, 11– 12. Available at ABL: Only on request.  Umweltblätter, China ist nicht Fern, 13 – 16.

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More frequent protests, the unrest of those seeking refuge in the West, and the condemnation of the events in China all suited the “fresh start sentiment.” With reforms underway in Central Europe, people in Leipzig felt that they were part of a transnationally shared struggle against the status quo. Kurt Masur, himself a leading figure by late summer, went so far as to identify this unique moment in time with a particular person: “The change in consciousness in this country began with Gorbachev, who initiated a revolution in the motherland of socialism. He will be remembered in history as the spiritual father of all the developments that are currently underway in Europe.”¹³⁹ The “fresh start sentiment” in the East was well noted by Western media, which widely discussed the unexpected and quickly unfolding events. A particular focus of the West German media lay on the newly-arriving refugees from the East.¹⁴⁰ The drastic rise in numbers of refugees led to speculations on how sustainable socialism in the GDR was.¹⁴¹ Meanwhile, Honecker’s reluctance to accept the fragile reality of the GDR made diplomats and journalists wonder even more.

Nikolaikirchhof as a Global Arena At the end of the eventful summer of 1989, the eyes of many observers lay upon Leipzig again. On 4 September, in a coincidence, the first prayer held after the summer break in Nikolaikirche fell on the opening day of the fair week. It was once again a day when foreign journalists were summoned and allowed to move freely around Leipzig.¹⁴² Supposed to report about the events of the fair, West German journalists took advantage of the exceptional chance to document the protests in front of the Nikolaikirche. ¹⁴³ But unlike earlier, less-noticed protests on fair-days, the images of the protesting crowd on 4 September spread

 Kurt Masur in Neues Forum Jetzt oder Nie, 275. Own translation: “Der Bewußtseinswandel in unserem Land begann mit Gorbatschow, der im Mutterland des Sozialismus eine Revolution einleitete. Er wird in die Geschichte eingehen als geistiger Vater all der Vorgänge, die gegenwärtig in Europa stattfinden.”  Spiegel, Wir wollen nicht mehr, 1989/33, 36.  Spiegel, Das Droht die DDR zu Vernichten, 1989/33, 18 – 26.  Tagesschau, 4 September 1989. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFIQSS9YnnY (29 March 2020). See also the short film by Wensiersk, Leipzig 1989.  State police documenting the activities on the square, printed in Freunde und Feinde, 198 Stasi Informationen, 294– 295.

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Fig. 3: Leipzig showing solidarity with China on 9 July 1989. Credit: Roland Quester.

quickly. While Nikolaikirchhof was still occupied with protesters, the news spread through the West German news show Tagesschau. The opening segment reporting about the protests for reforms and changes within the GDR was directly followed by the coverage of the refugee crisis in Hungary and diplomatic responses to it from Berlin and Bavaria.¹⁴⁴ Turning to Leipzig, protesters were shown shouting, “Take us with you into the FRG”¹⁴⁵ into Western

 Tagesschau 4 September 1989.  Report by the state police on September 4th, 1989. Printed in Freunde und Feinde, 198 Stasi Informationen, 294.

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cameras or chanting, “We want out” – meaning to exit to the West. Print media also paid attention to the protests in Leipzig that day.¹⁴⁶ Though the reception of Western media was officially forbidden, the reports were well received within the GDR, encouraging mobilization for the following Monday. The incident was just one of many public manifestations of discontent, while the global moment increasingly undermined the East German state by the end of the summer of 1989. Slogans shouted on the square reflected the changes at hand, as they further substantiated the view that hopes for the future were to be found in the West. At the same time, when protesters in East Germany learned about the bloodshed in Beijing, referencing the East became more prominent – though in a negative manner. The contemporary witness of the events in Leipzig, Kallenbach remembered how she and her fellows “got the news of 4 June in Beijing,” and how people in Leipzig “had feared that such a Chinese solution could take place, that they would again come with tanks when protests started to multiply.”¹⁴⁷ Images of China became present in Leipzig by the fall, though with the full force of its negative connotation. Fear of violence was associated with the events in China in 1989, while the hope for the future was increasingly projected onto West Germany. This imaginary dichotomy of West vs. East in the global moment of 1989 culminated once again on 11 September. The very same day Hungary opened its borders to Austria, police in Leipzig violently came down on the crowd gathering on Nikolaikirchhof. Regular participants of the Monday prayers noticed the immense presence of police in front of the church that day.¹⁴⁸ Fearing an escalation of the situation, Christian Fü hrer and Reverent Wugk both urged the community to leave quickly after the end of the official church services – with little success. When police finally engaged and took people away from the square by force, the stark awareness of the negative example of China burst out spontaneously. Gü nter Mü ller, a participant of the protests on 11 September, wrote about his thoughts when police came to raid the square: “As the police chain moved forward and the first citizens were pulled away violently, I felt a sort of powerless anger, and I spontaneously shouted: China.”¹⁴⁹ However, if the party leadership in Berlin had the idea that police interventions might settle the situation, it was

 See for example, Sü ddeutsche Zeitung (SZ): “Festnahmen bei Demonstration in Leipzig,” 5 September 1989; FAZ: “Demonstration an der Leipziger Nikolaikirche,” 5 September 1989.  Kallenbach, interview. Own translation: “Wir haben im Juni 89 Peking mitgekriegt, wir haben Angst gehabt, dass es eine chinesische Lö sung geben könnte, dass die wieder mit den Panzern auffahren, wenn die Leute sich mehr und mehr erheben.”  Eyewitness account printed in Freunde und Feinde, 201 Ereignisbericht, 296 – 298.  Günter Müller. Gedächtnisprotokoll. Available at ABL: 1.27.1.

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mistaken. Not only did the international press report on the violent crackdown,¹⁵⁰ but people were even more eager to join the protests than before. Furthermore, a wave of solidarity with those in custody turned public, and letters by Fidesz in Hungary and Charta 77, with Václav Havel as spokesman, were sent to Leipzig. In the words of Charta 77, it was clear that the importance of the moment was not only real for those in Leipzig, but also for those watching from afar: When such people are being arrested, chased, and harassed, we need to unite against this with all force, and make sure that the GDR, CCCP, Albania, and Romania do not become the sick spots of Europe. […] We thus turn to all Democrats in Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet Union […] to publicly show their solidarity with our friends in Leipzig.¹⁵¹

For the authors, Leipzig and its struggle against the state police of the GDR stood for the greater shared cause of reform in Europe. Reforms even of international reach, where Hungary and Poland exemplified positive turns, while the GDR was in line with Albania and Romania, and maybe the USSR itself in its reluctance to join the change. While hundreds rushed over the opened border in Hungary, Leipzig protesters encountered a violent raid on the square. In a nutshell, the two responses to the globally shared moment of change were observable again for Leipzig activists. On the one side, there was the violent intent to remain in control by the party and state police of the GDR, and on the other, there was Hungary’s decision to open its borders and give in to the crowd’s pressure. The mental map of the global moment of 1989 increasingly showed two poles drifting away from one another: Poland and Hungary on the one side, and China and East Germany on the other. Socialist examples beyond Europe were barely considered in the written reflections surrounding opposition in Leipzig. China and other socialist countries outside of Europe were situated in an imaginary “Third World.”¹⁵² A world, to which developed socialist countries such as the GDR, should serve as an example. China was consequently only referred to as the negative example of that year’s developments, without considering the broader context of reforms under Deng Xiaoping. Also lacking was any reflection on the protests with regard to the rampages in South Korea or other civil movements in Africa or Latin America. Though eventually fitting with the narrative of a socialist occupation of East

 SZ, Zahlreiche Festnahmen nach Andacht in Leipzig, 12 September 1989.  Charta 77 solidarity letter available at ABL: 1.36.43.  Samizdat: Mücke, page 2. Available at ABL: Only on request.

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Germany, no decolonization movement seemed to inspire protests in Leipzig. With Gorbachev reforming and the SED in Berlin stagnating, there was apparently also little interest in framing the protests as a liberation movement from a socialist occupation backed by Moscow. Nevertheless, by the end of September 1989, the little square in front of Nikolaikirche had evolved into nothing less than a conflict zone where the future of the GDR was fought over. A future which was now set in the context of a changing world. Under the eyes of a transnational public, and with now rapidly growing numbers of participants, those willing to challenge the ruling regime had created their own place to do so.

Fall 1989 and the “Chinese Solution” Not heeding the growing pressure from below, the official line in Berlin was to remain in denial of any protest. And though party leadership in China reassured Germany of its solidarity with the socialist system on the fortieth anniversary of both republics,¹⁵³ the continuation of the Chinese/German axis was soon more questionable than ever. The world was watching as the crowd formed and grew in Leipzig, and the party leaders in Berlin were the only ones left denying the existence of any problem – at least officially. In the background, Honecker ordered to prepare hospitals and military police for the worst. At least to him, the Chinese example seemed to still be a viable option in terms of how to respond to the protests in Leipzig. But fear of a “Chinese Solution” in the GDR also put the party leadership in Berlin under increasing international pressure. After 4 June, the gap between Moscow and Berlin grew even wider than before. Leading figures like Gorbachev distanced themselves from Honecker, with the former seeing his main negotiation partners for shaping perestroika and glasnost rooted further in the West.¹⁵⁴ Unlike his comrades in East Berlin, Gorbachev was disturbed by the violent crackdown of protests in Beijing and quickly adopted a new, anti-violent approach. Honecker and Ceaușescu, in turn, tried to push for military interventions by Soviet troops. However, Gorbachev did not allow for any such scenario under his watch. Hence, the already cooled relations between the GDR and the

 SZ, “China bekrä ftigt Unterstü tzung der DDR,” 26 September 1989.  Taubmann, William and Svetlana Savranskaya. If a Wall Fell in Berlin and Moscow Hardly Notices, Would it Still make a Noise? In The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989, Jeffery A. Engel (ed.). Oxford University Press, 2009, 69 – 95.

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Soviet Union eroded further.¹⁵⁵ Gorbachev was more supportive of reforms in Poland and Hungary under the banners of glasnost and perestroika than he was willing to intervene in East Germany. It became increasingly clear that a “Chinese Solution” to 1989 would not be enforced by Soviet troops, and was only an option if Honecker decided to act on his own. Meanwhile, protests in Leipzig put political elites under critical pressure. The growing visibility of protesters alarmed police officers and high-ranking party officials alike.¹⁵⁶ It also motivated more people to join. Around the time of the prayers on 2 October, the little Nikolaikirchhof was packed, and the crowd again chanted their songs, songs that had also been sung by the people protesting on Tiananmen: the International Anthem and “We Shall Overcome.”¹⁵⁷ While party leaders in the GDR were reluctant to accept the changing tides of 1989, people on the streets started to understand the historicity of the moment they were now part of. A full hour after the prayers had ended in this first meeting in October, the masses started to move, first to Karl Marx Square, then to the fortified police chains at the central train station. When police tried to engage and stop the protest march, the global moment of 1989 manifested by means of slogans: “No violence; No China,”¹⁵⁸ clearly identifying the danger of a police assault with the outcome of the protests on Tiananmen Square. But in spite of the widely shared fear of a Chinese solution,¹⁵⁹ protesters moved forward. Over ten thousand outnumbered the police chains around Nikolaikirchhof and moved towards the fortified train station.¹⁶⁰ Police hats were taken away and thrown into the air, and orders to disperse and to leave were ignored. Slogans further reflected the global context of protests, quoting the leading figure of glasnost and perestroika:

 Schäfer, Bernd. Die DDR und die Chinesische Lösung. In Sabrow, 1989, 153 – 173; Chen Jian. Tiananmen and the Fall of the Wall: China’s Path towards 1989 and Beyond. In: Engel (ed.) Berlin Wall, 96 – 131.  For the perspective on the protests from the side of the police, see Schäfer, Chinesische Lösung.  Report by an eyewitness in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 31.  Four eyewitnesses filing a report after the protests remember this on 2 October 1989, available at ABL 1.26.62.  Besides the already quoted sources, see also a time witness reports about posters on a blackboard within Nikolaikirche informing about Tiananmen on 2 October 1989, see Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, Wer folgt dort wem? 51.  SZ reported about the protests on the 27 September 1989 on page one: “Großer Protestmarsch durch Leipzig.”

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“Gorbi, Gorbi.” A rejection of the exit option was also proclaimed, with chants of “We stay here,” while urging people to join the protests: “Join in.”¹⁶¹ By then, the protesting crowd in Leipzig was felt to have the aura of a powerful force that had already achieved a most crucial task: breaking free of the fear induced by the state police. A young participant recalled the moment when he was convinced to join the protests: “At this moment my brain was like shut down, because I was afraid, but also because I wanted to join. And so, one dives into it and gets in. I was within this stream, and I somehow felt strong.”¹⁶² Self-enactment was accompanied by the spirit of solidarity, as two young participants of the protests revealed in an interview given to the Neues Forum Leipzig in 1989: Franz: What surprised me was the solidarity amongst ourselves […]. Someone had lost a shoe. He was 50 meters away. ‘Where is my shoe’, he shouted, and suddenly everyone was passing the shoe through the crowd. Such a high spirit of solidarity, I have to say, it moved me. I had the impression I was among nice people. Thomas: I found it to be beautiful that there was such an expression of solidarity. Since that’s how it was supposed to be, the way socialism is defined.¹⁶³

Attracted by a sense of self-enactment, more people joined. And whilst some of the participants experienced this as empowerment, state police, in turn, had a growing sense of doubt. The latter was reflected in a letter to the secretary of the party himself, sent the day after.¹⁶⁴ Erich Honecker would soon need to decide whether he would allow further growth of the global moment in Leipzig, or if he had to call for the dreaded “Chinese Solution.” A full-blown military response to the protests was a politically costly maneuver, however. Representative of one of the few countries that had officially supported the violent response to the protests on Tiananmen by their Chinese com-

 State police documenting the protests, available at: Freunde und Feinde, 230 SED-Information, 334– 336; See also ABL 1.26.62.  Franz in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 49. Own translation: “In diesem Moment war mein Gehirn wie ausgeschaltet, weil ich Angst hatte, aber auch mitwollte. Und da tauchte man plötzlich mit ein und war drin. Ich gehörte zu diesem Strom und fühlte mich irgendwie stark.”  Thomas and Franz in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 49. Own translation: “Was mich erstaunt hat war die Solidarität untereinander. […]. Also eine wahnsinnige Solidarität, und das hat mich im Herzen erfreut, muß ich sagen. […] Ich hatte den Eindruck, als hätte ich es nur mit netten Menschen zu tun. Thomas: Das fand ich schön, daß sich das so solidarisch auswirkte. So soll es ja im Sozialismus sein, wie er definiert ist.”  Letter printed in Freunde und Feinde, 230 SED Information, 334– 336.

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rades,¹⁶⁵ the SED had already become equally as isolated on the international diplomatic arena as the Chinese leadership in the aftermath of 4 June. In addition, economic and political sanctions against China by the West, and in particular by West Germany, also demonstrated to the GDR leadership the costs of trying to solve growing discontent on the streets violently. Even as highly decorated delegates from the CCP traveled from Beijing to Berlin to give their reassurances about the strength of socialism at both ends of the world,¹⁶⁶ people in Leipzig gathered on the square to voice dissent. The late Cold War alliance between Berlin and Beijing came together to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the East German regime, while protests grew in intensity in Leipzig. Police again came to stop people from gathering on Nikolaikirchhof and locked away those who were reluctant to leave the scene. Little by little, they shut down the square and waited for the evening to pass.¹⁶⁷ By night, a crowd big enough to form a demonstration march had gathered in the city center, and the reaction by police was violent.¹⁶⁸ As police officers reported an atmosphere of fear, they sought to justify the use of dogs and tear gas to gain the upper hand against the protesters.¹⁶⁹ Dogs, arrests, clubs, and riot police units dispersed the crowd in Leipzig – one last time. As soon as two days later, the crucial demonstration of 9 October formed in front of Nikolaikirche. From there, several thousand people started to roam around, flocking first to the next best square, the Karl Marx Square. Without anyone leading the demonstration officially, the protesters walked down the Ring to the central train station, roughly 500 meters from Karl Marx Platz. There, some of those forming part of the demonstration decided to occupy its west hall.¹⁷⁰ Having sung “We Shall Overcome” and shouting slogans like “Peace, Freedom, Fraternity” and “No Violence,” the crowd also collectively sang the Internationale. Police did not intervene because the high number of participants rendered

 The official statement issued by the parliament can be found printed in: Meissner, Die DDR und China, 397.  Meissner, Die DDR und China, 391– 425.  Activities on the square that day were filmed by the “Operative Kamera” available at: ABL: Only on request.  See Ahbe, Thomas. Einfü hrung: Gewalt oder Verhandeln? – Das Erlebnis des 9. Oktober 1989 als Auslöser für die öffentlichen Debatten in Leipzig. In Redefreiheit, Thomas Ahbe, Michael Hofmann, Volker Stiehler (eds.) Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2014, 18.  ABL 1.26.62; Jetzt oder Nie, 51.  Freunde und Feinde, 218 SED-Informationen, 323; Freunde und Feinde, 219 SED Informationen, 323; Freunde und Feinde, 220 Staat Kirche Briefwechsel, 324.

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them incapable of doing so.¹⁷¹ The magnitude of the protests left police with only two options: abide or fight. Reluctance and insecurity within the police rank had grown with the events in the previous weeks. Orders on how to handle the situation in many cities of East Germany where protests now formed were lacking a clear direction. On 9 October, the final call on where police stood on the question of violence had to be made. Thus, the day is now considered as the decisive day in the fall of 1989, giving the growing discontent in East Germany a turning point unfolding in Leipzig.¹⁷² The crowd that gathered that day in the city center was bigger than ever before, and police mobilization was severe. Orders for the mobilization of the military and the installation of a first-aid camp were issued.¹⁷³ Thus, preparations for a violent response to growing protests were made, but the institution needing to decide on how to deal with the protests on the night of 9 October was the Central Committee in Berlin. Little is known of the moment Honecker decided not to be available to make the final decision on the matter. The fact is that the SED general secretary of Leipzig, Hackenberg, in charge of the operations, could not reach the party secretary in Berlin. When a firm course of action against protesters in Leipzig would have required his rigid insistence, Honecker attended a state dinner with foreign representatives instead. Hackenberg, unwilling to take responsibility for a violent escalation in Leipzig, withdrew the troops from the protesters’ route and watched as they passed by.¹⁷⁴ The call that could have ordered the troops to act was never made, nor was Hackenberg any more interested in it: “Well, they’ve passed. Now he [Honecker] also does not need to call here anymore.”¹⁷⁵ Interestingly, in this moment of triumph, there was no celebration of new liberties within the protest lines, no euphoria. Most of the march was silent. Somewhere, someone started to clap, and this lone clapper was then answered by the mass of people, resonating, and reassuring the lonely and frightened participants of the presence of the many. A “Gorbi, Gorbi” or “No Violence” may also have broken the silence – at least, for a brief while. But there was no happiness in the protest, no sound or activity celebrating the release.¹⁷⁶

 On the surprisingly high number of participants for both police and church officials, see Freunde und Feinde, 220 Staat-Kirche Briefwechsel, 324.  Kuhn, Der Tag der Entscheidung.  Richter, Friedliche Revolution, 357.  Süß, Staatssicherheit am Ende, 301– 314.  Quoted in: Süß, Der Friedliche Ausgang, 204.  “Operative Kamera.”

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In the following days, Egon Krenz, a member of the central committee who was well informed about the events in Leipzig, moved to overthrow the party secretary. He did so by addressing the concerns of those protesting in a speech that was broadcast on television. He offered a dialogue on problems within the GDR and demanded a critical evaluation of recent developments. It was a final blow to Honecker, who was removed by 17 October. Protests, now sure there would be no Chinese solution awaiting them, grew in numbers and organized committees to communicate demands for a reform of the state from the bottom up. The importance of Nikolaikirchhof finally vanished, with protests marching freely on the Ring in Leipzig. By fall 1989, the attention of the world and of protests in East Germany moved to Berlin. There, the symbolic protests at the Berlin Wall became the central and world-renowned iconography of the global moment of 1989. When the Wall in Berlin came down, the global moment of 1989 had its most unanticipated conclusion for East Germany. Throughout 1989, the squares in Beijing and Leipzig displayed the acute discontentment of people in China and Germany, who would not only cross-reference each other but also the many other protests forming at the time. Additionally, political leaders from different countries weighed in to either support, moderate, or condemn protests. Thus, the squares had served as global arenas in which the critical moment of 1989 manifested itself. At the same time, the seizure of the squares in Leipzig and Beijing intervened into different regional contexts and provoked quite differing responses. The CCP mobilized the military to regain control over the square and hence the global moment of 1989. In East Germany, on the other hand, the SED appeared to be less aware that the global moment of 1989 undermined the foundations of their rule. The SpaceTime in 1989 was a global moment of unrest and struggle to remain in control, playing out on the squares. In their responses to the SpaceTime on Tiananmen Square and Nikolaikirchhof, the conservative socialist axis of Berlin and Beijing proved to be quite distinct. Most importantly, the Chinese leadership showed little will to take chances in how the global moment of 1989 would turn out. The unanticipated ends of the protests on the squares speak to the fact that the seized square introduced, first and foremost, a moment of decontrol.

IV Producing Counter-spaces on the Squares in 1989 The reason why nobody at the time anticipated the outcome of the SpaceTime in 1989 rests within the mode of space production on the seized square. Once protests in Beijing and Leipzig had established their claim to the square and produced a SpaceTime for dissenting views and self-enactment, protests developed without any clear agenda or plan. The squares became focal points for dissent but remained unpredictable in their dynamics and in terms of representation. People gathering on the squares acted upon a shared discontent and a general sense of wanting to challenge the existing order. Yet no binding agenda for a new order to come was presented. This is why the squares in Leipzig and Beijing can be understood primarily as counter-spaces: they sought to reject and disagree, but not necessarily agree on anything other than to disagree. “No” was the binding element for the diverse motives of people coming together in the SpaceTime of 1989, leading to the production of counter-spaces on Tiananmen and Nikolaikirchhof that were out of control. This chapter analyses the political nature of Tiananmen Square and Nikolaikirchhof during the protests in Beijing and Leipzig. It shows, on the one side, the difference in the way the squares were seized. While Tiananmen Square was loaded with high symbolic meaning and occupied for days and nights from mid-May, people in Leipzig only used the square on particular days to gather and were not as bold in their claim to it. After stressing differences, this chapter shows how the two squares shared a crucial similarity: both squares exercised a similar form of disruptive, unreal power in 1989. The chaotic nature of the seized squares did not allow for representation or agenda-setting, but nevertheless drove both socialist regimes in China and Germany into crisis. The differing outcomes of the protests were not dependent on the mightiness of the space of dissent set up on the square. They were, instead, dependent on the contexts in which the disruptive power of the seized square emerged.

IV.1 The Enduring Occupation of Tiananmen In China, the seizure of the square was spontaneous and assertive. Student organizations played a crucial role in mobilizing to the square, as did the newly founded workers’ union, the movement of Chinese journalists, and the presence of foreign media due to Mikhail Gorbachev’s state visit in May. This led to a dynamic that attracted more and more people to join the protests independently of https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682601-005

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the early mobilization networks. Once claiming Tiananmen Square, a radicalizing mindset of some protesters was able to mobilize the symbolic meaning of the space they occupied on their own behalf. With enduring protests, they also transformed the square by material means. A tent city emerged, and the seized square was increasingly shaped after the needs of the protests. Until the late days of the seizure, and despite all political chaos, this scene attracted people to join. To some, the square even held such a high value that they were willing to die defending it when martial law was enforced by the military on 4 June.

Mobilizing to the Square As pointed out in the previous chapter, the initial crowd on Tiananmen mourning Hu Yaobang formed spontaneously on 15 April. But the speed with which students, in particular, gathered in front of Tiananmen on that day had to do with the already highly politicized campuses of Beijing. Only a few hours after the death of the former general secretary of the CCP, students formed the first demonstration marches to the square in order to engender public mobilization and petitioning. Once the protests had started, several others joined the mobilization efforts of the students. One of the key activists on the square, Chai Ling, pointed out the spontaneous nature of the protests in May 1989: “In many ways, the movement is not very mature. An opportunity presented itself accidentally. No one knew Hu Yaobang was going to die when he did. This movement is a great manifestation of the natural democratic instinct of the students and the people, a spontaneous expression of the people’s own interest.”¹ Adding to the spontaneous nature of the first gatherings on Tiananmen, eyewitness Han Dongfang stated six years after the protests: “It was clear to me that people weren’t simply concerned with one man‘s death. Hu Yaobang’s death made it possible for a crowd to gather in a public place. It gave them something to discuss, and that led to discussions of all kinds of other issues.”² The mourning turned into a protest as people got together on the square to share their thoughts on the late progressive general secretary of the CCP. It was a fluid transition within the initial crowd from mourning to using the square to gather and grow in numbers.

 Longbow Group, interview with Chai Ling.  Longbow Group, interview with Han Dongfang, http://www.tsquare.tv/film/transcript.html (29 March 2020).

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After the first sporadic gatherings on Tiananmen Square, students took the lead in calling for wider action. Poems and statements covered the walls of Beijing universities, mourning Hu Yaobang and describing the scene on Tiananmen Square: “Although many students returned to campus in the course of the march, two or three thousand students reached Tiananmen Square, where they began a sit-in protest, loudly chanting ‘Long live democracy’ ‘Long live freedom!’ ‘Long live the rule by law!’ ‘Oppose tyranny!’ […] and singing the ‘Internationale’ and the ‘March of the Volunteers.’ This momentum was magnificent.”³ The “Cultural Fever” of the campuses in Beijing had spread to the square, and students could now share their ideas with a wider range of people. Mobilization efforts intensified in the following days, as various rallies took off from the campuses to the city center, with protesters handing out leaflets that called for broader participation and protests.⁴ This dynamic was further amplified after a violent clash with police at the Xinhuamen close to Tiananmen.⁵ Following this so-called ‘20 April Bloodshed,’ the first leaflets of organizing workers known on the square as “gongzilian”⁶ [literally: workers’ self-love] made the rounds in Beijing.⁷ The mass demonstration on Tiananmen that shortly followed on 27 April multiplied the actors interested in mobilizing to the square. Meanwhile, the party leadership attacked the protest harshly in a special edition of the daily newspaper Renmin Bao and denounced it as “dong luan” (“turmoil”).⁸ It is important to note that it was a highly diverse mass of people that called for protests utilizing leaflets and articles in newspapers at the end of April. Support for mobilization spread from student circles to a broad spectrum of actors, including newly founded workers’ unions, the Muslim community in Beijing,⁹ intellectuals, and journalists, who also broadened their efforts to mobilize for protests. On 21 April, an open letter by 200 intellectuals urged the party leadership

 Anonymous poster at the People’s University on 19 April 1989, reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, 11.  For a brief overview of the events on these first days of protest, see the anonymous handout: The Whole Story of the April 22 Incident, reprinted in: China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 26, 95 – 96. Discussing the “ecology” of campus mobilization more in detail: Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 239.  A Group of witnesses of the April 20 murder case, report, and call for actions after the sit-in at the Gate, printed in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 16, 83 – 85.  On the emergence and role of the workers union on Tiananmen, see Walder et al, Workers in the Tiananmen Protests.  See “Letter to People of the Entire City” by Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Union (gongzilian).” In China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 18, 86 – 87.  People’s Daily, “Editorial.”  An urgent call from the Beijing Islamic Community, see IISH PAM 00016.

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to take protests on Tiananmen Square more seriously than earlier versions of protests on the square: “The leaders should draw a lesson from the Tiananmen incident of 1976. They must not ignore the demands of the students.”¹⁰ At the same time, journalists started announcing their solidarity with the protests forming in China: “From April 21 to 22, about one hundred journalists stood side by side with the students. Many reporters wrote eyewitness accounts for this newspaper, but none was published.”¹¹ Success in mobilization for protests was not limited to Tiananmen. The long reach of mobilization efforts was reflected in the provinces, where similar activities were reported: “On April 22, college students and Xi’an residents gathered on Xincheng Square, which is situated in front of the Shaanxi provincial government building, where they held floral wreaths with mourning couplets to express their sorrow for Comrade Hu Yaobang.”¹² Due to the lack of strategic coordination, such a sporadic formation of protests in the countryside depended on “informal contacts.” But these initially informal networks only developed into more organized ones throughout May 1989.¹³ Then, student mobilizations connecting campuses across China were also supplemented by more daring journalists who started to print their own stories to report what they witnessed in Beijing. They called for freedom of the press,¹⁴ and a growing campus-made print media reported from the protests on Tiananmen Square to the country.¹⁵ Consequently, protests in Beijing and other cities around China were massive. In the first climax of the protests, people counted up to a million in Beijing alone by the end of April 1989.¹⁶ People following these calls for action had, from the beginning, a bold mode of operation. From early on, protesters seizing the square were very confident in their actions. On 27 April, whilst party authorities held the official state burial for Hu Yaobang in the Great Hall of the People, the crowd on Tiananmen Square ral-

 The open letter was reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 20, 80 – 89.  “Voice of the news reporters.” Article in the News-Herald, reprinted in: China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 36, 109.  Student and Faculty Members of Universities and Colleges in Xi’an Region. 26 April 1989, reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 27, 96.  On the particular interaction between Beijing and Xi’an, see Esherick, Joseph W. Xi’an Spring. In Unger, Reports from the Provinces, 79 – 105.  IISH: PAM 00123: “Why Want Press Freedom?”; “The road to freedom of the press in China.” Articles reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 107– 111.  First student News Herald available as IISH: PAM 00222: “Qinghua University People. Issue 1.”  The number of a million was the head line of the News-Herald May 18th Xinwen Dao Bao, reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 94, 228.

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lied just a few meters away from the gathering of state elites. Zhao Dingxin documented the protests that day and described how students dared to break through police lines that were supposed to stop them. In doing so, the students opened up “a long corridor about five to seven meters […] The corridor became a giant stage for any students who wanted to express themselves. There were always some students shouting slogans, raising demands, and giving speeches in the corridor.”¹⁷ In this way, students appropriated the square in the middle of Beijing by means of their bodies to express their solidarity with the late general secretary Hu Yaobang. The flow of people on Tiananmen Square was forceful from the beginning, daring and massive enough to push aside police units trying to shut down the square. Another remarkable way demonstrators appropriated Tiananmen Square by means of their bodies alone can be found in the way they demonstrated in the direction of the city center. People marched according to identity units. When a CNN news anchor bumped into the protesters on Tiananmen Square in 1989, he instantly caught the phenomenon at first hand.¹⁸ The video material shows people joining the protests and carrying banners stating the institution they came from. For students, units were assembled according to their home campus. But as the news reporters stated in their coverage, party and state institutions also joined the protests, and they too marched as a unit onto Tiananmen Square and chose to be visible under banners proclaiming their affiliations. Other journalists reported about workers who also marched in their respective working units.¹⁹ Philip Cunningham witnessed the same scene: “Outside the core, which was occupied by strikers and their handlers, ran a concentric ring of students, mostly organized in academic affiliation, pulled into the fray of bonds of friendship and school spirit.”²⁰ As socialist tradition since 1949 would have it, units arriving on the square were applauded and haled. Once a group had received their praise, they then turned into the crowd to welcome the next joining units. This way of demonstrating echoes the political culture that came along with the Maoist state-building practices in the CCP. Crucially, the students’ demand for political reforms was further supported by the Beijing population and a workers’ movement. In contrast to earlier mobilizations to Tiananmen in 1979 and 1986, when student protests lacked sufficient support from workers and others, protests in 1989 turned into a nationwide chal Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 152.  CNN, Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing.  CNN, Gorbachev’s visit to Beijing; Cremerius, et al, Studentenprotest und Repression, 91.  Philip Cunningham. Tiananmen Moon. Inside the Chinese Student Uprising. Plymouth (Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009), 88.

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lenge to party rule. The people of Beijing turned out to show solidarity with the hunger-striking students, and workers set up a state-independent union to issue statements in support.²¹ However, even though the newly formed workers’ union set up tents on Tiananmen Square, support for the protest on the square remained rather reserved. “In fact, the activists on the square, who had come together singly or in groups of two or three from the same work unit, felt so insecure until mid-May that they remained, by tacit agreement, on a surname-only basis.”²² According to Lau, the main concern of the working class in 1989 was actually to demand an end to the hunger strike and to support the students’ rather unspecific demands for political reform. Lacking a definite cause, the workers’ involvement in the protests meant, actually, further radicalization of protests. Framing late May of 1989 as an “extraordinary period,” the workers’ unions called to “safeguard order in Tiananmen Square, [and] to use vehicles from every work unit to block main transportation arteries and subway exits, and to ensure the normal operations of the China Central Television and China Central Broadcasting stations.”²³ Workers thus engaged in mobilization and appropriation of Tiananmen Square, ready to defend it under martial law. In the first phase of protests, the agency of dissenters might have still been found primarily within the rows of students that called for action and agitated a mass movement to Tiananmen. But even then, the range of actors involved in the mobilization efforts exceeded the campuses and connected to other discontented groups, like the workers’ unions and journalists. Crucially, in Beijing, these actors did not call for protests to gather anywhere but to the already symbolically loaded Tiananmen Square. There, up to a million gathered. Reports about protests on Tiananmen Square were communicated all across the country, slowly leading to a radicalization of the protest.

 On the role of the autonomous worker unions on Tiananmen, see Lau, Raymond W. The Role of the Working Class in the 1989 Mass Movement in Beijing. Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, 12:3 (1996): 343 – 373; Walder, Andrew G. and Gong Xiaoxia. Workers in the Tiananmen Protests: The Politics of the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation. The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 29:1 (1993): 1– 29.  Walder et al, Workers in the Tiananmen Protests, 6.  Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Union Preparatory Office Public Notice. Handbill, reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 273.

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The Importance of Tiananmen for Mobilization One of the reasons why the mobilization to Tiananmen could develop so quickly and reach as far as it did was the fact that Tiananmen and the square in front of it carried such a high symbolic value. Because the Gate of Heavenly Peace had repeatedly been the scene of political struggles since the end of the Qing dynasty, students could easily connect their call to action with the vivid history of politics in twentieth-century China. The gate itself was already a national symbol, and the square had been turned into a political arena for public politics by Mao himself. It was used for a variety of events of a political nature, turning it into an identity-carrying place with national meaning and reach. By the sole fact of being on Tiananmen, protesters could claim to speak on behalf of the nation, thus mobilizing the symbolic value inherent to the square. After the fall of the last emperor, throughout the twentieth century, the square served as a twofold source for symbolic acts. On the one hand, as Hayan Lee argued, Tiananmen Square became a central source of legitimation for the CCP. Deliberately reconstructed to fit mass gatherings under the supervision of Mao, it was turned frequently into a scene of power displays and even charismatic leadership. Military parades and their well-ordered choreographed marches laid out the iconography through which the party could present its legitimate rule to the public.²⁴ In addition to these official uses came the critical appropriations of the space in front of Tiananmen. In 1919, the May Fourth Movement gathered on the square to demand that “Mr. Science” and “Mr. Democracy” modernize the Chinese mindset, which was blamed for China’s declining role as a world power.²⁵ Early calls for the renewal of Chinese society and an end to imperial rule were formulated in front of Tiananmen. This allowed students to connect to a lively history of demanding reforms. By 1949, Tiananmen Square and the gate to the Forbidden City held such symbolic power that it was coined and used as a national symbol by the CCP. Furthermore, the square was also appropriated in its material features for the needs of the newly beginning rule of the socialist party. Officials in Beijing planned and realized its enlarged shape, turning it from a formerly T-shaped space surrounded by old imperial offices into a wide square, so huge that until today it remains the third biggest city square in the world.²⁶ After the civil war  Lee, Haiyan. The Charisma of Power and the Military Sublime in Tiananmen Square. The Journal of Asian Studies 70:2 (2011): 397– 424.  Schwartcz, Vera. The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. University of California Press, 1990.  Hershkovitz, Tiananmen and the Politics of Place.

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and Mao’s proclamation of the People’s Republic in 1949, “there [was] little doubt that the Party was (and is) the de facto power holder, but it could not consecrate itself without also consecrating the people – the source of power and legitimacy. Herein lay the ideological impetus of the creation of Tiananmen square […] a space in which the sacralization of power could be enacted in a process of mutual acclamation between the Party and the people.”²⁷ On Tiananmen Square, Mao sought approval of his rule by gathering anonymous masses to be the passive observants of his leadership. The modern vision of socialist China materialized on the square, and gave Tiananmen its new meaning: “In contrast to the Forbidden City, enclosed within high walls and moats that symbolized the power of emperors, Tiananmen Square opened up a massive space to represent the power of the people and the revolutionary spirit of socialist China.”²⁸ Mao first welcomed the Great Proletarian Revolution from the top of the Heavenly Gate, just to witness the chaos and disobedience on the square at the height of his mass mobilizations.²⁹ From the 1979 ‘Democracy Wall’ that was set up not far from the square, to a severe clash on the square between protesters and police in 1986, the urban space around Tiananmen turned into the center of social conflicts in China under socialist rule. With such history inscribed into Tiananmen Square, the realization of its symbolic value during the protest did not go unutilized. Due to its meaningful role for both the party as well as critical voices in Beijing, Tiananmen Square was a highly symbolic choice for protests in 1989, as the square had a national, and in particular, a socialist, history that the 1989 protesters could refer to. From the first public sign installed on the monument in the middle of the square, it was already evident that the protesters were referring to the spiritual sphere of national consciousness, as the large image of Hu Yaobang was accompanied with the statement: “The Death of the Soul of China.”³⁰ Feng Chongde pointed out the importance death can have in China: “In Chinese culture, there’s a phenomenon I’d call the cult of the dead. After death, all the man’s flaws are forgotten, and his memory is enshrined in a halo of glory. Then people use the dead man to vent their anger and express their hopes.”³¹ With the symbolic value

 Lee, “The Charisma of Power,” 400.  Lillian M. Li, Alison Dray-Hovey, and Haili Kong. Beijing. From Imperial Capital to Olympic City. New York (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 179.  Meisner, Mao’s China and After, 291– 315.  The Death of the “Soul of China” slogan with pictures of Hu Yaobang at Tiananmen in early April on an image in China’s Search for Democracy, 70.  Longbow Group, interview with Feng Chongde. http://www.tsquare.tv/film/transcript.html. (29 March 2020).

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given by choice of place and with the praise of Hu Yaobang as the “Soul of China,” protesters on Tiananmen Square held a high moral ground, which dissuaded a too-harsh response by the party. Grieving for the death of a national leader on the symbolically loaded square gave the protests a spiritual note which referred to a greater cause. As they were mourning Hu Yaobang on the place that represented the Chinese nation and public consciousness, the party cadres had little choice but to tolerate the first day of protests. Several scattered documents depict the sentiment that brings together ideas on power and space. In the self-published student newspaper Square Bulletin, for instance, reporter Chang Li describes the extraordinary relentlessness of the students during the second day of the hunger strike and its historical meaning in the face of Tiananmen. To Chang, the movement had a heroic character, as the hunger strikers’ struggle was fusing with the history of Tiananmen: On this huge Tiananmen square, students maintain order, and they themselves clean it of rubbish. They carry the burden of Tiananmen Square. Charged with it, their generation appears to be burdened too heavily. Here we held the foundation ceremony [of the People’s Republic of China]. Chairman Mao Zedong’s shout of “The Chinese people have awakened” was properly echoed here, and the great parades for the national day took place here. Chairman Mao welcomed here a million Red Guards. The May Fourth Movement was here. The honor of Tiananmen is a history of the Republic. There were people who added to her [the square’s] glory, and there were people who disgraced her. We have the responsibility to add to the glory of Tiananmen. It is the responsibility of every citizen; it is the responsibility of the government.³²

To Chang, the fact that protesters used Tiananmen Square had significant importance, as they utilized a forceful idea of national history for their cause. This sentiment was also shared by foreign participants in the square, such as Cunningham: “Standing on a monument to history, gazing at such a vast and defiant gathering, now at least a hundred thousand strong, it was not hard to have the impression that history was being made.”³³ Being on the square meant connecting directly to the history of the People’s Republic of China. Cunningham’s

 Bulletin available at: IISH: PAM 0131. Own translation: “Ruoda de tiananmen guangchang, xueshengmen ziji weichi zhixu, ziji qingchu lese, tamen beifuzhe tiananmen guangchang, danfuzhe bi tamen nianling xiang bi tai xian chenzhong de yiqie. Zheli, women ceng juxing kaiguo dadian, mao zedong zhuxi ‘zhonggouo renmin congci zhan qilaile’ zhuangyan xuangao zhihou de huanhu sheng hong weibing, youguo wusi yundong, baojingcangsang rongru de tiananmen shi gongheguo de yi bu lishi, youren wei ta zhenghui, yeyou ren shi ta meng ru, women you zeren wei tiananmen zengtian guang. Zhe shi mei yige gongmin de zeren, geng shi zhengfu de zeren.”  Cunningham, Tiananmen Moon, 89.

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and Chang’s emphatic readings of the importance of the square was complemented by the observation that it unified diverging interests into one: “Tiananmen was a place of rare alchemy, a place that could turn disputatious and distrusting people into a unitary mass; people with little in common could feel like comrades in arms.”³⁴ By the single fact of using the square, protesters managed to elevate their act to make it part of national history. Journalists also hoped the square would serve as a unifying force. Some even expressed the belief that the square itself could be the democratic institution people hoped for: “Friends wish this magnificent Tiananmen movement can unify ‘students, workers, intellectuals, peasants’ to oversee the party and compete with it equally in order to establish real socialist democracy.”³⁵ Such rhetorical connections of the square and this ideal of unification further elevated the protests into a national symbol: “The heroic actions of the hunger-striking students at Tiananmen have turned the Square into a symbol of Chinese freedom and Chinese democracy!”³⁶ Just like students did it in their self-published articles, Chinese journalists also interpreted the square as a symbolic entity that worked on behalf of the protests. The idealistic claims and actions of students were bound up with the symbolic meaning of the occupied square. Agents of the state also stressed the symbolic power of the city square in Beijing. The 27 April editorial was particularly eager to discredit the protesters seizing the square. In the report informing state officials about the “nature” of the protests on Tiananmen, the authors stress the importance of place: “The Square has become a large banner of democratic patriotism, it is now the epicenter and heart of the nationalist movement for democracy.”³⁷ Less interested in drawing any historic meaning to the protests, state views on Tiananmen Square stressed the problematic aspects of the spatial affinity of the protests. Realizing that the quality of the protest differed from a demonstration march or a party event, Li Peng warned his comrades about the dynamics of the occupation: “With extremely excited crowds packing Tiananmen Square, shouting inflammatory slogans continuously, the representatives of the hunger strikers even indicated

 Cunningham, Tiananmen Moon, 89.  Bulletin available at: IISH: PAM 0056. Own translation: “You pengyou zhuyuan tiananmen zheci bolanzhuangkuo de yundong, hui jiecheng yige “xuesheng, zhishi fenzi, gongren, nongmin” de tuanjieti, yi jiandu zhonggongdang, bing yuzhi gongping jinzheng, yi jianli zhenshi de shehui zhuyi minzhu jizhi.”  “News Flashes (Xinwen kuaixin),” Editorial, 22 May 1989, reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 326.  Report to the political secretary of the CCP. In Zhang et al, eds, Tiananmen Papers, 528.

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themselves that they were no longer able to control the situation.”³⁸ The official portrayal went so far as to claim that protesters were manipulated by a small number of people with “ulterior” motives. Tiananmen Square was understood to be a place of importance for the protesters in the eyes of state elites, while also being perceived as out of control. International attention further nurtured the image of the square as the focal point for protests in 1989 China. The strategic use of the square to communicate with the media was, for example, documented by a poster hanging in a Computer Science Department in April. It underscored the purposeful appropriation of the square as a stage: “We took the streets to explain our cause to the populace, we solicited donations, and using our thin and faint voices, shouted against the China Central Television, which is equipped with modern satellite communication technology. The ordinary people saw this with their own eyes, and their hearts ached for us.”³⁹ While students were excited about the attention they gained from the media, large television stations, and newspapers in the West reported from the square.⁴⁰ A Florida newspaper wrote on 23 May that Tiananmen was turned into a “symbol and battleground,” adding that “Tiananmen has become a garbage-strewn encampment for students demanding more freedom and a symbolic field of battle in the political struggle on China’s leadership.”⁴¹ In a further example, an article on 28 May in the Washington Post stated that “Tiananmen Square is converted into the world’s largest peace park.”⁴² The article went on to ascribe to the protest a new mode of power: “Chinese students came to understand so well and so boldly that the strength of truth and justice is superior to the weakness of guns and tanks.” The Western take on the protest seizing Tiananmen Square was to celebrate it as an example of spreading democracy around the world. In their view, the square was the symbolic and physical embodiment of the outreaching of democracy. In response to such reports, the beguiling of foreign media on the square intensified further. It even went so far as to feature a poster thanking the BBC for  Li Peng speech at a special meeting of central and Beijing municipality and army cadres on 19 May 1989, printed in Cries for Democracy, 255 – 258.  Poster at a computer science department in Haidian on 28 April, reflecting upon the march the day before. Printed in Cries for Democracy, 94.  See for example New York Times. Soviets and China Resuming Normal ties After 30 Years; Beijing Pledges ‘Democracy’; The Envy is Mutual. https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/17/world/ soviets-china-resuming-normal-ties-after-30-years-beijing-pledges-democracy-envy.html (29 March 2020).  The Ledger. “Square a Symbol and Battleground,” 23 May 1989 https://news.google.com/ newspapers?id=0sFOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=E_wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2187%2C4509515 (29 March 2020).  Washington Post, “Nonviolence and the Process of Change in China,” 28 May 1989.

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its news coverage during the protests.⁴³ Disappointed by the initial news coverage by the national media, protests on Tiananmen Square turned to the foreign media to communicate with the imagined audience that was assumed to be watching from all over the world: “The whole world is focusing its attention on China and Beijing. The world’s people have shown their sympathy for the Chinese people, and their struggle”⁴⁴ stated a “Letter to the People throughout the World” written by the medical team supporting the hunger strikers on Tiananmen. Another example of global outreach is the speech held while revealing a statue that resembled the Statue of Liberty of New York, proclaiming: “Today, here in the People’s Square, the people’s Goddess stands tall and announces to the whole world: A consciousness of democracy has awakened among the Chinese People!”⁴⁵ To address the watching world via the foreign journalists present, language and direct appeals were formulated using English as well as Chinese letters.⁴⁶ Tiananmen’s symbolic value thus extended its reach beyond Beijing and even China. Already filled with substantial national meaning, people on the square in 1989 turned it into a scene befitting a protest that sought to speak to the people in Beijing as well as to the imagined audiences sitting in front of televisions far away. Supported by international newspapers, mobilization to Tiananmen Square only accelerated through activities by students and journalists, who made deliberate use of the national symbol of Tiananmen for their own cause. Deliberately, the mass movement occupying Tiananmen Square appropriated its symbolic value and propagated it to the campuses in Beijing and in other cities in China, as well as to an imagined world audience that was watching.

Seizing the Square in Beijing Besides shaping reports and representations of the square, protests also engaged in an appropriation of Tiananmen Square by material means. Dwelling in tents and vehicles, people in Beijing’s city center built a concrete place for weeks-long

 Photograph of a student holding up a poster saying “Thank you BBC” available at: IISH: BG/ B 146.  Printed in: China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 168, 339.  Tsao, The Birth of the Goddess of Democracy, 145.  For a photo of students carrying a banner with Chinese as well as English letters, see Engel, (ed.), The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 100; Picture of a banner hanging on a tent that compares Tiananmen 1989 to the French Revolution, written in French at IISH: A35/750.

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protests. By setting up a space to keep protests going, and even defending it against the military, protesters turned Tiananmen Square into something that was felt to be worth sticking around for, even despite the highest levels of discomfort and the threat of martial law. The space that was set up in the middle of the city was not so much one of confrontational power, but one able to undermine authority over the square by means of an alternative mode of producing space. By the time the party sent in military troops, the occupied square was regarded as a space even worth dying for. The production of a lasting counter-space on Tiananmen Square started on the night of 13 May. That night, a small group of students put their bodies and the square into a highly vulnerable position. Worried about losing the momentum after Hu Yaobang’s death, they camped out on the square: “On Saturday, 13 May, the first night of the hunger strike, one could only see the dark camp of students at the foot of the Monument to the People’s Heroes. A large banner reading “hunger strike” (jueshi) had been strung between the flagpoles.”⁴⁷ As a means of rebellion, students turned to starving their bodies. Their first night on Tiananmen is described as a lonely one, with 300 students camping out on the dark square. Not knowing what was to come and not possibly able to defend themselves if the police engaged with them, the vulnerability of the protesters was displayed for everyone to see. Once the hunger strikers had started their first night on Tiananmen Square, people joining the protest brought equipment to further support the camp. Public transport buses were parked on the square and were used to affix tarps to provide shade from the hot sun.⁴⁸ The seized square also soon had its own tent hospital, in order to take care of the hunger strikers on the spot.⁴⁹ The spatial organization of the square was dominated in these first days by the needs of the starving students: “There was […] an open space within the masses of the milling people, through which ambulances rushed with sirens screaming and lights flashing, carrying stricken hunger strikers to and from the square in what was soon a twenty-four hour lifeline.”⁵⁰ Even as the masses grew, the lifelines and needs of the hunger strikers were carved into the occupied space. The early occupation was not a fortification of the square but shaped after the needs of the most vulnerable people in it. Only after these initial days of the hunger strike had passed, did the number of protesters on the square grow, and new ideas, as well as needs, for the pro   

Barme´, “Beijing Nights, Beijing Days,” 37. For photographs documenting the buses parked on Tiananmen, see: IISH A35 750 & 743. Photo documenting of the improvised hospital, in IISH A 35 254. Barmé, “Beijing Nights, Beijing Days,” 47.

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Fig. 4: Map of Tiananmen Square. I – Tiananmen “Gate of Heavenly Peace,” II – Tiananmen Square, III – Monument to the People’s Heroes, IV – Great Hall of the People, V – Mao’s Mausoleum, VI – Chang’an Avenue and the “Tank Man.” Credit: Daniel Palm.

duction of space emerged. Tiananmen turned into a tent city with its own logistics. Old military tents popped up, complementing the buses that were used for shelter.⁵¹ The original center of the counter-space around the hunger strikers and the hospital shifted with the installation of a headquarters on the Monument to the People’s Heroes.⁵² In addition, the tent structure on the square increasingly reflected political interests that were present on Tiananmen. For example, “students refused to allow the founders of the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Feder-

 Images of the first tents, see: IISH A 35 247, 248 & 249.  Chai, Heart for Freedom, 153 – 171; Cunningham, Tiananmen Moon, 182.

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ation to set up their tents near those of the students in Tiananmen Square.”⁵³ Such spatial differentiation on the square grew with the enduring occupation. Francis noted that “during the occupation of Tiananmen Square, students were sectioned off by school and class.”⁵⁴ This observation was also shared by student leader Chai Ling: “Little groups took over areas of the Square and posted their own guards to protect their turf.”⁵⁵ According to Barmé, this division of the square into smaller units developed even further with the arrival of students from the provinces in late May: “By now, many of the students in the area were from outside Beijing, and their camps were identified by banners with the names of their universities, each with what looked like their own bit of ‘turf’ marked out.”⁵⁶ Likewise, the workers’ union also fostered their own tent habitat in the occupation: “They posted their pronouncements and requests for donations of materiél, and set up makeshift tents that they then occupied continuously.”⁵⁷ The environment made of tents that had grown on Tiananmen thus had its very own structure of units with a center, corresponding to identities of protest and political interests. In the middle of the new tent urbanity of Tiananmen, some participants turned the square into a stage. Little plays were performed in front of the crowd. Tiananmen was also turned into a stage for a rock concert. The rock group formed around the well-known artist Hou Dejian held a concert on Tiananmen on the night of 25 May. Video material documented the installation of the equipment on the square. Preparations of the rock group for the concert took place with hundreds already watching. Unlike a regular concert or play, the stage could not be divided into a backstage and a frontstage. The rehearsal and soundcheck needed to take place in front of the audience, leaving the performance and the preparations for it as one single act. The aggressive composition of drums and electric guitar corresponded to the protesting mood of occupied Tiananmen. The initial soundcheck was later complemented by the shouting of the rock singer, who sought to fit his lyrics into the disruptive setting.⁵⁸ Though the crowd on Tiananmen Square mostly sat and only a few individuals openly celebrated this concert, the performance reflected in a dense moment the chaotic and, at times, bizarre nature of the occupied square.

     

Wilson, “‘The Polish Lesson,’” 273. Francis, The Progress of Protest. 915. Chai, Heart for Freedom, 158. Barme´, “Beijing Nights, Beijing Days,” 54. Walder, “Workers in the Tiananmen Protests,” 6. IISH: V2/343 (Part I).

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With this new tent urbanity in the middle of Beijing, hosting up to a million people, also came the challenge of maintaining the occupied environment. As Barmé described in his account, it took only five days to make the square very uncomfortable. On 18 May, “the place stank, and there were piles of filth, decaying food, plastic and glass containers and all kinds of rubbish everywhere, students huddled asleep all around the monument. Parents who had come to the square with their children had let them freely urinate around the place, and after some days of this, large parts of the plaza emanated a foul odour.”⁵⁹ In the face of this negligent pollution of the square, it was hard to keep it maintained. Though there are documents showing how people on the square sought to master the dirt, bad hygiene and litter, such issues remained throughout the occupation. Hygiene standards deteriorated further under martial law when the water supply to the square and its surroundings was cut off, as Chai Ling reports: “The city had cut off the water supply to the public bathrooms near the Square, which had been our only resource during the strike.”⁶⁰ With the rise of the tent city came the most basic problems of sustainability, and the first attacks by the state were already meant to hurt the environment built on the square. Tiananmen Square was not a disciplined camp of an army division, but a hugely uncomfortable place for all participants. People on the square were driven by an ongoing lust for news and action, and thus constantly roamed around the square in search of the next event. Barmé described the flow of the crowd during the occupation: “They chatted with the student stewards, looked out for speech-makers, and at the first hint of excitement in another part of the square would rush off, trampling over broken bottles and the accumulated filth of the past days. There were clutches of sleeping students all over the square and in the ground walkways to Tiananmen Gate.”⁶¹ The steady unrest of the space was further complemented by the discomfort people on the square had to endure, as a German journalist described: Some of the young Chinese cover themselves with nothing more than a blanket against the cold of night and the occasional heavy rains and dust storms. Others have built tents out of tarps and plastic foils. Workers have opened up the sewer tunnels due to the lack of toilets. Some of the buses, which had been intended as shelters, were being used as toilets by the students as well. The disgusting smell of sweat and rotting garbage fills the whole Tiananmen area.⁶²

 IISH: V2/343 (Part I).  Chai, Heart for Freedom, 156.  Barmé, “Beijing Nights, Beijing Days,” 43.  Hamburger Abendblatt, 25 May 1989, reprinted in Cremerius et al, eds, Studentenprotest und Repression, 311. Own translation: “Manche der jungen Chinesen schützen sich nur mit Decken

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Tiananmen Square was not a place to stay in for the sake of a beautiful environment. It was, in fact, a camp that had no comforts to offer. It was even less a place of security, especially after martial law was declared. Being on the square was to descend into a chaotic scene, but it was tolerated for the sake of continuing the protests. Only at the end of May could some improvements be made, with aid coming mostly from Hong Kong solidarity movements. New tents arrived, and those still seizing the square showed their intention to construct a better infrastructure than before.⁶³ In its final days, the protesters were even in possession of the most modern equipment, since “people from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong have donated more than a million US dollars and tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars. Some of the funds have been used to purchase tents, food, computers, high-speed printers, and advanced communication equipment.”⁶⁴ With these donations from abroad, the physical appearance of the square improved somewhat from the scenes described in early May. However, the occupation remained an ever-enduring challenge for those present on the square. Furthermore, those staying also needed to confront the crucial question of their political impact. Because even former supporters of the protests within the party – like Zhao Ziyang – needed to withdraw, there was little reason to expect a quick turn-around regarding the party stance. Hence people on the square awaited the next logical step for the protests: eviction. Barmé witnessed the mix of leisure and anxiety that was dominating Tiananmen Square during the occupation by late May: Throughout the next few days, a pattern emerged among the protesters: mornings were spent asleep, followed by lunch, an afternoon turn around the square and discussion among people in the streets. […] There would be consternated excitement at the news that this was the night the army would move on the city, and people would stream into the streets again. They were there to support the students, to protect the city, and just to be there.⁶⁵

gegen die Kälte der Nacht und die mitunter heftigen Regenfälle und Staubstürme. Andere haben aus Planen und Plastikfolien behelfsmäßig Zelte gebaut. Arbeiter öffneten mangels an Toiletten Abwasserkanäle. Einige Busse, die als Unterkunft dienen sollten, sind von den Studenten ebenfalls als Toiletten umfunktioniert worden. Der widerliche Gestank von Schweiß und verrottenden Abfällen erfüllt das ganze Tiananmen Viertel.”  Photo taken of the newly set up tents sent from Hong Kong available at: IISH A35 560  “An Emergency Report of the Beijing Party Committee,” printed in: Zhang et al, eds, Tiananmen Papers, 334.  Barme´, “Beijing Nights, Beijing Days,” 58.

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As the political battle for a change in party leadership seemed increasingly lost, protesters on the squares embraced and even expected the violent eviction that was to come. It was in this time between excitement and anticipation of the enforcement of martial law that the Goddess of Democracy was born. On 2 June, art students erected the statue on Tiananmen to express their motives for protesting. Its body and emblematic torch resembled Lady Liberty guarding the port of New York. However, a divergence with the original in New York City was carefully composed by the art students. They deliberately took the Western motif of Lady Liberty to sculpt the Goddess of Democracy but added elements that were certainly alien to the original. In particular, social realism inspired the female head and hair of the statue, as students drew on Vera Mukinha’s work, “A Worker and Collective Farm Woman.”⁶⁶ The Goddess hence was a copy that at the same time displayed the desire to not simply copy, but rather to adopt the ideal taken from the West for the purpose of the protests on Tiananmen in 1989. The figure was, in fact, a hybrid amalgam of two leading Western ideals: liberalism and socialism. Within the Goddess, they both fused together and were complemented, finally, with Asian features. It was a strong female worker holding the torch of enlightenment firm in both hands while displaying a deliberatively Asian styled face. The statue’s message of fusing a revolutionary legacy and vulnerable reaching out into something new with distinct features was also apparent by the fact that it was erected just in front of Mao Zedong’s portrait hanging at Tiananmen. By setting it up there, a certain idea of democracy was materially inscribed into the square. It was a particular democratic ideal that did not seek to replace the face of Mao, nor to cover it. Rather, the Goddess complemented the already existing iconoclasm Mao stood for; rebellion as a duty, with democracy as the motive for such a rebellion. The chosen words for the introduction of the Goddess to the people on the square, however, also pointed out the vulnerability of that rebellion: “The Goddess of Democracy is made of plaster, and of course it cannot stand here forever.”⁶⁷ The creators of the statue anticipated from the beginning the removal of the movement from the square. In this way, it was a stark reflection of Tiananmen’s vulnerability – a vulnerability that was hoped to one day overcome the same power that would soon eradicate it: “On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent.”⁶⁸ The    cy,

Tsao, “The Birth of the Goddess of Democracy,” 145. Tsao, “The Birth of the Goddess of Democracy,” 145. A statement signed by several art schools located in Beijing, reprinted in Cries for Democra347.

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Goddess of Democracy represented, in a dense way, the paradoxical mode of space production on Tiananmen during the occupation. She fused dissent and vulnerability into a spatially visible and experienced space and represented the will to rebel and to reach out to a new society. At the same time, she was also a reflection of the limited power to enforce the changes she was to signify. The always-possible scenario of being erased was anticipated and confirmed when tanks rode into the Goddess on the night of 4 June. Despite the impact of the people gathering on the square, protesters on Tiananmen Square remained vulnerable at any given point. Their vulnerability lay within their bold claim to the occupied space itself, which could be destroyed at any given time by the police and military. While gatherings on the square were, from the beginning, quite demanding, setting up a tent-city meant, in the end, to be in a vulnerable position in the middle of Beijing. Being on the square day and night, experiencing exhaustion and irritation all the time, the protesters were no enforcement of actual power – especially not so in the face of martial law.

A Space to Die for In the face of a government willing to enforce martial law with violence, parts of the enduring protest on Tiananmen Square spread fatalistic mobilization efforts shortly before eviction. Already from late May on, students started to take an oath to defend the square: “I swear to devote my life and my loyalty to protect Tiananmen Square, the capital in Beijing, and the republic. Struggle to the end against all difficulties!”⁶⁹ When troops finally marched to enforce martial law, the “square defensive guard” mobilized in the name of that oath, printed leaflets titled “Defend the Square,”⁷⁰ and further broadcast more mobilization messages, saying: “We appeal to all our classmates to return quickly to Tiananmen Square to defend our position. In the future, the Square will become our clearest banner of the triumph of good over evil.”⁷¹ On its last day, protesters turned Tiananmen into a place to die for. This fatalistic mobilization to the square went on until the night of 4 June, when shootings around it had already

 Quoted in Zhang et al, eds, Tiananmen Papers, 288.  Available at IISH: PAM 0278.  “Urgent Call to Mobilize to Protect Tiananmen Headquarters.” Reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 359.

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Fig. 5: Producing space with dense meaning on Tiananmen Square: art students and the “Goddess of Democracy.” Credit: AP Photo / Jeff Widener.

killed hundreds. Liu Xiaobo as well as Munro,⁷² bore witness to the fatalistic mindset that was propagated until the last minutes of the occupation via loudspeakers. Large public buses were parked to block the streets and were set on fire, as “during the advance on the Square, bricks rained down on officers and soldiers, and obstacles littered the ground at their feet. Along the way they were attacked by rioters with clubs and steel reinforced bars while a sea of smoke and fire rose in front of them.”⁷³ The violence surrounding the defense of the square was also documented by the burned tanks,⁷⁴ and the soldiers reported dead the next day. While it is commonplace to talk about a massacre on Tiananmen on 4 June, it is actually more accurate to frame what happened that night as a violent confrontation around the square.⁷⁵ Mainly unarmed protesters tried to confront military

 Munro, Robin. Remembering Tiananmen Square. Who Died in Beijing, and Why. The Nation, 06 November 1990. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/remembering-tiananmensquare/ (29 March 2020).  A military report on the raid of the square in, Zhang et al, eds, Tiananmen Papers, 390.  For a picture documenting the burned-out vehicles, see: IISH: A 35 72.  See for instance the telling eyewitness report by the Chilean Ambassador, sharing his story with Lilley, the American Ambassador. Documented in a cable sent to Washington on 12 July 1989. https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/89BEIJING18828_a.html. (29 March 2020).

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forces in order to stop their advance on the square but were overwhelmed by the war machinery in the hands of the soldiers. Violence by the military was overwhelming in two ways. First, people standing their ground to defend the square were, until the end, incapable of even imagining the idea that the military could open fire on them with live ammunition. Film material used by the Longbow Group documents how protesters were incapable of understanding what happened. Shouting at the military that was supposed to be the “People’s Liberation Army,” their frustration exceeded even their fear.⁷⁶ Whether people in Beijing actually believed they would be able to stop the army or whether they simply accepted their own deaths to as the price that had to be paid at this point is hard to say. What is clear is that they, in fact, never stood a chance of stopping the military. It pushed aside any blockade on the way to the square by the early morning of 4 June. After fighting on the avenues leading to the square and long deliberations among the remaining 4,000 to 5,000 protesters about whether to stay or leave, military units finally dispersed the last group standing on Tiananmen Square. Chai Ling, present in the last hours, remembers the last minutes at Tiananmen as follows: “A strong human wave surged around me, nearly pushing me backward. ‘Soldiers!’ someone shouted with a mixture of anger and fear. ‘The soldiers are here now!’ Immediately, a contingent of fully armed soldiers pushed aside the crowd and rushed to the top of the monument steps.”⁷⁷ Riot police and tanks overwhelmed those remaining unmoved, and finally, a march of about 4,000 students returned to the campuses in Haidian. With the last protesters gone, the alternative space production on the square also ended.

IV.2 The Rhythmic Claim to Nikolaikirchhof in Leipzig In contrast to the appropriation of Tiananmen Square, Leipzig’s pervasive call for change in the fall of 1989 grew slowly and had a more considered way of using Nikolaikirchhof. The appropriation of the square in Leipzig was an outcome of the small community meetings on Mondays in Nikolaikirche. Undeniably, the church played a crucial role in the formation of the early protests. However, the growth and visibility of discontent in the global moment of 1989 would not have been possible without the square. One of the reasons why a counter-space needed to be produced in the first place was that the church community started to

 Longbow Group. The Gate of Heavenly Peace, minutes 187– 190.  Chai, Heart for Freedom, 190.

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dissociate itself from those who wanted to mobilize against the regime more openly. This expulsion of activists led to the rise of a very covert claim to the square throughout 1988 and 1989. Instead of symbolically and boldly claiming the square like those on Tiananmen Square, protests on Nikolaikirchhof adopted a small-scale, repetitive strategy to voice discontent.

Mobilizing to Nikolaikirchhof When the Rosa Luxemburg Affair revitalized the prayers on Mondays in Leipzig in early 1988, people meeting in Nikolaikirche organized within “grassroots groups.” (“Basisgruppen”) From the early months of 1988, people met according to their interests in various groups that reflected the heterogeneity of motives to participate in the weekly meetings. Differences among these groups could be vast, even concerning the very basic notion of faith. For instance, some groups, like the “working group on human rights” (“Initiativgruppe Menschenrechte”) or the working group on the natural environment (“Initiativgruppe Umwelt”) understood their work to be a Christian practice. According to Frank Richter, such an affinity to Christian ideas was not least due to a careful pragmatism of the community meeting in the church. To him, the religious character of the protests was “partly a precaution – self-protection – and partly reflected a real anchoring in spiritual community and belief.”⁷⁸ Others, and in particular, the “working group departure” (“Arbeitsgruppe Ausreise”) were more interested in leaving the country and neglected religious motives.⁷⁹ The groups gathering in and around the church already diverged on the cardinal question of whether or not their criticism was anchored in Christian belief. The question of belief notwithstanding, tensions between the activists and the church grew as public mobilization strategies replaced face-to-face invitations to the meetings. Early activist Richter remembered in an interview how invitations to the prayers were initially made: “I pulled friends with me and said:

 Frank Richter, interview with ABL given in 2008. Own translation: “das war zum Teil Schutz, Selbstschutz, und es war auch zum Teil eine wirkliche Verankerung in der Gemeinde und auch im Glauben.”  Kallenbach formulates this explicitly in a letter signed by the “Arbeitsgruppe Ausreise.” available at: ABL 2.2.8. A further source describing this motive present within the society of Nikolaikirche comes from the state police. See Freunde und Feinde, 54 Innerkirchliche Mitteilung, 129 – 131.

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Why don’t you come and join us. It’s interesting, and we get things done.”⁸⁰ But when the ambition to stage protests arose, the urge to get more people involved rendered this face-to-face mobilization insufficient. Moitzer, another long-time activist in the “grassroots groups,” remembered the urge to become more active in terms of mobilization: “This was always a consideration within the groups, how to grow […] [because] we are not doing this to flatter ourselves, we do want to grow. We do want to become larger.”⁸¹ Consequently, the drive to “become larger” led to publicly visible actions in Leipzig’s city center. Whether by means of demonstrating for Western cameras in spring 1988 on the fair days,⁸² calling for a demonstration against the abuse of the natural environment,⁸³ or spraying slogans on the walls of the city center,⁸⁴ public actions taken under the new “fresh start sentiment” (“Aufbruchsstimmung”) can be understood as calls for more to join the oppositional meetings in the church. As Uwe Schwabe put the task at the time: “We said that we needed to break through the church walls. That we needed to step out of the church to reach more people.”⁸⁵ Outreach by some of the activists led to a problematic relationship with church authorities and the more conservative groups who participated in the Monday prayers. Those who wanted to focus on the prayers started to feel used by activists, who left an impression of turning the meetings into something “else,” which some “could not identify with anymore.”⁸⁶ Despite these growing tensions, activists like Frank Richter could still use the church’s network to produce and distribute media that sought to mobilize more people to join protest activities in Leipzig. This implied editing and distrib Richter, interview. Own translation: “Also es ist eher so, dass ich dann spä ter Freunde mitgezogen habe und gesagt hab: Komm doch mal mit. Das ist interessant, da machen wir was.”  Moitzer, interview. Own translation: “Es war auch immer eine gewisse Ü berlegung in den Gruppen, wie kö nnen wir dennjetzt mal mehr werden, wir machen das hier nicht, um uns selbst zu beweihrä uchern, sondern wir wollen ja wachsen. Wir wollen ja mehr werden.”  Activities were documented by the state police, printed in Freunde und Feinde, 42 Stasi Information, 105 – 109. But also by activists: RHG: PS 075; Initiativgruppe Leben, Demonstration in der Lese-Metropole der DDR, ABL 2.2.10; Also, FAZ reported of the protests on the 15 March 1988: “300 Ausreisewillige demonstrieren in Leipzig.”  Samizdat: Umweltblä tter, August 1988, 21– 24. Available at ABL: Only on request.  For a photograph documenting the graffiti quoting Gorbachev “We need democracy like the air to breathe” (“Wir brauchen Demokratie wie die Luft zum Atmen”) sprayed in spring 1988 well visible in the city center, see Hollitzer, Tobias and Tobias Sachenbacher (eds.) Die Friedliche Revolution in Leipzig. Bilder Dokumente und Objekte. Band I. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2012. Image on page 22.  Uwe Schwabe in an interview given to ABL. Available online. https://www.jugendopposition. de/zeitzeugen/145521/uwe-schwabe (29 March 2020).  Gisela Kallenbach in an interview to ABL 2008, only on request.

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uting samizdat media such as the Mücke, but also the use of church events to reach out to a larger public: “This was the public we could reach through church events by setting up information tables on the official church days, on conferences, youth conferences, the gatherings of “Concrete Peace” (“Frieden Konkret”) we used as a forum.”⁸⁷ The samizdat and church networks were the channels used to motivate more people to join protests in Leipzig in the days when public calls were still too dangerous to share in the GDR. The double-sided role of the church for mobilization meant that while activists and church authorities alienated one another, the network around the church nevertheless served as the base for the early mobilizations. With the removal of Wonneberger from organizing the Monday Prayers, solidarity actions emerged in Leipzig’s city center. This set the pretext for the subsequent appropriation of the square in front of the church. Without the church, the protest on Nikolaikirchhof might never have materialized. But without the usage of the square, oppositional activities might have ended after Wonneberger had to give up his position as the leading organizer of the Monday prayers in the fall of 1988. From the small first gatherings on the squares a mass demonstration developed that would unsettle the socialist regime – an outcome, which could not be derived from the given meaning of Nikolaikirchhof at all.

The (Un)importance of Nikolaikirchhof in 1989 The city center of Leipzig lacked the symbolic importance of Tiananmen, and neither was there an association of protest with the city square Nikolaikirchhof itself. Both observations relate to one another. No place in Leipzig would have allowed a connection to a political history such as the one on Tiananmen, as the SED directed most of the architectural representation of its power to Berlin.⁸⁸ Instead of offering a place with a national symbolic meaning, the urban environment in Leipzig provided a secret place to gather in front of one of the traditional pillars of society: the Christian church. In terms of spatial symbolism, protesters in Leipzig’s city center had little to turn to. Maintenance and renovation of the old buildings in the medieval city center were too expensive, and, if required, would anyway need to make space for cheaper buildings made with precast concrete slabs (“Plattenbauten”) that resembled the homogenizing idealism of socialist space production. This was the

 Kallenbach, interview.  See for example the Stalin Allee or the tower on Alexanderplatz.

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case, for instance, with the over 700-year-old Pauliner Church close to the Nikolaikirche. By command of the SED, the church was filled with dynamite in 1968 and blasted away to make open space for the installation of a new university building. Christian references were removed from the renamed Karl Marx Square and were replaced with a large relief inspired by ideals of socialist realism. It had the telling title: “Karl Marx – the revolutionary and world-changing essence of his teaching.”⁸⁹ What can be taken away from this episode is the strategic disregard of symbolism inscribed into Leipzig’s center under socialist rule. Marx’s writings, which legitimated the rule of the SED, were deemed larger than historical buildings, larger even than the religious monument that had stood for 700 years in the center of Leipzig. As Leipzig’s city center was dense, the old needed to make space for the new, and the cruelty with which Pauliner church was removed sheds light on the importance the SED ascribed to the 800-year-old Nikolaikirche close by: namely, not much. The square used for protests in 1989 was symbolically not much more than a run-down part of the city center of Leipzig, to which arguably little attention was directed by the socialist regime. Consequently, protesters did not refer to the square as a highly loaded space as protesters on Tiananmen Square did during the occupation. The very few open references to the square were formulated only after the fact. Writing in 1994 on the usage of the Nikolaikirchhof from 1988 on, the activists Christian Dietrich and Uwe Schwabe said that this square became a political forum (speakers’ corner, banners, leaflets, candles, demonstrations), and from the small talk after the prayers […] the meetings on the Nikolaikirchhof developed. The strategic constellation was perfect since a shut down by the police state was hardly possible. Access had to be granted due to the right to ‘freedom of religious practices’, but also a later intervention could still be interpreted as ‘arbitrary action against the spiritual community’.⁹⁰

By turning the square into a speakers’ corner, the society of Nikolaikirche “conquered public space,” especially after the contentious reopening of the Monday

 Own translation: “Karl Marx – das revolutionäre und weltverändernde Wesen seiner Lehre.”  Freunde und Feinde, 370. Own translation: “So wurde dieser Platz zum politischen Forum (Speakers Corner, Transparente, Flugblätter, Kerzen, Demonstrationen), und aus den Nachgesprächen, die im Frühjahr/Sommer 1988 in der Kirche stattfanden, wurden Meetings auf dem Nikolaikirchhof. Die strategische Konstellation war perfekt, denn eine Behinderung durch den DDR-Sicherheitsapparat war kaum möglich. Der Zugang mußte im Interesse “freier Religionsausübung” gewährt werden, aber auch ein späteres Eingreifen konnte als ‚Willkürakt gegen Gottesdienstbesucher‘ gedeutet werden.”

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Fig. 6: Map of Leipzig’s city center. I – Nikolaikirchhof, II – Karl Marx Square, III – Leipzig’s Ringstreet, IV – Central train station, V – Central market square. Credit: Daniel Palm.

prayers on 29 September 1988.⁹¹ These notions do reflect a rudimentary awareness of the importance of the Nikolaikirchhof but were only formulated in retrospect. That so little has been consciously formulated by protests in Leipzig at the time is most likely due to the fact that protests grew out of the little square once they gained momentum in the fall of 1989. Thus, rather than the Nikolaikirchhof, Karl Marx Square, or Ring Street, protesters referred to the city center of Leipzig as the overarching “place” of interest. For example, in the fall, activists printed leaflets that stated: “On the eve of the 7th of October, the 40th anniversary of our republic, our country is in a state of unrest. Thousands of people are leaving the country, 20,000 demonstrate on Monday in Leipzig’s city center

 Hollitzer et al, Die Friedliche Revolution in Leipzig, 27.

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to push for their demands of a broad dialogue and new beginning in our society.”⁹² In the call for protests, the city center of Leipzig becomes the place where people pushed for reforms on the national scale, referencing, of course, Nikolaikirchhof, but not mentioning it directly. The roaming and searching nature of the crowd in the fall of 1989 made it difficult to fix it to a particular place other than the city of Leipzig itself.

Seizing the Square in Leipzig Though the occupation of the square in Leipzig had a more covert nature and Nikolaikirchhof held practically no symbolic value, it was of crucial importance for protesters to form and to have a space through which to display dissent. The importance of the square in front of the church becomes noticeable when examining interactions between protesters and the media. In the early days of mobilization, this interaction was only possible because Leipzig had a long history of hosting fairs. Fairs, which were also of importance for the SED. Because the selfimage of the socialist regime could be presented during the fair in Leipzig, for a couple of days every six months, the city could be accessed by journalists from the West. Consequently, it was especially on these days of the fair that protests became emboldened. After the protests on every opening day of the fair since 1988, it was known by West German journalists where oppositional views in Leipzig could be found: Nikolaikirchhof. The oppositional community in Leipzig designed the production of a counter-space within the police state of East Germany to be most impactfully. The “grassroots groups” in Leipzig knew that fair days allowed them to turn the square in front of the church into a special zone for interaction with foreign media. Contemporary witness Christoph Moitzer remembered the typical days of fair openings, saying that “there were certainly many more people willing to protest on the fair days, trying to march on a demonstration route through Leipzig. This always had its own dynamic.”⁹³ The reason for the boldness of op-

 Own translation of the leaflet available at: ABL 1.26.111. “Am Vorabend des 7. Oktober, dem 40. Jahrestag unserer Republik, befindet sich unser Land in einem Zustand der Unruhe. Tausende Menschen verlassen das Land, 20.000 demonstrieren am Montag in der Leipziger Innenstadt, um ihre Forderungen nach einem breiten Dialog und einem Neuanfang in unserer Gesellschaft voranzutreiben.”  Moitzer, interview. Own translation: “[E]s gab auf jeden Fall zu den Messetagen immer viel mehr Leute, die gewillt waren in einem Demonstrationszug auf irgendeine Tour durch Leipzig zu gehen. Da gab es auch immer eine Eigendynamik.”

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positional groups in Leipzig was the belief that police would not respond violently in front of Western media: “There, television cameras were at hand all the time, so they could not shut it down violently. They did not want to expose themselves to the embarrassment back then.”⁹⁴ Protesters on Nikolaikirchhof took advantage of the presence of foreign journalists for their own activities on fair days, turning visitors from the West into their accomplices. The desire to reach out to Western media led to the careful use of Nikolaikirchhof as a stage to display dissent. But precisely due to the exceptional visit of Western journalists, the activities filmed on fair days captured a rather more stylized image of the opposition in East Germany. What was shown to the West was a careful composition of an image of protests in Leipzig. Because state police could not do more than watch from the sidelines, this image production for Western media was closely monitored and documented. In the report on activities in Leipzig on 4 September 1989, for instance, a security agent described the performance for Western cameras as follows: Activities by GDR citizens were significantly inspired and supported by the presence and behavior of Western correspondents – in total there were 40 correspondents on site, of which 32 came from West Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany and three from Hungarian media. The arrival of the teams in trucks took place right on the Nikolaikirchhof – orders by the DVP forces were deliberatively ignored [sic] – and the recording technology was unloaded demonstratively so as to make their presence felt. After the end of the prayers, an active [sic] recording of film and audio material took place, which focused on the protests, certain particularly active individuals, and the security personnel.⁹⁵

While camera teams from abroad “inspired” and “provoked” the protests by unloading their equipment “demonstratively” and filming “actively,” the protest community in Leipzig also had not come unprepared. Knowing the cameras

 Moitzer, interview. Own translation: “Da war ja auch das Fernsehen immer mit dabei, also die konnten das nicht gewaltsam auflösen. Die Blöße wollten sie sich nicht geben damals.”  Printed in Freunde und Feinde, 198 Stasi Informationen, 294. Own translation: “Aktivitäten der DDR-Bürger wurden wesentlich durch die Anwesenheit und das Verhalten westlicher Korrespondenten – insgesamt befanden sich am Ereignisort 40 westliche Korrespondenten, darunter 32 Korrespondenten aus der BRD und Westberlin und drei Mitarbeiter ungarischer Medien – inspiriert und unterstützt. So erfolgte die Anfahrt der Teams von ARD und ZDF vor dem Montagsgebet direkt bis auf den Nikolaikirchhof – Weisungen von Kräften der DVP wurden bewußt mißachtet –, und Aufnahmetechnik wurde gezielt demonstrativ entladen, um auf die Anwesenheit der BRD- Medienvertreter aufmerksam zu machen. Nach Veranstaltungsende kam es zu einer aktiven Aufnahmetätigkeit – Film/Tontechnik -, die demonstrativ und gezielt auf die in Bewegung geratene Personenansammlung, sehr aktiv agierende Einzelpersonen und auf Aktivitäten der Sicherheitskräfte ausgerichtet war.”

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would be present to film them, people brought banners with them to the church – something they otherwise did not dare to do: “About the posters. One I painted myself. […] I smuggled it into the church under my parka. In the church toilet, I handed it over to Gesine Oltmanns and stayed in the background.”⁹⁶ Rarely did protesters gathering on Nikolaikirchhof carry banners. Only with the anticipated visit of journalists from the West did activists in Leipzig prepare the requisites needed to perform dissent on the square. Knowing the impact of Western television news within the GDR, it was crucial for activists to have their public appearances reported on West German television. As Frank Richter remarked, much effort was put into “reaching the foreign media, most importantly in the Federal Republic [of Germany], to get information out there, always in the hope that it would be broadcast in the news, and, in this way, with the exception of Dresden, it would also reach the GDR population.”⁹⁷ To achieve this effect also outside of the fair days, activists like Frank Richter set up a working group to communicate with the West: We tried to get in touch with the news agencies of federal Germany and abroad, and had even established concrete contacts. […] What I did was to bring the pictures and videos we had taken at […] the mass demonstrations in Leipzig to East Berlin, or directly to the ARD correspondent Hauptmann or to Ingo Schmelz from the Associated Press. That’s where we brought our films, which they took to West Berlin in order to develop, and, if they were of any use, to have them published.⁹⁸

Not even knowing what exactly would be done with the pictures taken during protests, Frank Richter still risked a lot by smuggling the films into Berlin to

 Moitzer, interview. Own translation: “Mit den Plakaten. Eins hab ich auch selber gemalt damals in der Mariannenstraße. Das habe ich auch in die Kirche geschmuggelt, unter dem Parka versteckt. Das habe ich auf dem Kirchenklo der Gesine Oltmanns übergeben und ich hab mich dann im Hintergrund gehalten.”  Richter, interview. Own translation: “Medien im Ausland, vor allem in der Bundesrepublik zu erreichen, dorthin Informationen zu geben, immer in der Hoffnung, es kommt dann in den Nachrichten und erreicht damit, außer dem Raum Dresden, dann doch die DDR Bevölkerung.”  Richter, interview. Own translation: “Wir haben versucht, an die bundesdeutsche und ausländische Medien ran zu kommen, hatten da auch Kontakte geknüpft, haben Informationen hingegeben, Bilder von Demonstrationen, Texte. […] Konkret was ich gemacht habe, nach den Demonstrationen, nach dem zweiten Pleißegedenkmarsch zum Beispiel, nach den Massendemonstrationen in Leipzig, haben wir die Filme, die wir geknipst hatten, die Fotos, nach Ost-Berlin gebracht und dort entweder direkt beim ARD- Hörfunk, dem Korrespondenten Hauptmann bzw. Ingo Schmelz, der war bei Associated Press beschäftigt. Da haben wir die Filme hingebracht, die haben sie dann auch Westberlin mitgenommen, dort entwickelt und die Bilder, so sie denn brauchbar waren, veröffentlicht.”

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share them with foreign media so that the protest in Leipzig would not go unnoticed. This sophisticated news production in Nikolaikirchhof, however, did not lead to a spatial take on the protests. In general, coverage of the events in Leipzig remained sparse until the fall of 1989. As one of few exceptions, the fair days in Leipzig and the staged protests on those days made their way into the Western media, but the image presented was far from celebratory and did not anticipate what was to come. For example, in a short article in the Stuttgarter Zeitung, the protests in spring 1989 were described as acts of subversion that were nevertheless limited in their power to change anything: “Not that this means a revolution is imminent. But the fact, at least, that a GDR citizen could voice the truth openly in public […] makes a crack appear in the world of illusions in which Honecker and his fellows live.”⁹⁹ Similar minor mentions of protests in Leipzig could also be found in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), as well as on the daily eight o’clock news on the public television network. But until late fall 1989, none of these articles or reports predicted the later breakdown of the regime. State news also gave little thought to the role of the square for the protests. First and foremost, the official takes on protests in Leipzig by the state media aimed to draw an image of social misbehavior by a few. In particular, the Leipziger Volkszeitung (LVZ) worked here on behalf of the state, writing in early fall 1989: “On Monday evening an unauthorized, unlawful “ganging up” [“Zusammenrottung”] disrupted public order and traffic for a limited time. Owing to the de-escalating strategies employed by the security forces, this newly-formed ‘ganging up’ with clear anti-socialist tendencies could be contained.”¹⁰⁰ Following this and earlier reports on “disorder” in the city center of Leipzig, the newspaper continued to print exclusively critical views of the events. In one of the last printed pieces discussing the protests, a “reader’s letter to LVZ” supported the outcry against the subversive meetings on Mondays: “What was taking place there was outrageous. This has an anti-socialist character. Whoever was ganging

 FAZ, “Festnahmen bei Demonstration in Leipzig.” 14 March 1989. Own translation: “Nicht, daß in der DDR jetzt ein Umsturz bevorstünde. Aber daß wenigstens einmal ein Bürger in der DDR in aller Offenheit die Wahrheit aussprechen konnte […] das macht die Scheinwelt, in der sich Honecker und seine Getreuen eingerichtet haben, brüchiger.”  LVZ, Ordnung Gestört, 16 September 1989. Own translation: “Am Montagabend kam es im Leipziger Zentrum zu nicht genehmigten, ungesetzlichen Zusammenrottungen, die die öffentliche Ordnung störten und den Verkehr zeitweise beeinträchtigten. Durch das besonnene und zurückhaltende Verhalten der Sicherheitskräfte blieb diese neuerliche Zusammenrottung mit eindeutig antisozialistischer Tendenz begrenzt.” reprinted in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 8.

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up [zusammenrottete] there wanted to subvert socialism of the colors in the GDR.”¹⁰¹ The collaboration of news writers and the state is apparent in these two pieces of news, as they both use the term “ganging up,” (“zusammenrotten”) which was, in the administrative language of the socialist state of the GDR, a punishable crime. However, the idea that the square might play a crucial role in the protests did not occur, not even in a defamatory way. Only in the fall of 1989 itself did reports from Leipzig became more frequent. Coverage started with the opening day of the fair on 4 September, when protesters once again took advantage of the presence of foreign journalists on Nikolaikirchhof. The film material of that event made its way into a whole segment on opposition and flight from the East in the Western news program Tagesschau. Images of the Stasi in civilian clothing were shown as they took banners down and arrested several activists. However, the celebration of democratic ideals was still timid at the time. The motives of the protesters remained unclear, with the news anchor saying that half of the people protesting wanted to leave the country, while the other half might have been interested in reforms within the GDR.¹⁰² Though unsure about the nature of the protests, journalists in the West were aware of the growing discontent in Leipzig from September 1989 on, and hence reported about activities in Leipzig more frequently.¹⁰³ Consequently, news then covered protests on 9 October widely, and by then headlines started to frame the protests as a movement that challenged socialist rule.¹⁰⁴ The role of the Nikolaikirchhof, however, remained unarticulated by activists and news at the time.

 Own translation: “Was sich da nach dem sogenannten Friedensgebet abspielte, war empö rend. Das hatte antisozialistischen Charakter. Wer sich dort zusammenrottete, wollte dem Sozialismus in den Farben der DDR ans Leder.” LVZ, Leserbrief Lothar Vogel, 29 September 1989. Reprinted in: Jetzt oder Nie, 41.  Tagesschau 4 September 1989.  FAZ, “Demonstrationen an der Leipziger Nikolaikirche” (demonstrations at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig) 5 September 1989; SZ, “Festnahmen bei Demonstrationen in Leipzig,” (Detentions at the demonstrations in Leipzig) 5 September 1989; SZ, “Zahlreiche Festnahmen nach der Andacht in Leipzig” (Numerous detentions at the prayer in Leipzig) 12 September 1989; FAZ, “Keine Festnahmen in Leipzig, (No detentions in Leipzig) 6 September 1989; FAZ, Festnahmen bei Demonstrationen in Leipzig” (detentions at demonstrations in Leipzig), 26 September 1989; SZ, “Großer Protestmarsch durch Leipzig” (Large protest march through Leipzig) 27 September 1989; SZ, “Bisher größte Demonstration in Leipzig” (So far largest demonstration through Leipzig), 3 October 1989.  SZ on 10 October 1989 even with the title story: In Leipzig demonstrieren 50 000 Menschen fü r Reformen und friedlichen Dialog (50,0000 people demonstrate for reforms and peaceful dialogue in Leipzig).

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In contrast to activists and newspapers, church authorities and police in Leipzig were aware of the importance of Nikolaikirchhof. State police increasingly referred to it as a scene for criminal activities. For instance, participants were now sentenced for disturbing the peace by participating “in a gathering on Nikolaikirchhof that compromised public order and security, and flouted society’s interests.”¹⁰⁵ In the minutes of a meeting between state police and church representatives, the officer talking to Magirius and Führer pressured the two church officials to “do everything possible to avoid creating beneficial conditions for demonstration activities in front of the church.”¹⁰⁶ Führer correspondingly seemed to be aware of the growing importance of the gatherings in front of the church in terms of policing: “When the attendees of the prayers leave the church they usually linger in the square [parking lot] in front of the church [Nikolaikirchhof] [sic] to talk and exchange information. Since May, security forces have been closing down the exits in response and giving orders to leave the square and arrest several persons.”¹⁰⁷ Asked to support the police in their effort to shut down the protests, Magirius and Führer responded that police might even be part of the problem, as “from May 7, 1989 on, rising tensions have been observable as a result of the visible police presence. On those few Mondays when police did not shut down the church, the square emptied within 30 minutes.”¹⁰⁸ Close observers of the situation thus were quite aware that there was a place of importance in front of the church used for the formation of pro-

 Printed in Freunde und Feinde, 118 Beschwerde, 193. Own translation: “Sie haben am 24. Oktober 1988 eine Ordnungswidrigkeit begangen, indem Sie in Leipzig, Nikolaikirchhof, an einer Zusammenkunft teilnahmen, durch die die öffentliche Ordnung und Sicherheit beeinträ chtigt wurde und gesellschaftliche Interessen mißachtet wurden.”  Printed in Freunde und Feinde, Doc 192, 289, Own translation: “Gen. Dr. Reitmann die beiden kirchlichen Vertreter ernsthaft auf, alles zu tun, daß keine Begü nstigung fü r Demonstrativhandlungen vor der Nikolaikirche erfolgen.”  Printed in Freunde und Feinde, 215 Innerkirchliche Information, 316. Own translation: “Wenn die Gottesdienstbesucher die Kirche nach Gottesdienstschluß verlassen, bleiben sie gewöhnlich auf dem (Park‐)Platz vor der Kirche (“Nikolaikirchhof”) zum Gespräch und Informationsaustausch stehen. Seit Mai sperren daraufhin an einigen Montagen die Sicherheitskräfte alle Ausgänge durch Polizeiketten ab, fordern auf, den Platz zu verlassen und greifen sich verschiedene Personen (die “zugeführt” werden und im Allgemeinen bis zum nächsten Abend aus dem Polizeigewahrsam entlassen wurden).”  Printed in Freunde und Feinde, 195 Staatliche Gesprä chsnotiz, 290. Own translation: “Wir haben allerdings mit steigender Beunruhigung sehen mü ssen, daß durch die sichtbare Polizeiprä senz vom 7. Mai 1989 an, steigende Spannungen zu verzeichnen sind. An den wenigen Montagen, an denen die Polizei die Kirche nicht abriegelte, war nach 30 Minuten der Kirchplatz leer, ohne daß es zu irgendwelchen Irritationen gekommen wä re. Wir haben die maßgeblichen Stellen auch des Rates des Bezirkes schon mehrfach darauf hingewiesen.”

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tests. Wondering how the conflict zone in front of his church could be handled, Christian Führer sought to expand the spiritual experience of the prayers to the square in the decisive days of fall 1989 by preaching to the crowd: “Our church remains to be a house of hope in the middle of this city. Help us, so that hope may also spread to the square in front of this church.” In terms of representation, Nikolaikirchhof was not promoted as a space of particular importance during the global moment of 1989. Activists came to note the importance of the square only after protests ended. The authorities interested in policing the square had already pointed out that the square functioned in a critical way for protests. In spite of this lack of representations at the time, the square can be rendered as a vital part of protests through further analysis.

A Space to Face the Police State In response to the appropriation of Nikolaikirchhof as a space to hold protests, police tactics were increasingly designed to maintain control over the square. From May 1989 on, police kettles surrounded the square and sought to subdue the forming protests. They went so far as to park vehicles on the site in order to block it before the protest could form.¹⁰⁹ Police were very much aware that the square in front of the church was the critical place that they needed to bring under control. The Nikolaikirchhof had slowly and clandestinely, without affirmation through words and without much symbolism, become a space in the face of the police state during the global moment of 1989. How far the production a counter-space had developed by fall 1989 can be seen in rare documentation showing the awareness of the importance of space. On the Saturday of 7 October, protesters gathered on Nikolaikirchhof even though no prayers were taking place in the church that day. Men and women stood in the light autumn rain around the square. A picture taken there shows one man from the group standing in the loose crowd of people and looking around as though he knew he was not supposed to be there, yet waiting for something to happen. Meanwhile, police surrounded the square and ordered people to leave. The picture documents the subtle fight over presence on the square and the im Official note on police tactics against opposition in Leipzig printed in: Freunde und Feinde, 169 Notizen aus einer Parteiberatung, 263, footnote 533. Own translation: “[A]ls Maßnahmen u. a. beschlossen, die Kamera gegenüber der Nikolaikirche wieder abzubauen, den Nikolaikirchhof montags immer mit PKWs vollzustellen und ausreisewillige Teilnehmer sofort ausreisen zu lassen.”

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Fig. 7: Roaming, watching, protesting on Nikolaikichhof, 7 September 1989. Credit: Archiv Bürgerbewegung Leipzig / Martin Jehninchen.

plicit question of power. Video material taken from the same scene further documents the subsequent development of the conflict. Policemen walked over to the crowd, took a man by his elbows, and escorted him from the square. Little by little, individuals were picked out and led away, with no acts of defense taken by the people gathered.¹¹⁰ The protesters on the square were aware of their precarious position, and yet the authority of police was undermined by people simply standing on a square that was by then well-known as the side for the opposition. Even more vulnerable than the protests on Tiananmen Square, people on Nikolaikirchhof sought to produce a space for their dissent to be seen. Sociologist Pollack stressed the importance of this ambiguity of protest formation on Nikolaikirchhof: “One could always pretend as if one was only casually standing on the square of protests or in its near, and slip back into the role of the pedestrian, who simply had become curious.”¹¹¹ In this way, the square was turned into a counter-space in the face of the overarching police state. With the always-observing police state at hand, protesters shaped their activities according to their limited abilities. There was little effort to call for a last-

 See: “Operative Kamera.”  Pollack, Die Friedlichkeit der Herbstakteure, 119. The same observation can also found in Süß, Der Friedliche Ausgang, 177.

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ing presence on Nikolaikirchhof, with protesters instead relying on the repetitive quality of their gatherings. People in Leipzig seized the square repeatedly over the course of two years, with actions only growing slowly bolder over time. In this way, they learned about the limits of their own public activities and could push them a bit further day by day. An official statement by the minister for state security documents the activities during the first protests in the city center of Leipzig on 14 March 1988: After the end of the event [the Monday prayer] – ca. 18:10 – about 100 to 120 people gathered in front of the Nikolaikirche. From there, they walked without carrying any banners or other items or symbols in the direction of Thomaskirche, where they took each other’s hands on the square in front of it and formed a circle. Afterwards, they split up into smaller groups and headed back to the Nikolaikirche, where the circle briefly formed anew in the market [square].¹¹²

Not daring to carry banners, not shouting nor forming an ordered march, the “provocative demonstrative actions” taken by “negative political forces” were limited to loosely roaming around the city center.¹¹³ Protesters formed circles by holding each other’s hands on the squares. Not to be too provocative, they let go shortly after. But during a brief while, a space within the circle was formed, excluding the outside observer and creating an unreachable space inside. Also, by holding each other’s hands, people on the square indicated their belonging to a group. It was a silent and an unprovocative form of protest that nevertheless allowed activists in Leipzig to show their presence publicly. These manifestations of dissent here were timid and loose. Until the large demonstrations in the fall of 1989, most forms of seizing the square in Leipzig were likewise sporadic and rather fluid in their appearance. Before the demonstrations took to walking along the ring in 1989, activists in Leipzig rarely dared to go beyond the above-described forms of appropriating the square. Seldom was a banner carried, and no one even raised the idea of staying on the square overnight. Nevertheless, at certain points a marital side toying with the idea of seizing the square could be noted. In fall of 1988, for instance,

 Minister for state security on the Monday prayers in Freunde und Feinde, 42 Stasi Informationen, 105. Own translation: “Nach Abschluß der Veranstaltung – ca. 18.10 Uhr – versammelten sich ca. 100 bis 120 Personen vor der Nikolaikirche. Von dort aus begaben sie sich ohne Mitführung von Transparenten, Gegenständen oder Symbolen in Richtung Thomaskirche, wo sie sich auf dem Vorplatz der Kirche an den Händen faßten und einen Kreis bildeten. Anschließend ging diese Gruppierung, aufgelöst in kleineren Gruppen, zur Nikolaikirche zurück, wobei auf dem Markt nochmals kurzzeitig eine Kreisbildung erfolgte.”  Freunde und Feinde, 42 Stasi Informationen, 105.

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the shape of the occupied square in Leipzig allowed the mimicking of the classical agora. After the break with church authorities, activists of the “grassroots groups” sought to use the Nikolaikirchhof as a speaker’s corner, and for this, the fact that an “eternal”¹¹⁴ construction site could be found on the square was helpful. The contemporary witness Moitzer remembered: There was a construction site nearby and there you could find concrete blocks or paving slabs made of granite, so we stood on top of them. In our hands, we held the posters. And I believe it was Jochen Läßig, as he has a loud, well-developed voice due to his singing, who read out our declaration. Or, to put it differently, he finished what we could not finish in the church. And as quick as that, we had our first event outside of the church, on the Nikolaikirchhof. ¹¹⁵

It was hardly a daring occupation of the square, but marked the first appropriation of Nikolaikirchhof by spatial means. Activities on Nikolaikirchhof were rarely persistent, and, in a manner of speaking, the activists were always on the run. So vulnerable was the position of protesters within the city center until late 1989 that they did not dare to form ordered marches through the city. Still, in the early fall of 1989, it was never fully clear whether one was really protesting or claiming to be simply an observer. Katharina Führer, an eyewitness, described the typical procedure after the prayers on Mondays: “Smaller groups stand on the church square. There was Talking, smoking, looking for friends. Today the curious population of Leipzig has gathered outside the dense police lines. Dogs are barking, and a voice is coming through the megaphone of one of the green cars: Citizens! Leave the Nikolaikirchhof.”¹¹⁶ Katharina also documented the behavior of bodies on the Nikolaikirchhof, and her notes illustrate how the small number of bodies

 Protest participant Saskia Paul had speculated the construction site was originally set up and never finished to hinder protest formations on the square.  Moitzer, interview. Own translation: “Da war eine Baustelle in der Nähe und da gab es diese Betonblöcke oder Gehwegplatten aus Granit auf einem Haufen und da haben wir uns daraufgestellt, hatten unsere Plakate in der Hand und ich glaube der Jochen Läßig, der hat ja auch ein lautes ausgeprägtes Organ durch seine Singerei, der hat eben noch eine Erklärung vorgelesen bzw. das noch zu Ende gebracht, was wir in der Kirche nicht mehr machen konnten. Und schwuppdiwupp hatten wir die erste richtige Veranstaltung außerhalb der Kirche auf dem Nikolaikirchhof.”  Katharina Führer in a memo written on 11 September 1989. Available at ABL: 1.26.13. Own translation: “Kleine Grüppchen stehen auf dem Kirchenplatz. Es wird geschwatzt, geraucht, man sucht Bekannte. Die schaulustige Leipziger Bevölkerung hat sich heute außerhalb der dichten reihen Bereitschaftspolizei versammelt. Hunde bellen, eine Stimme aus dem Megaphon eines der grünen Wagen ist zu vernehmen: ‘Bürger’ Verlassen sie den Nikolaikirchhof!”

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and the rapid dispersion of groups into individuals made it easy for participants of the gatherings to shift their identity from protester to observer. This strategy made policing of the square tricky. In response to the growing number of people on the square that made them difficult to be detained, police in Leipzig decided to surround it. The line set up by police was to limit the protest to the square, and not allow its spread around the city center. A testimony written by an officer of the secret police reports a typical scene of how this plan of containment was carried out: After the ending of the peace prayers, most of the participants left the church and city center. About 300 persons stayed in loose groups, discussing in front of the church as others were leaving the area. At 18:25 a movement of people in loose groups of about 200, started from the Nikolaikirche towards Grimmaische Straße. Already by 18:28 this marching route and other side routes towards the city center were blocked by forces of the VP [police units]. After the call by the VP to disperse at about 18:40, [the group] began the slow turn-around back to the Nikolaikirche and then dispersed in different directions except for the city center. By 19:05 any attempt of a march was definitively abandoned.¹¹⁷

When the crowd on the square slowly gathered to form a march, police already anticipated their next move. Police officers stood ready in a line to block the protesters when they tried to leave the square as a group. The logic of this plan seems clear: if police could not stop the square from being filled with loose groups after the prayers, it could at least try to make sure protesters could not leave the Nikolaikirchhof. Thus, the vulnerable position of the protesters arriving at and gathering on the square was policed by containment. At this stage, the protesters did little to break through police lines that were set up. Protesters on the Nikolaikirchhof simply accepted the lockdown of the city center and dispersed only some minutes after realizing the police would not allow them to pass. As the numbers of those willing to protest grew, the small square did not suffice anymore. Hence, protesters burst through the containment lines of the po-

 Printed in Freunde und Feinde, 158 Stasi-Informationen, 247. Own translation: “Nach Beendigung des Friedensgebetes verließ die Mehrheit der Teilnehmer die Kirche und das Stadtzentrum. Ca. 300 Personen hielten sich anschließend vor der Kirche in losen Gruppen diskutierend auf, wobei weitere Personen das Terrain verließen. 18.25 Uhr erfolgte der Beginn einer Personenbewegung in losen Gruppen von ca. 200 Personen ü ber die Nikolaikirche [handschriftlich: “ca. 100 m”] in Richtung Grimmaische Straße. Bereits 18.28 Uhr war diese Abgangsmö glichkeit in Richtung Innenstadt und auch andere Abgangsstraßen in dieser Richtung durch Krä fte der VP abgesperrt. Nach Aufforderung durch die VP zur Auflö sung erfolgte ca. 18.40 Uhr der zö gernde Rü cklauf in Richtung Nikolaikirche und dann der Weggang in mehreren Richtungen außer der Innenstadt. 19.05 Uhr war der Versuch der Personenbewegung endgü ltig beendet.”

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lice. When the number of people eager to join protests grew rampantly in fall 1989, Nikolaikirchhof was substituted with the much larger Karl Marx Square close by. Gisela Kallenbach remembered the adoption of this improvisation to shift people from the policed zone in front of the church on 7 October: I got to Nikolaikirchhof and saw that the whole square was encircled by police with, for the first time for me, helmets and shields and clubs. Usually, it was only reserve units who accompanied us – they were never dressed up like that. We walked around the city center and then they came with water cannons. There were so many people gathered on the Grimmaische Straße and then they drove into the street with the water cannon trucks and we fled in the direction of the Opera.¹¹⁸

Moving first towards the Nikolaikirchhof, protesters did not dare to break through police lines and instead moved to the next closest square. Karl Marx Square in front of the Opera was too large to be encircled by the police units present. Thus, the initially successful strategy of containment was subverted by the protests moving to a larger square. Still, the protesters remained careful not to get into a confrontation with the police, and even when they started to outnumber police units, they did not try to break through their lines. Once enough people had also gathered together on Karl Marx Square, protests started to move in a circle around the city center. In the beginning, the walks were rather short, leading the crowd not further than 500 meters to the central train station, where police troops had closed down the street. Not daring to challenge these police lines, the crowd roamed around the city rather than forming a firm protest march through Leipzig.¹¹⁹ Even when police lines were broken the week after, there was no organization in the crowd, no banners or leadership.¹²⁰ Gatherings in the city center of Leipzig remained covert though high in number by 9 October 1989. Escaping the containment lines on Nikolaikirchhof, protesters trickled by police to form a circling flow of bodies. Thus, it

 Kallenbach, interview. Own translation: “Ich kam zum Nikolaikirchhof hin, da war der ganze Platz von Polizisten umstellt und zum ersten Mal fü r mich mit Helm und Schild und mit Schlagstö cken. Sonst waren die Bereitschaftspolizisten, die uns immer begleitet haben, die waren nie so angezogen. Aber so, das war das erste Mal. Wir sind dann in der Gegend rumgelaufen in der Innenstadt und kamen sie ja mit dem Wasserwerfer. Es waren ja unheimlich viele Leute in der Grimmaischen Straße versammelt und dann sind sie mit dem Wasserwerfer in die Grimmaische Straße reingefahren und wir sind dann geflü chtet in Richtung Oper.”  See the description of Protests on 9 October by a participant in Kuhn, Tag der Entscheidung, 128.  Discussing the mysterious formation of protest marches in the fall of 1989, see Timmer, Karsten. Vom Aufbruch zum Umbruch. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000. From page 161 onwards.

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was not so much that containment lines were broken – protesters outnumbered the police in the thousands. The protests finally overcame the vulnerability of the gatherings on Nikolaikirchhof and became the mass movement of the so-called Ring-demonstrations.

IV.3 The Dominion of Representational Space in 1989 Representations of the square have shown many differences, and the spatial practice observable during the protests in China and Germany were also distinct. The way the squares were seized was very different: on Tiananmen Square, there was an ongoing occupation that held on firmly to the symbolically loaded square and did not let go until it was raided. In Leipzig, in turn, people did not lay claim to the square in any lasting manner. Neither did the square hold as much symbolic meaning as Tiananmen Square. Even the way protesters confronted their respective antagonists in the party leadership was very different. Tiananmen Square was turned into a place worth dying for in the minds of the radicalized occupants of the square. This fatalism was absent in Leipzig, where protesters were instead determined to push the limits of what they could do publicly just a bit further every day. But the two protests seizing the square in 1989 in East Germany and China shared one crucial feature, which has to do with the dynamics in the representational space produced on the respective squares. Whether protests were pulsing with a regular rhythm from Monday to Monday as in Leipzig or seizing the square for an impactful occupation like at Tiananmen: the city squares turned into an attraction that captured the attention of the many. As protests progressed, fewer and fewer standing on the squares had formed part of the earlier mobilizing networks. There was thus a particular form of agency gained on the square. Because Nikolaikirchhof and Tiananmen Square were both open spaces in the city, anyone with the desire to publicly speak about their problems and hopes for change could go there and do so. With such movement on the square, it was, on the one hand, hardly possible to formulate a coherent political agenda. But on the other hand – and what is more crucial for understanding the disruptive nature of the squares in the global moment of 1989 – it was the space rather than a party or idea that brought people together. Along the course of its existence, this space on the square decoupled from the interests of those who initially mobilized. With the growth of protests, the space gained its own, de-controlled dynamic. Only on the surface does the space of de-control appear to hold the power to change the course of time. The capacity to define changes remains unreachable

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to those protesting on the square. Thus, the power in the counter-space that was produced on the square remained “unreal.” Like an image in the mirror, protests on the square became an imaginary artifact with a real impact. The image of power produced on the square became for better or worse, dominant over any aims to represent the square politically. In consequence, the seized square did not hold any actual negotiating power in the global moment of 1989. Not being able to control the spirits they had called up, the activists mobilizing early-on to the squares witnessed how Tiananmen Square and Nikolaikirchhof were used by more and more people they could no longer reach. In the end, the population and mindsets on the square had changed and did not respond to calls to withdraw. Due to its open and chaotic nature, the seized square tended to turn against those who sought to use it for protestations in the first place.

Unreal Agency on Tiananmen Square For Tiananmen Square, the break between the initial activists and those who joined later seizing the square was observable when protests entered the hunger strike phase. In the early days of the protests, there was still a general acceptance of the party’s position as a ruling institution and authority. This can be seen, for instance, in a highly symbolic act that took place on 22 April. A fusion of protest and obedience was displayed when students wanted to hand over their demands. Kneeling in front of the Great Hall of the People for hours, their gesture remained without a response. The numerous students assembled on the square started to cry and were disappointed about the ignorance displayed by the party leadership. This moment captured on video shows the still rather authority-oriented imaginary dimension of the protesters seizing the square in the early days. This somewhat obedient attitude, however, was gone by the end of May 1989. Under the leadership of Chai Ling, a circle of radical student activists decided to carry on their protests after the momentum slowed in mid-May. They pushed for the continuation of protests in a moment when most students were already willing to return to classes. Dissatisfied with their fellow students, Chai and her followers even sabotaged lectures and called for a radicalization of action.¹²¹ With the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev at hand, they furthermore saw an opportunity to gain a maximum amount of attention. Despite the downturn in protest mobilization, on 13 May, a few dozen students camped out on Tiananmen and declared their hunger strike:

 Chai, A Heart for Freedom, 129.

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In these bright and beautiful days of May, we are beginning a hunger strike. We are young, but we are ready to give up our lives. We cherish life: we do not want to die […]. We ask of every Chinese citizen – every worker, peasant, soldier, civilian, celebrity, every government official, policeman, and our accusers – that you place your hand on your heart and ask yourself: What wrong have we done? What “turmoil” have we created? What causes have led us to protest, to demonstrate, to boycott classes, to fast, to hide ourselves? Why did this happen?¹²²

This initially small group had a significant effect on the formation of dissent on Tiananmen Square in the weeks to come. On the one hand, the radicalized group succeeded in revitalizing the protests after they had been winding down at the beginning of May. The then newly founded ASUCUB further engendered this new development on Tiananmen. Interrupting the lectures, they called for support for the hunger strikers: “ASUCUB asks students in every college and university to take immediate action, to support the student hunger strikers, protect their safety, and ensure the victory to the hunger strike.” Their call for support was further supplemented by leaflets to “the people of the whole country.”¹²³ In addition to the students’ call for action there was growing support from a new workers’ union in Beijing, who wrote: “This morning, 300,000 university students declared a general hunger strike. Most of the students are facing the threat of a strong and brutal suppression. Only the capital’s working-class can save this great democratic movement.”¹²⁴ Thus, two new organizations that were only founded in the aftermath of Hu Yaobang’s death and during the consequent protests on Tiananmen Square joined forces to get as many people as possible together to the square in mid-May. To this forceful new Tiananmen alliance came the national media. Eager to get rid of their reputation as a propaganda tool, they declared solidarity with the student hunger strikers on the square.¹²⁵ The call for action took a day to have an impact, and then rapidly gained momentum. This renewed momentum meant, on the other hand, that a new group of people replaced the previous decision-makers on the square. It was not a specific group of people that decided on the ending or continuation of protests, but rather whoever decided to come to the square. The day after the hunger strikers had started their protests, the crowd on Tiananmen Square grew and gained its own dynamic. Images of fainting students and rushing ambulances were broad Hunger Striker’s Statement,” reprinted in: Cries for Democracy, 199.  Printed in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 77, 206.  Taken from “Letter to the Capital Workers,” reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 78, 207. Note that 300,000 is an overestimation.  Printed in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 83, 214– 215.

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cast and inspired more people to come. For some, the square by then even gained a mystical power working on behalf of mobilization efforts. Barmé writes: That night [17 May] was the first time I experienced a ‘magnetic pull’ of the square. Being in Beijing it was impossible to stay away from it. […] To establish one’s own physical presence at the square, an area filled with uneasy milling crowds, became a driving emotion. […] It was a tantalizing and disturbing phenomenon that, I believe, existed in and around the square right up to the morning of June 4.¹²⁶

Tiananmen Square had turned into a space that appeared to have its own force, drawing people to come and see and join the protests. This “magnetic” pull slowly decoupled protests from the Beijing students’ control. Especially after the declaration of martial law, people on the square developed new modes of mobilization that were independent of the campuses in Beijing. Crucially, the state visit by Gorbachev had brought many foreign journalists to the capital, and protesters on Tiananmen Square deliberately communicated through them. This expanded the reach of actions on the square to an audience sitting far away from Beijing. In consequence, it drew more people from the provinces to the capital. By the end of May, complaints by Beijing university students that the newly-arrived students from the provinces had completely taken over Tiananmen Square began to circulate.¹²⁷ In addition to the media spectacle mobilizing students from far away came the efforts by the workers and residents of Beijing, who now also took over agitating for further protests.¹²⁸ A whole motorcycle network was established to carry information from the propaganda department set up on Tiananmen Square to the streets of Beijing.¹²⁹ Students capturing the “Cultural Fever” on Beijing campuses might have started the occupation at Tiananmen, but by the end of May they were not in charge of it anymore: “For those three weeks people would gather there at all hours of the day or night to express their solidarity, or just watching and waiting, not wishing to miss anything but unsure of just what it was that they expected to happen.

 Barmé, “Beijing Nights, Beijing Days,” 38.  Documented numbers of Students from all over the country try to reach Beijing via train on 23th of May, see Zhang et al, eds, Tiananmen Papers, 280; Complains that the square has been taken over by mostly students from the provinces, page 463.  Employees of the Beifang Precision Machinery Factory: “Letter of urgent appeal.” Available at IISH PAM 00183.  Documenting the “flying tigers” motorcycle group: an official party report on the square “On the true nature of the Uprising.” Reprinted in Zhang et al, eds, Tiananmen Papers, 529. A handout on the square informed the present people about the “Propaganda Department at Tiananmen square,” see: IISH PAM 00290.

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Even late at night, people would be attracted to the vast open space.”¹³⁰ Mobilization to Tiananmen Square was by then independent from the student organizations that had been crucial for the initiation of the protests.

Unreal Agency in Leipzig’s City Center A similar decoupling of the square from the initially mobilizing networks could be found in Leipzig at the end of 1989. The “grassroots groups” in Leipzig, who had carefully nurtured the protests and tried to organize dissent under the roof of the Nikolaikirche, lost control over them by fall 1989. Smaller and with less radical spirit, the principle at work in the representational space of the square was the same as in Beijing. As discussed, crowds formed on Nikolaikirchhof repeatedly during the first half of 1989. In March 1989, protesters used the opening day of the fair as an occasion to address foreign journalists through the square. In addition, the square was used for spontaneous protests, like on 8 May, when people in Leipzig found the local elections to be fraudulent.¹³¹ Continuing protests in Leipzig taking off from Nikolaikirchhof led to a visible presence of police units on the square every Monday from the summer on. It was clear by then that the square in front of Nikolaikirche held a particular attraction to oppositional minds.¹³² However, what was meant as a warning from the state further fed a growing curiosity. Those in Leipzig who had not been part of the church’s network now learned more about the ongoing dissent: “In the newspaper, it said “ganging up” [“Zusammenrottungen”], but I wanted to get my own impression of what was happening there in and in front of the Nikolaikirche.“¹³³ The way mobilization worked by then was thus no longer dependent on the church networks, but, among others, on the unintended effects of negative press. “To me, the LVZ help-

 Barmé, “Beijing Nights, Beijing Days,” 38.  Western media reporting about protests after elections: FAZ, “Demonstranten in Leipzig festgenommen,” 8 May 1989.  LVZ repeated basically articles in Summer and on 26 September, and 3 October, writing that “On Monday evening unlawful gatherings [Zusammenrottungen] again took place in Leipzig’s city center.” (Own translation). Printed in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 39.  Contemporary witness Wolfgang Hentzschel in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 32. Own Translation: “In der Zeitung stand >Zusammenrottungen< – aber ich wollte mir eine eigene Meinung bilden über das, was dort in und vor der Nikolaikirche passierte.”

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ed trigger the revolution. But they did not know it. […] The LVZ hustled for so long that even the most unhurried Saxon said: How dare they, now I go, too.”¹³⁴ Mediated mobilization was met by talk on the streets, which accelerated protests. People knew where and what was happening, as Kallenbach shared in her interview: The more it was talked about, the more people came, already by September or so; the more these forces were challenged, the more people wanted to come to make up their own minds, and [they] stood a bit further away by the Riquethaus, the Schumachergässchen, or elsewhere, to see what was happening there, what was really going on, what kinds of people these were, who dared to speak out.¹³⁵

More people were intrigued by Nikolaikirchhof and were curious about what was happening. Rumor and news about the square grew, and with it, the number of people attracted to its protests. “My sister had told me about the demonstration. So, I wanted to come along and watch – from the sidelines. There were really a lot of onlookers. The actual core of it was in front of the Nikolaikirche.”¹³⁶ Talk and media reports, whether supportive or not, now worked on behalf of the protests on Nikolaikirchhof. Increasingly, by means of seizing the square, people were mobilized without being addressed directly. Contemporary witness and participant in the protests on Nikolaikirchhof, Bernd-Lutz Lange, describes the situation on the square at the time: “It was interesting how the church garnered more and more sympathy each week. How there were ever more people standing there, waiting for 18:00, when the doors opened, and those at whom the sympathy was directed came out.”¹³⁷  Lange, Bernd-Lutz in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 279. Own translation: “Ich sehe es so, daß die LVZ die Revolution mit ausgelö st hat. Das wußte sie aber nicht. […] Die LVZ hat so lange gehetzt, bis der letzte gemü tliche Sachse gesagt hat. ‚So nich! Awer nu grade.’”  Gisela Kallenbach in an interview 2008 given to ABL. Only on request. Own translation: “Aber je mehr da auch drü ber gesprochen wurde, je mehr Leute kamen auch schon vorher im September oder so, je stä rker gegen diese Krä fte dort angegangen wurde, umso mehr Leute wollten sich ein eigenes Bild machen und stellten sich noch was weiter weg zum Riquethaus hin, Schumachergä sschen oder irgendwo, mal sehen, was dort passiert, was ist denn da wirklich los, was sind das fü r Typen, die da aufmucken.”  Contemporary witness Thomas, printed in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 33. Own translation: “Meine Schwester hatte mir von der Demonstration erzä hlt. Ich wollte dann einfach mal mit hingehen und hab’ mir das angeschaut – von der Seite. Da standen unheimlich viele Schaulustige. Der eigentliche Kern was vor der Nikolaikirche.”  Bernd-Lutz Lange in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 278. Own translation: “Interessant war, wie das Sympathiefeld um die Kirche Woche für Woche gewachsen ist. Wie dort immer mehr Leute standen und warteten, bis die Türen um 18:00 Uhr aufgingen und jene herauskamen, denen die Sympathie galt.”

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People coming to the square were increasingly independent of the “grassroots groups” and did not join the prayers in the church, but waited in front of it. They were not part of the church community, but visitors to a public square that was known for its displays of discontentment. As had happened earlier on the fair’s opening days, the Nikolaikirchhof again turned into a stage for protesters eager to reach the foreign journalists on 4 September. As Christoph Moitzer pointed out in an interview: “This was always our concern. To get out there, on Mondays of the fair, when we knew that all those cameras would be there too.”¹³⁸ On 4 September, images of protests on the square in Leipzig were broadcast practically live on Tagesschau and, as intended by the “grassroots groups,” made the Monday prayers in Leipzig once again visible to most parts of the East German population: “This had a huge mobilization effect because it was screened in the evening on the Tagesschau [Daily News]. A lot of people saw that. That’s how the Nikolaikirche became known. That’s when it became clear: on Mondays at 17:00 something is going on; I should check it out. So, it got bigger and bigger.”¹³⁹ Finally, neither police nor the activists in Leipzig were capable of controlling the mobilizations in September 1989. De-control became especially apparent after the police tried to shut down the protests by violently raiding the square on Monday, 11 September. Remembering the violence that had already occurred in the weeks prior, activists in the “grassroot groups” agreed to – and in fact, did – leave the square on 18 September.¹⁴⁰ Christian Führer stated that “[t]he ‘exit’ from the church proceeded surprisingly well from our point of view. Everyone was moving along, and the visitors of the mass were able to leave without any problems passing through the police lines. Kreß, Wugk, and I approached the few remaining groups in the square and asked them to leave.”¹⁴¹ The square

 Moitzer, interview. Own translation: “das war ja immer ein Anliegen auch nach Außen zu gehen, also an diesen Messemontagen, wenn wir wussten, dass da die ganzen Kamerateams auch da sind.”  Schwabe, interview. Own translation: “Das hat einen Riesen-Mobilisierungs-Effekt gehabt, denn das kam abends in der Tagesschau. Das haben viele Leute gesehen. Dadurch wurde die Nikolaikirche bekannt. Dadurch wurde bekannt: Montags um 17:00 Uhr ist dort irgendetwas los. Da muss ich mal hingucken. Das sind dann immer mehr geworden.”  See the reports on the events on 18 September by Christian Führer, ABL 1.24.62. Also, for a view from the Stasi, see Freunde und Feinde, 209 Stasi Informationen, 306 – 307, here in particular reference 629.  Führer in a letter to the state police, printed in Freunde und Feinde, 208 Ereignisbericht, 305. Own translation: “Der ‚Auszug‘ aus der Kirche verlief erstaunlich in unserem Sinn, alles war in Bewegung, die Andachtsbesucher konnten ungehindert durch die Polizeikette nach Hause. Als noch kleine Grüppchen auf dem Platz waren, gingen OKR Kreß, Pfr. Wugk und ich auf den Platz und baten die Menschen, nach Hause zu gehen.”

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was emptied, and Führer felt relieved. But the protests were already acting according to their own dynamics, as the “absolutely incomprehensible” happened: “The police let all those from outside [the police lines], the onlookers, into the Nikolaikirchhof. The square filled up, there was shouting – for the first time! Songs were sung.”¹⁴² When the early agitators of the protests did not dare to push any further, others simply took their place. Just like the students on Tiananmen Square, activists in Leipzig needed to realize that the square did not respond to their plans anymore. Former key organizers failed in trying to stop the protests from growing further. Once mobilization had reached its tipping point, the news in the media, word of mouth, and radicalization took over mobilization and decoupled protests from the former organizing networks. Due to the acute danger that protests could be shut down violently, long-time activists called for a truce: “We […] call to abstain from any demonstrations and the related confrontations on 7 October.”¹⁴³ Yet, even though there was no prayer on this day – the fortieth anniversary of the GDR – a turnout on the square was unavoidable. No one had called for action from the side of activists, no prayer was happening, nor any church door was open. But too much momentum existed within the discontent of the GDR. The square was also too well known for its role as a center for oppositional meetings. When the church community wanted to stop it, protests on the Nikolaikirchhof continued. As different as protest formation on Tiananmen and Nikolaikirchhof was in 1989, it shared one crucial element. Both protests gained their own local momentum, which was bound up with the square. Though initial agents of mobilization stopped pushing for further action, the squares were already working as spaces of dissent. They did not belong to a specific group of people, but to a general idea that dissent should be enacted and displayed publicly. By replacing its population and giving voice to dissent in the crisis of 1989, the squares themselves gained a spatial form of agency.

 208 Ereignisbericht, 305: Own translation: “[D]as völlig Unverständliche: die Polizei ließ mit einem Mal alle ‘von außen’, also die Zuschauer, von allen Seiten auf den Nikolaikirchhof. Der Platz füllte sich, es kam zu Geschrei – erstmals! – Lieder wurden angestimmt.” Discussing the same events, the historian Karsten Timmer also pointed out the crucial turn of events that day, in Aufbruch zum Umbruch.  Call available at ABL 1.26.111.

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Witnesses to Unreal Agency Activists also recognized this detachment of the square from their interests. In China, Wu’er Kaixi’s statement on the night before Gorbachev’s arrival is a witness to it. In front of live broadcasting cameras, he stated that it was impossible to clear the square through an official agreement between the students and the party leaders: “You leaders just don’t get it. I’ll tell you one more time. The problem is not convincing those of us in this room. The problem is how to get the students to leave the square. […] If but one hunger striker chooses to stay in the square, we cannot guarantee that the thousands of others will leave.”¹⁴⁴ After the meeting, the tumultuous discussion on whether or not to leave the square showcased precisely the impossibility of cutting protests down.¹⁴⁵ Besides Wu’er Kaixi’s call to comply, an alliance of 12 poets and writers also walked to the square. They urged people to leave at least “temporarily”: “We beg that you make full use of the most valuable spirit of the student movement, the spirit of reason, and temporarily leave the Square.”¹⁴⁶ Their intervention was met with little sympathy. On the eve of 17 May, Tiananmen Square had already turned into a space of unreal power. Any hopes of intellectuals and students gaining leverage with the party for their demands were undermined. The crowds continued holding on to the square and were unwilling to leave. Likewise, in Leipzig, Christoph Moitzer realized how the unreal power of the square took over the former mobilizing networks. An organizer of activities and long-time participant of the prayers on Mondays, Moitzer believed that it was crucial to grow in numbers. He realized later, however, that this also meant giving up the hope of controlling the unfolding events, especially by September 1989: “From then on it was clear to us that we would now be taken seriously. It was a validation for us. One now had to reckon with us. This was a fact. As we were few, [people on the square] it was not necessary, but now we really could reach out to people. This could no longer be stopped. But on the other hand, it was also not controllable. This was not clear to us at that point. This was not clear to anybody.” As mobilization to Nikolaikirchhof in 1989 increasingly became self-enforcing, key activists in Leipzig realized that they were not in control of it anymore. “At some point, it gained its own dynamic, which came

 Longbow Group, Transcript of the dialogue. http://www.tsquare.tv/film/transcript.html. (29 March 2020).  Film material on that evening documenting the discussion can be seen in Gordon et al, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, minutes 80 to 86.  Call by the 12 poets read out on Tiananmen Square, reprinted in: Cries for Democracy, 207– 208.

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from the crowd. There was a critical mass reached and exceeded, where it was clear that one does not have any influence on it anymore. What one hoped for – that this seed of a particular idea would bloom – could not give fruit because by then, there were too many [people protesting].”¹⁴⁷ The growth of the number of people on the square in Leipzig developed according to the dynamics of representational space production. Contentious ideas on the city squares were shared among a growing number of people that did not have much to do with the initial group that began the mobilization. When Wu’er Kaixi in Beijing and the “grassroots groups” in Leipzig, each in their own ways, turned to the masses gathering on the squares and pleaded with them to leave, they each failed. In consequence, not even momentary cooperation with the government was feasible as protests on the squares gained their very own momentum. Students and “grassroots groups” had carried out the initial mobilization efforts and succeeded in reaching out and getting more people to come together during the global moment of 1989, but the agency gained on the city square was not theirs to command. Protests on Tiananmen Square and Nikolaikirchhof were thus disruptive events and were, in fact, capable of challenging the foundations of rule and pushing the two socialist states into crisis, but they both were not able to fully speak on behalf of the squares. The power gained seizing the square was unreal. Power on the square is unreal because the events do not allow those at the helm of protests to define what the outcome of the protests should be. What those mobilizing to the square can do, is foster and spread ideas about power that could be gained on the square. By unsettling the regime with their intervening counter-space on the square, the real effects of protests can be observed and enforced. But the quality of these effects remains out of reach. Like the image of the self in the mirror that may have real implications for the self, it remains unreachable. If images in the mirror represent something real in an unreal and unreachable space, the power on the square is a representation of power that is unreal and, in fact, unrepresentable.

 Moitzer, interview. Own translation: “Fü r uns war wirklich der Punkt klar, wir werden jetzt ernst genommen. Fü r uns war das eine Bestä tigung. Mit uns musste man jetzt rechnen. Das war Fakt. Mit den paar nicht unbedingt, aber wir haben wirklich die Leute ansprechen kö nnen. Das war nicht mehr aufzuhalten. Es war aber auf der anderen Seite nicht mehr zu steuern. Das war uns aber damals noch nicht klar. Das war niemanden klar.”

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Representing the Unrepresentable The fact that the production of counter-spaces on the squares led to uncontrollable dynamics meant, consequently, that there was no real representation and authority to turn to. The lack of real representation, however, did not hinder people from wanting to speak on behalf of the squares. Student leaders in Beijing were fighting one another, just as different figures in Leipzig scrambled to be representatives. But the initiators of protests in particular needed to realize at some point that they could no longer represent the square. Though struggles for the representation of the square were in full flow all the time, no real representation could be achieved. The chaotic yet still student-focused early phase of the protests illustrates the lack of real representation in the Tiananmen demonstrations very well. Not one, but several student associations were founded just after the death of Hu Yaobang. Zhao has shown in detail how these new student organizations were subject to factionalism and an ongoing struggle over who was to be officially in charge.¹⁴⁸ In an almost absurd anecdote, the filmmakers of The Gate of Heavenly Peace captured student leader Feng Chongde telling the story of a student who took over the headquarters on the square by picking up newly arrived students from the provinces at Beijing’s central train station. Walking alone to the station, he convinced the new students from the provinces to attack the headquarters at the square. He apparently succeeded in taking it over – until someone else did so again later.¹⁴⁹ Such power plays meant student representatives came and went at a fast pace on the square. Claims made by intellectuals joined the wild scramble for leadership. They entered the protest at its climax on 17 to 18 with their very own agenda. Barmé reported on a meeting of intellectuals on the square that laid claim to being in charge by the evening of 17 May: It was a confused meeting of intellectuals, although their leaders maintained an air of great self-importance. One of them told me quite earnestly that it was obvious that the party leadership was impotent in the face of the mass protests, and they were discussing how to set up a provisional government. Since the workers were now coming out in mass support of the students, it was just a matter of time before the government collapsed out of sheer incompetence, he argued. Thus, he said, it was time that the intellectuals take their rightful place at the head of the movement.¹⁵⁰

 For a discussion of the event in more detail: Zhao, The Power of Tiananmen, 155 – 164.  Gordon et al, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, minutes 117 to 120.  Barmé, “Beijing Days, Beijing Nights,” 53.

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This anecdote further exemplifies the uncoordinated turmoil that actually took place on the square throughout the occupation. Generally, the heterogeneous masses on Tiananmen Square supported student leaders in their aim to serve as representatives of the protests. Though workers,¹⁵¹ intellectuals,¹⁵² journalists, and even peasants joining from the provinces formed part of the occupation,¹⁵³ it was the students from Beijing that served as the short-lived representatives of Tiananmen until the end. This is understandable considering the critical role students from Beijing universities had played in China during the twentieth century, a legacy which was commonly cited during the protests on Tiananmen.¹⁵⁴ Students were quick to associate their struggle with the question of the future of the nation, and fittingly adapted practices that indicated their privileged role in the protests. For example, as Barmé observed: “Student leaders wrote their names boldly on their shirts and were carried around the square and to other venues by bodyguards.” He furthermore reports about the desire of some of the students to encourage at least some conformity: “The organizers demonstrated with them, telling them that if they wanted to participate, they had to line up, chant the right slogans, and sing the right songs.”¹⁵⁵ Though there was widespread confusion about leadership on Tiananmen Square, there was also an active intent by student leaders to gain some sort of control over the protests. Wu’er Kaixi and Chai Ling provide two insightful examples of student leaders trying to shape the chaos on Tiananmen according to their respective wills. Both were central figures during the occupation but stood for distinct ideas. Wu’er Kaixi had been involved from early on, mobilizing and organizing the protests on the square from the beginning. Chai Ling, in turn, grew into her role as a student leader on the square itself. She took the lead during the hunger strike. In her person the radicalization of the square towards the end of the occupation was represented. She replaced Wu’er Kaixi as the central student leader over the crucial question of whether or not to cooperate with the party leadership

 “An exchange of views of two workers,” poster at Beijing Normal College, reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 180 – 182.  Twelve poets, in Cries for Democracy, 207– 208.  “Let’s listen to the voice of a Peasant.” Poster composed by a graduate student, reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 182– 185.  “A discussion of the Historical Tasks and Objectives of the April 1989’s Democracy Movement.” Speech by Ren Wanding in April, reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 121– 124; “New May Fourth Manifesto.” Speech by Wu’er Kaixi held on Tiananmen on 4 May 1989, reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 135– 137.  Barmé, “Beijing Nights, Beijing Days,” 36.

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on the eve of Gorbachev’s state visit and further fostered the belief that the occupation of the square needed to continue. Asked why he had taken a leading position in the protests, Wu’er Kaixi answered: “I hoped we could get the same effects of enlightenment as the May Fourth Movement.”¹⁵⁶ His affirmation of the traditional critical role of students in China was again evident on 4 May, when he spoke to the crowd on the square and shouted out: “Today, in front of the symbol of the Chinese nation, Tiananmen, we can proudly proclaim to all the people in our nation that we are worthy of the pioneers of seventy years ago […] fellow students, fellow countrymen, here at richly symbolic Tiananmen, let us once again search together and struggle together for democracy, for science, for freedom, for human rights, and for rule by law.”¹⁵⁷ Eager to make his demands and references comply with the historical heritage of the May Fourth Movement in Beijing, Wu’er Kaixi emulated the widely shared role model for student protests in China and at the same time also implemented these ideals in the spatiality of the square. His ability to express shared ideals and emotions on the square led Wu’er Kaixi to the position of “Commander of the Square.” Embodying this role, he was even invited to a meeting with Li Peng and other high-ranking party officials. There, he disrupted monologues by party leaders and introduced his ideas on the protests, which were broadcast live on television. His provocations still seemed to suit the momentum of the Tiananmen protests that challenged the hardliners in the party: “Wu’er Kaixi’s performance was remarkable. Li’s bad temper was reflected in his tone of voice, and his beating of the antimacassars of his chair with his pudgy hands,”¹⁵⁸ observed Barmé. Charismatic and acting on behalf of the square in front of the highest-ranking party representatives,¹⁵⁹ Wu’er Kaixi remained powerless in the face of the crowd gathered on Tiananmen. The same night he confronted Li Peng, Wu’er Kaixi also sealed the decline of his role in the protests. Though he was adamantly against cooperating with party leaders on television, he nevertheless went to the square after the live broadcast to argue on behalf of a compromise. Wu’er Kaixi wanted to move the protests from the square so the official state visit of Gorbachev could take place. However, his call to move just a bit (“yi xia’r”) was not welcomed by the masses

 Wu’er Kaixi in an interview to ming pao Hong Kong, 17 June 1989 based on an interview he gave on 3 June 1989, reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 176, 349 – 353.  Reprinted in: Cries for Democracy, 135– 137.  Barmé, “Beijing Nights, Beijing Days,” 53.  Wu’er Kaixi’s charismatic nature in front of the masses is also documented in a Rolling Stone portrait. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/children-of-tiananmen-19891214. (29 March 2020).

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on the square.¹⁶⁰ Riding on wave of favor of protesters for weeks, Wu’er Kaixi’s role as a leader declined with his moderate and cooperative position that evening. On 22 May, he attempted once more to try to convince students to clear the square in the face of martial law, but failed.¹⁶¹ Under the pressure of martial law, his de facto powerlessness became visible in the face of the anarchic square. After his unsuccessful intervention in the radicalizing Tiananmen protests in mid-May, Wu’er Kaixi was replaced by Chai Ling. Her first public appearance in 1989 was on the night of the announcement of the hunger strike on 13 May. Her explicit motive was to revitalize the protests, because to her, “arguments over whether we should return to class or continue the class boycott consumed a lot of the student movement’s time and resources, and the situation was getting more and more difficult. We felt then that we had to undertake a hunger strike. At that time, [some] people from the Beijing Student’s Federation desperately tried to dissuade us, but we stood our ground.”¹⁶² In the announcement of the hunger strike, Chai Ling sought to use Tiananmen as a stage to share her ideas about the protests: “I read aloud our declaration of a hunger strike. At that time, I hoped it could be broadcast live so that people all over the country could know what was in the student’s minds.”¹⁶³ Chai Ling stepped onto the square as a political figure when protests were on the brink of dissolving. Together with the other hunger strikers, she revitalized protests on Tiananmen Square, and, by “standing [her] ground,” she made it the center of attention again. The radicalization of the protests towards the end of May was reflected in the persona of Chai Ling. After replacing Wu’er Kaixi as the leading figure, she had no intention of giving up the seizure of the square that had given her the role as a leading figure: “Many students did not understand that staying on the square is the only way left for us. Our retreat will make the government happy. I am the chief commander. I will never make any compromises.”¹⁶⁴ The dramatic pathos in her acts and speeches apparently fit better with the protests that were now facing martial law. Still, her role as the leading hunger striker on Tiananmen was not without its controversies. Barmé wrote about a scene he observed one day after Chai Ling had taken over as leader of the square: “On the morning of Thursday, 18 May, I went to the square with a friend to see the hunger strikers

 Film material on that evening documenting the discussion in Gordon et al, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, minutes 80 to 86.  Cremerius et al, Studentenprotest und Repression, 266.  Chai Ling in an interview reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 197.  Chai Ling in an interview reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 197.  Interview with Chai Ling in “late May,” Singtao Evening Post, Hong Kong, reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, Doc 172, 344.

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[…]. They had begun their water strike on Tuesday after Chai Ling and others had made a theatrical but half-hearted attempt at self-immolation. According to one of the hunger strikers, they were offended by Chai’s hysteria and decided to go on their hunger strike instead.”¹⁶⁵ As the new “Commander of the Square” Chai further fortified her position by attacking her competitors: “There are a few people who intended to use the movement to rebuild their own images, like Liu Xiaobo.”¹⁶⁶ Chai Ling was here attacking Liu for his much-anticipated “Letter to Comrades in the world.”¹⁶⁷ She even got quite specific in the face of her biggest competitor at the time: “I have been also irritated with Wu’er Kaixi all along; he has at times used his own influence and position in ways that have caused great damage.”¹⁶⁸ As a controversial figure, Chai Ling apparently understood quite well that offense might be her best defense in those intensifying days of the occupation. Towards the end of the occupation, Chai Ling even began to formulate the ultimate scenario for the occupation: death. “Only when rivers of blood flow in the Square, will the eyes of our country truly be opened, and only then will they unite.”¹⁶⁹ As she spoke about this most dreadful scenario against the backdrop of martial law and in the heat of the moment, she instantly realized the dilemma of her formally being in charge of the protests, while at the same time stating the deadly needs of the seizure of the square she agitated for. Hence, she asked rhetorically: “How could I say that to my fellow students?”¹⁷⁰ Caught between her supposed responsibility and a radicalized vision, Chai Ling cried into the cameras and said she needed to escape, just to return to the square and not leave it, until her vision indeed became real on the night of 4 June. In Leipzig, protesters did not have such radicalized figures in their midst. Due to the lack of representation and access to the party leadership, no negotiations took place between protesters and SED anyway. The first antagonists the protesters in Leipzig came to struggle with was not the state and its police, but the church representatives. After Pastor Wonneberger had established the grassroots organization of the Monday prayers in 1988, the attempt by Führer and superintendent Magirius to regain control of the growing protests under their roof triggered confrontations and, in an unanticipated consequence,

 Barmé, “Beijing Nights, Beijing Days,” 50.  Chai, Singtao Evening Post. In China’s Search for Democracy.  Liu Xiaobo’s letter to “All concerned worldwide.” Reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, 220.  Liu Xiaobo’s letter to “All concerned worldwide.” Reprinted in China’s Search for Democracy, 220  Chai, Singtao Evening Post. In China’s Search for Democracy.  Chai, Singtao Evening Post. In China’s Search for Democracy.

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space for proliferation. As long as the activities on Nikolaikirchhof were coordinated from within the “grassroots groups,” accountability and representation of protests were fairly clear. But with the suspension of Wonneberger, the relationship between protesters outside and representation inside the church became increasingly ambiguous. In this early period of protests, activists fought an uneven fight with a system that seemed too large to overthrow. To some, the David vs. Goliath battle was even noted as a source of amusement: “For more than a year we just had plenty of fun in this city, and when I think of why we were ‘caught,’ fined, and why I was sent to prison, then in the end it was nothing but fun. This vibe leaped over to the streets and the people here.”¹⁷¹ Demonstrations and activities did not have the character of a state crisis until the fall of 1989. Before then, the “grassroots groups” were struggling to draw at least some attention to their activities and tried to keep legal persecution through state police as low as possible. Those who were involved at the time acted as clandestinely as they could to organize well-timed public appearances throughout 1988 and 1989. Within this early phase, one figure that stood out was Frank Richter. He was part of the grassroots organizations in the churches around Leipzig and was eager to spread the critique beyond the relatively safe space of the religious community. As part of the early community that was not yet interested in picking a fight with the socialist regime, he stood at the center of the transformation of the Monday prayers in 1988 to 1989. By the late 1980s, he and his comrades agreed that “they needed not only to reach the public within the church, but the public of the GDR [as a whole].”¹⁷² Consequently, he was deeply involved in the early mobilization efforts. With his critical drive and grassroots democratic approach, Richer represented the growing boldness of the Monday prayers in Leipzig. While leaders of the church condemned the actions on behalf of oppositional mobilization, Richter reports how “we realized we needed a network, particularly for the solidarity campaigns [from 1988], for the Monday prayers, for the intercessions [“Fürbittandachten”] and the vigils, and whatever else we had. Because we didn’t only have

 Katrin Hattenhauer, interview with Neues Forum Leipzig in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 296. Own translation: “Ü ber ein Jahr lang haben wir in dieser Stadt einfach ’ne Menge Spaß gemacht, und wenn ich ü berlege, weshalb wir «zugefü hrt» wurden, Geldstrafen bekamen, weshalb ich in den Knast gekommen bin – dann war das am Ende nichts weiter als Spaß. Diese Freude hat sich auf die Straße und auf die Leute hier ü bertragen lassen.”  Richter, interview. Own translation: “[D]ass wir immer gesagt haben, wir mü ssen nicht nur die kirchliche Ö ffentlichkeit erreichen, sondern wir mü ssen ü berhaupt diese Ö ffentlichkeit in der DDR erreichen.”

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these in Berlin, we also had them in Plauen, or in Neugerdorf, in small towns, wherever there were active people who could be reached by phone, and who were in the network.”¹⁷³ Through the church’s network, knit together by sporadic assemblies and telephone calls, he reached out beyond the church and thus found further supporters But soon he also learned about the limits of his activities, as his efforts “were met with low enthusiasm in the church.” This led to a tension between activists and church that had an early consequence for Pastor Wonneberger, who was forced to leave his position as chair of the “grassroots groups.” As a consequence, it became increasingly “difficult to get a space” for the kind of activities he sought to organize.¹⁷⁴ Working along the direct divide of the church and the protesters in Leipzig, Richter represented in person the growing oppositional mindset of the Monday prayers. Because activists like Richter did not give up and enacted mobilization activities even against the will of the church, the fruitful groundwork for protests in the fall of 1989 could be laid. Richter’s role as organizer and agitator did not endure, however. Though his activities were crucial for the slowly gained agency on the Nikolaikirchhof during 1988 and 1989, he did not become a leader of the protests in the escalating demonstrations in the fall. When protests gained momentum in the fall of 1989, he had to accept that his control over the same protests he had agitated was fairly limited. Asked about his experiences in the October demonstrations in Leipzig, he answered with “[a]lways as an observer”¹⁷⁵ – meaning that he ascribed to himself a rather passive role, despite his efforts to reach out to Western media, also downplaying his involvement in the printing of 25,000 leaflets calling for peaceful protests when events escalated in the fall. Worried about an open confrontation between protesters and police in the streets of Leipzig, Richter and other activists from the “grassroots groups” sought to intervene by talking to the church community during the prayers,¹⁷⁶ and spending all available resources on leaflets to plea to the demonstrators expected on 9 October: “We

 Richter, interview. Own translation: “Wir haben ja festgestellt, dass wir eine Vernetzung brauchten, gerade auch für die Solidarisierungskampagnen für die Friedensgebete, die Mahnwachen, was es da alles gab. Das gab es ja nicht nur in Berlin. Das gab es ja auch in Plauen oder das gab es in Neugersdorf, in kleinen Orten, überall dort, wo aktive Menschen waren, sie per Telefon erreichbar waren, die vernetzt waren miteinander.”  Richter, interview. Own translation: “Ist in der Kirche nicht unbedingt auf viel Gegenliebe gestoßen […] es war schwierig, Rä ume zu kriegen.”  Richter, interview. Own translation: “immer als Beobachter.”  Transcript of the prayer by Richter and Führer in Freunde und Feinde, 217 Friedensgebetstexte, 318.

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are one people. Violence amongst ourselves leaves eternally bleeding wounds […] today it is upon us to avoid any further escalation; our future depends on it.”¹⁷⁷ But the words written by Richter were formulating a passive spirit that had already passed. His and his fellows’ leaflets were overshadowed by an equally hastily assembled call by the “Leipzig Six” that day, introducing new actors who replaced the initial agitators of the protests. For the brief period of unstoppable protest gatherings in Leipzig and the uncertain reactions from the party, a man who had not had any stakes in the protests so far emerged as a leading figure: Kurt Masur. Worried about the possible conflict in the city center, the conductor of the well-known orchestra of the Gewandhaus close by the Nikolaikirchhof called his friend and local party representative Roland Wörzel. Together, they rushed to meet with four others who were equally worried about the situation. As the “Leipzig Six,” they then published a call that had – at its core – the same goal as rank Richter’s leaflet. It was handed out on the same day, stating: “No Violence.” The tone of it, however, was more demanding and promising: “We are affected by the developments in our city, and we are looking for a solution. We all need a free exchange of opinions on the future of socialism in our country […] we urgently ask you to be reasonable so that a peaceful dialogue becomes possible.”¹⁷⁸ Shared via radio and leaflets, the call of the “Six” soon became famous among the protesters on the streets. Masur himself claimed not to be a politician but nevertheless tried to represent protests in 1989. The reason he became so central to the protests in Leipzig was, on the one hand, due to his popularity. On the other, he was also able to provide a trustworthy interpretation of the demands. Masur reflected as follows on his role as a non-politician doing politics in 1989: I always tried to explain that I am not a politician and that I do not feel like one. It just so happened that I believed that on the basis of my talks with the people at Karl Marx Square, due to my many encounters with young people from the ‘Neues Forum,’ [a newly founded political organization] and other organizations, from the churches, I did have a certain in-

 Leaflet is reprinted in Kuhn, Tag der Entscheidung, 84. Own translation: “Wir sind ein Volk. Gewalt unter uns hinterlä ßt ewig blutende Wunden […] heute ist es an uns, eine weitere Eskalation der Gewalt zu verhindern, davon hä ngt unsere Zukunft ab.” Note that “one people” here refers to police and protests, not necessarily East and West Germany.  Call by the “Leipzig Six,” reprinted in Kuhn, Tag der Entscheidung, 122. Own translation: “Wir sind von den Entwicklungen in unserer Stadt betroffen und wir suchen nach einer Lö sung. Wir alle brauchen einen freien Meinungsaustausch ü ber die Weiterfü hrung des Sozialismus in unserem Land. […] Wir bitten Sie dringend um Besonnenheit, damit ein friedlicher Dialog mö glich wird.”

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sight into the thoughts and feelings of the people in this city […]. This was also what all these politicians were interested in. They wanted to understand the developments here. They wanted to know what kind of hopes were present.¹⁷⁹

Feeling capable of conveying the many hopes and ideas formulated on the square, Masur entered into a dialogue with people protesting, as well as with local politicians. As quickly as he rose, however, he vanished again as a representative figure. For a brief moment, Masur appeared to have the right sense of the protests and of a way to handle the situation. He disappeared as a representative, however, the moment he arose as a political figure. This aspect of ephemeral power that came together in Leipzig was experienced and reflected on a year later after the events by Masur himself, saying: “Last fall we had a process, which has shown that the people were capable of much more than anyone thought. That’s the one side. But the other is, and that is the danger, that now some that are more skillful gain the upper hand, and that our still values that are still alive, like idealism, will get lost.”¹⁸⁰ The appearance of Masur as a political figure further documents the random nature of the dynamics on the square. Masur’s own observations regarding others replacing him underline how fleeting the moments were for figures trying to represent it. Efforts to represent the square helped to foster opposition and increase momentum. But any intention to force the protests to commit to or do something, or simply to shut down, failed. Within this chaotic lack of representation and the unpredictability of the squares, various figures who tried to speak on their behalf emerged and fell. The interesting point about these figures is not so much the quality of their prominence, but rather their short-lived nature. Their moment proved to come and go quickly, and it is thus doubtful whether they actually held any power on the squares at all.

 Kurt Masur in an interview given to Neues Forum Leipzig in Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 276. Own translation: “Ich habe immer versucht zu erkä ren, daß ich kein Politiker bin und mich nicht als solcher fü hle. Es war lediglich so, daß ich aufgrund der Gesprä che am Karl Marx Platz, aufgrund der vielen Begegnungen mit jungen Leuten vom Neuen Forum, von anderen Organisationen, aus den Kirchen, glaubte, doch einen gewissen Einblick zu haben in das Denken und Fü hlen der Menschen dieser Stadt. […] Das war es auch was all diese Politiker besonders interessierte. Sie wollten die Vorgä nge hier verstehen, sie wollten wissen, welche Hoffnungen es hier gibt.”  Masur, Jetzt oder Nie, 276.

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Unreal Power from the Centralists’ Perspective If the goal of those mobilizing to seize the square was to replace the centralized power under the socialist parties with their own leaders and ideas, they failed. Seizing the square did not guarantee their voices being heard by the central authorities, nor did it lead to a replacement of leadership with those protesting. Given the lack of agenda and representation, it was not surprising that protests in Beijing and Leipzig hardly led to any meaningful negotiations with the party cadres. Even if high-ranked members of the party were willing to negotiate with the crowd on the square, people like Chai Ling or Kurt Masur could not possibly represent the diverse interests that came together on Tiananmen Square and Nikolaikirchhof in 1989. This meant, in the end, that the power of those on the square was limited. They could push for the attention and reaction of the party cadres but were unable to commit and enforce any negotiated compromises – let alone replace institutionalized power. In China, early protests were anyway more about recognition by the party than a push for the replacement of one-party rule as such. When Hu Yaobang died and the first gatherings on the square came together, one of the main issues among the crowd was to push for the highest possible state honor for the former party secretary’s burial. Students then added to this primary demand further points from critiques that were meant to complement the reformist course set by the party leadership. Wu’er Kaixi pointed out the relatively moderate ideas of the protests at the beginning: “Before the massive demonstration on 22 April, the majority of young students […] presented a petition. At that time, students only lodged their appeal. There was no organization. The government could then have taken the initiative to solve the problem and easily handled the student movement.”¹⁸¹ But the party leadership was not interested in opening up to demands. Even as students on the square burst into tears due to not being heard, the party remained deaf. In response to what was felt to be an insult to the students,¹⁸² some 600 gathered on the evening of 21 April in front of the gate to the party leaders’ quarters in Beijing. There they demanded dialogue. Instead of changing the tone of their approach, the leadership sent police units to clear the gate of protesters. This, together with the first official statement by the party in newspapers on 26 April, which labeled the protesters on the square as

 Interview with Wu’er Kaixi, printed in China’s Search for Democracy, 350.  “Your actions have deeply wounded the hearts of a generation.” In an open letter signed by graduate students of Beijing University. Reprinted in Cries for Democracy, 63 – 64.

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causing an “upheaval,” (“dong luan”) led to a more open confrontation between students and the party leadership. By then, still, party hardliners not interested in dialogue were accompanied by more moderate positions within the party. One of the party leaders who proved open to the protesters’ demands was Zhao Ziyang. He sought to navigate between the hardliners in the party and the demands of those protesting. In his subsequently published secret diary, Zhao resented the way Li Peng and other party members had convinced Deng Xiaoping to publish the controversial Daily News editorial on 26 April. Understanding the effect of the editorial very well, Zhao noted that the statement by the party intensified rather than calmed the situation on the square: “The 26 April editorial not only agitated the students, but also left those in various government departments, organizations, and other political parties in a general state of discontent.”¹⁸³ Zhao then managed to open up a period of dialogue and mutual exchange between party leaders and students. But the cooperative phase could neither convince the party nor the protesters to comply. Never really getting Deng Xiaoping on his side, Zhao Ziyang soon realized that there was not much sense trying to talk to the square leadership either: “Even though they had formed a command center, not one leader among them could make a cool-headed decision. Even when a decision was made, it was not authoritative in any way. Leaders were changed frequently at the command center, and things proceeded according to the ideas of whosoever’s voice was loudest and most rousing.”¹⁸⁴ Unable to achieve cooperation, Zhao was attacked again by Li Peng and others for being too sympathetic to the students. His proposals for concession were left unheard, and Deng Xiaoping moved to impose martial law by 20 May. Hardliners within the party, combined with the impotent leadership on the square, led to the escalation of the situation by 4 June. The crackdown came with a price for the party, however. While fighting only continued for several days in Beijing, the subsequent damage from spring 1989 was not solely of a violent nature. The seizure of Tiananmen Square had dominated world affairs in spring 1989, and the images of a military power cracking down on protests on the square led to a moral verdict on the CCP that could not be easily reversed. What remained from the global moment in 1989 in Beijing was the shock over its violent end.

 Zhao, Prisoner of the State, 12.  Zhao, Prisoner of the State, 26.

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Fig. 8: Exercising unreal power by staying put: the “Tank Man.” Credit: AP Photo / Jeff Widener.

The day after the enforcement of martial law, that indignation over the violent clash at Tiananmen was displayed one more time for the world to see. The famous picture of the “Tank Man” that has been shared and discussed around the world represented in a condensed way the unreal power that the Tiananmen protests had held in the global moment of 1989. In the face of overwhelming firepower and the massive machine that could easily crush his body to death, the “Tank Man” achieves the seemingly impossible: the halting of a war machine. Calling for the “Tank Commander” to take sides in a brief moment of disruption, he was able to stop an army unit. Within that moment captured by photograph and video, the paradox of the seized square – forceful yet impotent – was presented for the world to see and understand. The seized square could not replace the military might of the CCP, but it could display its incapacity to find peaceful answers to the global civil society in unrest in 1989. That truth captured in an iconic picture cemented the process of political alienation of China in a further globalizing world. Liberal agendas dominating the new world order after 1989 became a red flag in China. In that sense, protests in 1989 had a reverse effect for anyone hoping for the further liberalization of China. In fact, the events confirmed to reactionary cadres the need to further regulate the “opening” process Deng Xiaoping had pushed for. If anything, the party hardened its grip on power afterwards. In contrast, the SED in East Germany nurtured the illusion of being able to police dissent for too long. All developments in the church were monitored by

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the state police in Leipzig closely, while at the same time, no politician officially reacted to it. Reports written by the surveillance agencies operated on the idea that the activities at Nikolaikirche were a problem concerning the community within the church exclusively.¹⁸⁵ Only when the demonstrations after the prayers became more frequent than before did the state police pay closer attention to the “provocations.” But even then, protests were understood to be caused by those seeking to be expelled to the West. A report filed after a demonstration march that led to the detention and interrogation of over 50 protesters reads as follows: “There is no evidence from the testimonies that the march was planned beforehand. But it had become known among the emigration applicants through whisper-propaganda, [“Flüsterpropaganda”] and the strategically placed information in the Western media that such marches would take place after the peace prayers.”¹⁸⁶ Instead of realizing the critical potential of such leaderless protests, however, the police and party in the GDR proceeded with their strategy of ignoring the growing opposition. The state police went on to react to the activities sporadically and sought to further intimidate those they identified as key actors or to expel them from the country altogether.¹⁸⁷ Given the drastic developments towards the summer of 1989, it is surprising how little effort was made to respond more constructively to the “ganging-ups,” which were growing in numbers and frequency on the Nikolaikirchhof. By fall 1989, when the situation was increasingly uncontrollable and gaining momentum, party secretary Honecker demanded a firm stance against the protests. In his first official reaction to the events in Leipzig, he made clear he had no intention to respond to demands or even consider any grounds for discussion with the people protesting. Just recovering from an operation, he wrote a letter to the party officials on the regional level, saying that “these hostile actions have to be nipped in the bud, so there is no basis for a mass movement.”¹⁸⁸ Modrow, the minister for domestic security, interpreted this as a call to

 See for example, Freunde und Feinde, 166 Staatliche Einschätzung, 256.  Report of the investigation section of the Stasi director Oberst Etzolf “Über die Untersuchung des Vorkommnisses im Anschluß an das Friedensgebet am 22.05.1989.” Printed in, Freunde und Feinde, 165 Stasi Information, 252. Own translation: “Aus den Aussagen ist nicht erkennbar, daß ein solcher Marsch von vornherein geplant war. Es hat sich aber durch Flüsterpropaganda und aufgrund gezielter Informationen der Westmedien unter den Antragstellern herumgesprochen, daß nach dem Friedensgebet derartige Märsche stattfinden sollen.”  A closer discussion of the perspective of the State police on sanctioning and controlling the protests, see Süß, Staatssicherheit am Ende, 129 – 141.  Printed in Spiegel, Die Endphase des Honecker-Regimes, 1990/17, 79. Own translation: “[D]ass diese feindlichen Aktionen im Keime erstickt werden müssen, dass keine Massenbasis dafür zugelassen wird.”

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mobilize police and even military for the forthcoming Monday protests in Leipzig. But the final order to use violence by any means necessary was absent. Without the order to shoot, the general secretary of the SED in Leipzig, Hackenberg, informed the central committee of the party in Berlin, that “the preparations for clearing the square […] could not be put in motion due to the aggressiveness of the participants and the high number of persons.”¹⁸⁹ Honecker’s harsh rhetoric without instructive commands to back up his words failed to have an effect. Against the growing opposition in Leipzig, he thus fostered doubt among his party comrades whether he had the ability to deal with the situation. Uncontrollable mobilization finally led to the momentous day of 9 October 1989, when people again gathered to form a crowd big enough to fill the whole of Nikolaikirchhof on the Monday. With a crowd so big that participants themselves were overwhelmed by the numbers of people that had come together to fill up not only Nikolaikirchhof but also the large Karl Marx Square next to it,¹⁹⁰ protesters had broken through the “wall of silence.” The SED’s grip on public space wilted as people on the squares found the unreal power of the square to overcome intimidation by police. Instead of altering the course of the party, the seizure of the city square in Leipzig vanquished the fear that had marked a cornerstone of the party’s legitimacy in East Germany until 1989. Without fear of retaliation, the party lacked further reasons to continue dominating the urban space, not only in Leipzig but all-over East Germany. From the little actions on Nikolaikichhof to the breach of the Berlin Wall, the reign over public space by the police of the East German state was broken. Step by step, it led to the collapse of the ruling regime. By the end of the global moment of 1989, the earlier crucial work done by activists around the Nikolaikirche became part of a larger movement that had already won its most important fight. As Frank Richter put it, in November, when the masses marched around the Ring of Leipzig he stated: “We had already won. The camera teams were on-site, we did not need to bring anything to East Berlin anymore, everyone was there, and one

 Hackenberg in a letter to Honecker, 3 October 1989, quoted in Süß, Staatssicherheit am Ende, 304. Own translation: “Aufgrund der Aggressivität der Teilnehmer und der hohen Personenzahl konnten die vorbereiteten Varianten zur Räumung des Kirchenvorplatzes […] nicht angewandt werden.” See also further reports by Hackenberg on the protests in fall 1989 in Freunde und Feinde, 219 SED Information, 323; Freunde und Feinde, 202 SED Information, 298.  Contemporary witness Gradt on the protests 2 October in Leipzig: “Am Wintergartenhochhaus riskieren wir einen Blick nach hinten, und unser Erstaunen schlägt fast in Jubel um. Bis hoch zur Hauptpost bietet sich uns eine mutige Menschenmenge.” In Neues Forum, Jetzt oder Nie, 46.

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could come along and walk around [the city center of Leipzig].”¹⁹¹ The intimidation by state police was broken, allowing for new developments and thoughts that no one who initially mobilized for protests could possibly have anticipated. With his reluctance to hear out protesters, Honecker had not only isolated himself on the international level, as his days as general secretary of the party were also numbered after the Monday protests on 9 October. Under the leadership of Egon Krenz, Honecker’s closest comrades drove him out of office. But once in power, Krenz displayed equally little skill in dealing with the protests constructively. Instead, newly founded organizations such as the “Neues Forum” became the representatives of the opposition in Leipzig, while the people on the streets claimed one of the central symbolic foundations of power in the Leninist-styled regime: “We are the people” was chanted on the streets, indicating that the central claim of the party to represent the will of the people had eroded. Thus, the centrality of the party vanished. Alienated party comrades and public figures alike turned to the new oppositional organizations that spoke on behalf of a change in the GDR.¹⁹² The short-lived emergence of oppositional organizations at that time was peculiar, though. Emerging alongside the growth of protests and yet proving skeptical of mobilizations in Leipzig,¹⁹³ “Neues Forum” and initiatives like it already began to decline in importance shortly after November 1989,¹⁹⁴ leaving not much more than a vacuum of power at the core of the socialist regime. Because the SED in East Germany remained incapable of opening itself up to dialogue and could not back up its claim to power with violence, it lost the symbols and organizational power to signify the meaning of centrality. Instead, by mere accident, the party cracked open the Iron Curtain in Berlin.¹⁹⁵ Neither party elites nor protesters, then, were to fill the void left behind. The core of power in the GDR that lay open demanded to be signified, and it was left to Western politicians like Helmut Kohl to fill it. The political vacuum was subsequently filled not with the unreal power of those who had mobilized to protest, but by a figure foreign to the events in Leipzig: rushing to Berlin, the Chancellor of the

 Richter, interview. Own translation: “Da hatten wir ja schon gewonnen. Dann waren die Fernsehstationen vor Ort, da musste man nichts mehr nach Ostberlin bringen, die waren dann da und dann konnte man auch einmal mit einmal ringsrum.”  Documenting their own work in 1989: Neues Forum Leipzig: Jetzt oder Nie.  Neues Forum and others encouraged people in Leipzig to refrain from protests in order to secure their negotiation position, see Süß, Staatssicherheit am Ende, 316.  Richter, Die Friedliche Revolution, 817.  Sarotte, Mary E. How an accident caused the Berlin Wall to come down. Washington Post. 1 November 2009. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/30/ AR2009103001846.html (29 March 2020).

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FRG, Kohl, declared to the gathered crowds roaming leaderless through the streets: “Long live the German fatherland, Long live united Europe!” The Wall, icon of the Cold War, fell, and politicians from West Germany reached out to those protesting in the cities of East Germany. The SED lost importance and control over the events that followed.¹⁹⁶ Unresponsive to the protests from the beginning, and not daring to shut them down for good either, the party cadres of East Germany brought isolation on themselves and, eventually, dissolution. The unreal power of the people on the squares in 1989 had different implications for the outcome of protests in China and Germany. Though there were several attempts in China to come to terms with the demands of protesters on Tiananmen Square, the inability to hold a dialogue with the people producing a disruptive counter-space on the square, in the end, led party hardliners enforcing martial law. In East Germany, on the other hand, party elites elected to ignore the situation in Leipzig altogether. Not until the late fall of 1989 was there a reaction by the central committee in Berlin, which was nothing more than a call to shut down the protests for good. But since the protests in Leipzig had gained enough momentum to not be influenced by empty threats, the unreal power of the city square finally undermined the SED’s rule.

IV.4 Globalization and the SpaceTime of 1989 As far as the political nature of the city squares is concerned, protests in Beijing and Leipzig shared one central element: de-control. Both protests in 1989 mobilized dissent to seize the squares. But the space produced was out of the control – even for those who had initiated the protests. Instead of a revolution conquering power, the image of the SpaceTime in 1989 is one of discontent with globalization producing a disruption in a time that allowed global interactions on the squares to take place. Since no one was able to stop protests at their peak, it is doubtful whether they can be framed as movements “for” anything. Given the diversity of the motives and the limited power of anyone trying to speak on behalf of the people on the square, this gathering of discontented masses could not be represented nor enforce a particular political agenda. The common denominator of protests was the dissatisfaction with the ruling socialist parties – albeit for very different reasons. It was the claim and production of a shared counter-space on two squares that altered the path of the socialist re-

 For a fascinating narrative on the state bureau during the fall of 1989, see Spiegel. ‘Ich bin das Volk’ 1990/16.

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gimes in East Germany and China after 1989. Since the uncontrollable dynamics of representational space dominated the SpaceTime of 1989 in Beijing and Leipzig, the impact of protests on the square was far from predictable. The power gained within the SpaceTime of 1989 was unreal. It was experienced and eventful and yet remained imaginary since it did not allow any definition of the outcomes of the events. This is the SpaceTime of 1989 on the squares: chaotic and nurtured by dissatisfaction, bound to a particular space that becomes a means and, at times, even the end for protests forming within a break in global time. As could be seen for Leipzig and Beijing, producing such spaces of de-control in 1989 was bound up with transnational and global interactions. In a tense moment of globally unfolding changes, the squares enforced the destabilization of the ruling regimes in China and Germany. Once protests were visible for a global audience, statements of solidarity and support reached those seizing the square from other people protesting or from top diplomats across the world. Following the course of other seized squares, local protests were also shaped by the dynamics of de-control far away. All this turned the seized square into a translocal space, a space that is locally produced but also shaped by events far away. Together, the squares in Beijing and Leipzig formed part of a transnational and finally global SpaceTime of 1989. There and then, events unfolded that were to change the course of global history. The sphere of international diplomacy, the transnational civil society developing in 1989 across Central Eastern Europe, and the economic decay of East Germany also played a part in deciding the eventual conclusion of the protests, which first indicated and then sealed the crisis of legitimacy of the SED. Honecker and his followers were unable to deal with the discontent in Leipzig. But their eventual downfall had as much to do with the uncontrollable dynamic of mobilizations on the square as with the exceptional moment in time that washed the party cadres out of office. In China, pressure from the international community is not as imperative in understanding the outcome of the protests. Yet, it was riddled by global transformations, causing dissatisfaction. Not being bound to perestroika and glasnost nor undergoing a comparable process of regional integration like East Germany in Europe, China was left facing the tools of its own past, the Red Army and its violent ability to end “turmoil.” Deng’s response can be understood in a context of a violent-ridden and militarized history of China in the twentieth Century. Without the context and diplomatic surroundings of Europe, the CCP in China acted with the means it had internalized through a long history of violent struggle. The outcome of protests on Tiananmen Square and Nikolaikirchhof differed, as did the nature of the space set up on the squares. Though protests on Tianan-

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men endured with a bold claim on the square, the effect of protests disappointed anyone who hoped for further liberal reforms in China. At the same time, the somewhat timid and careful claim to the square in Leipzig led to a collapse of the socialist regime in East Germany. In the end, the SpaceTime of 1989 concluded with the fragmentation of globalization for years to come. In Europe, civil society established strong institutions and a critical relationship to the state. In China, liberties enjoyed in the 1980s were cut back, and the CCP enforced its position in the Chinese state. This came at the cost of establishing its role as the villain regime in a new world order after 1989, while German integration took full force after the reunification of Germany in 1991. Tangibly, counter-spaces such as those set up on the squares in 1989 do not drive globalization into a process of convergence. They might emerge synchronously due to shared transformations on a global scale but are not necessarily followed by equally shared periods of synchrony. The villain status of the CCP after Tiananmen set it apart not only in histography, but also in diplomatic and military terms. Economic prosperity, at the same time, has taken over more layers of society in China than in East Germany since 1989. And in terms of a global civil society, seizing the square may have been an expression of a more interactive civil society responding to growing pressures in 1989. However, after the shared moment of discontent on the squares, no common denominators would remain. Moreover, even if the seized square could have enforced a process towards democratization, this process remains reversible. Thirty years after the fact, civil society in East Germany questions the rule of liberal institutions installed after the dissemination of the SED. Rather than being state skeptical, protests forming on the streets and squares in East Germany in the second decade of the twenty-first century express doubt about liberal convictions of cosmopolitanism and universality. In China, protests have largely abandoned their former outreach to Western-style liberal democracies as well. Though dissatisfaction with aspects of the regime continuously spark protests in China, the leading role of the CCP as such is not in question as it was in 1989. These regional divergencies have led to an alienation of society in China and Germany. Today, the SpaceTime of 1989 is history, and a repetition of a global moment mobilizing civil society from Beijing to Leipzig appears highly unlikely. More likely, in turn, remains the prevalence of protests seizing the square. Since the occupation of Tiananmen Square and the breakthrough of civil society on Nikolaikirchhof, the practice of appropriating a public square in a city has become a global phenomenon. Seizing the square means to seize a moment of disruption, and depending on the reach of that moment, eventually altering the path of global history. People may find others on the square to share their discontent with, producing a space that enforces a decision without being able to

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determine the nature of that decision. Today, such appropriations of public spaces demanding changes for politics beyond national reach have become global spectacles. Since the mass production of smartphones, cameras and microphones are available at little cost, and multiple representations of the seized square can thus travel in real-time across the internet. Uncontrollable in their outcome, these protests have challenged various regimes since 1989 – from authoritarian regimes in the Middle East to the post-colonial city of Hong Kong, while also questioning liberal democracies in Europe and in the US. Though 1989 stands as a particularly impressive example of protests seizing the square within a global moment, spatial affine protests have become a global practice today. Protests producing global SpaceTimes on the square can thus be found in all world regions and political regimes, disrupting and redirecting globalization following its acceleration in the 1970s.

Lessons from 1989 for 2011 and after History does not repeat itself, nor does it stop. Today’s globally dispersed protests on city squares are not late echoes of the happenings in 1989. Nor are they necessarily the pushes for democratization many Western spectators have hoped for. Nevertheless, protests seizing the squares after 1989 serve as further examples that accelerated globalization is not exclusively driven by high-profile arenas such as the United Nations General Assembly or the campuses of internationalized universities. Globalization is also shaped by protests seizing a decision space that used to hold exclusively national or local meaning – such as the city square. By taking the square as a unit for analysis, formerly national interpretations of protests such as those at Tiananmen and Nikolaikirche can be complemented with insights into the squares’ relation to globalization. This mode of research – looking for global linkages and impacts of the seized city square – can be labeled as a way to study globalization “from below.” For such a view of globalization from “below,” the SpaceTime of 1989 holds lessons of interest for more recent protests as well. Contemporary protests seizing the square, just as the protests in 1989 did, protests refer to one another a well to global affairs. Notably, the original Occupy! Wall Street (OWS) call to action in 2011 asked if people were ready for the “Tahrir moment,” and sought to “set up tents and occupy Wall Street.”¹ When protest in 1989 can be understood to have engendered a global moment responding to discontentment at accelerating globalization, protests seizing the squares in 2011 can be said to have responded to yet another moment of global tension. After years of protests against global political institutions like the World Trade Organization, or against summits like G7, G8, or G20, a global moment was again felt to have disrupted in the aftermath of the financial crisis 2008. Long-time alter-globalization activists such as Rebecca Solnit saw in the protests in 2011 a moment where “the old order is shattered, governments and elites tremble, and in the rupture civil society is reborn.”² Thus, the vocabulary to describe the SpaceTime of 2011 is already reminiscent of 1989. However, 2011 does not hold the same compressed nature of the global moment in 1989. The relative synchronous outburst of protests indicates the again rising levels of discontent with the status quo on a global

 Adbusters. A Shift in Revolutionary Tactics. 13 July 2011. https://www.webcitation.org/ 63I8ygR4q?url=http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html (29 March 2020).  Solnit, Rebecca. Miracles and Obstacles. In Thank You, Anarchy. Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse, Nathan Schneider. University of California Press, 2013, ix. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682601-006

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scale, but falls short of creating a moment in global time as dense and impactful as 1989. What makes protests seizing the square in 2011 comparable to 1989 is the urban nature of disruption and the global entanglements at hand. Besides the relative synchronism in and after the year 2011, protests also shared a particular spatial practice by forming “asambleas”³ on the squares in various cities.⁴ Contrasting the claim to the square with the earlier alter-globalization movements that formed after the 1999 protests in Seattle, Hardt and Negri argue that there has been a spatial shift in the form of protests around the year 2011: A decade ago, the alter-globalization movements were nomadic. They migrated from one summit meeting to the next, illuminating the injustices and anti-democratic nature of a series of key institutions of the global power system: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the G8 nation leaders, among others. The cycle of struggles that began in 2011, in contrast, is sedentary. Instead of roaming according to the calendar of summit meetings, these movements stay put, and, in fact, refuse to move.⁵

This cycle of struggle has mostly been associated in the literature with a new class of indebted, young, and well-educated members of a generation in discontent: The so-called Millennials. After the insights gained into the SpaceTime of 1989, however, it would be unfair to claim that only now “people are using methods of protests that do not seem archaic or at odds with the modern contemporary world.”⁶ Instead of a new subject promoting an unseen mode for protests, it is instead a return to protest practices already observable in 1989 that could be observed in 2011. Though it is today easier to message discontent across worldregions, people in 1989 already made use of available technology to co-construct the global moment of their time. A similar “refusal to leave” the square was also visible in the protests two decades earlier, with people responding to the various ramifications of accelerating globalization. Thus, protests on the squares such as the ones in Frankfurt, Cairo, and New York in 2011– 2012 may be called counter-spaces of globalization as well. Like in 1989, it might first and foremost be discontent that brought people with varying

 Asambleas were spontaneous reunions on the occupied square that were supposed to empower a radical form of democratic participation and decision-finding process.  della Porta, Donatella and Andrea Felicetti. Democratic Innovations and Social Movements. In The Government Report, Regina List and Sonja Kaufmann (eds.) Oxford University Press, 2017, 127– 142.  Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio. 2012. Declaration. Kindle Books, 4.  Mason, Why it’s still Kicking off Everywhere, 65.

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motives together to seize the square. Instead of a unifying party or agenda propagating the usurpation of the state, protests enforced disruption on national and transnational levels. Acting within a time of accelerating globalization where spatial categories are already being reshuffled anew, protests seizing the square produce their own political space. When the set order of things starts to be undermined by the discontent of many, a space is sought to enforce some form of critical decision. In other words, the square serves as a negative decision space under accelerated globalization: an old order is rejected, but a new one is not necessarily in sight. Studying the seized square is a particular study of globalization from “below” because protests produce a counter-space to enforce changes that often enough imply questions about politics beyond national settings. From this perspective, globalization came to a new breaking point in 2011 that resembles the global moment of 1989. After Tahrir, and following the transatlantic and shared Occupy! movement on the squares in 2011, protests in Frankfurt 2012 also formed part of a larger protest cycle, in which the quest to seize the squares was central. City centers were under siege from Frankfurt to Oakland and Kyiv, directly referring to another and introducing a moment of de-control. Within this apparent global SpaceTime of 2011, however, the importance of heterogeneity in the protests should not be neglected.

Counter-spaces in Twenty-first Century Globalization Converse to protests in the twentieth century, where people fought for collective understandings such as nationalism or socialism, protest today often depends on individual preferences, addressing problems of global magnitude. In particular, the Occupy camps in 2011 reflected this eclectic self-understanding quite openly. “Just about the only thing everyone could agree on was the fantasy of crowds filling the area around Wall Street and staying until they overthrew the oligarchy, or until they were driven out,”⁷ writes Nathan Schneider, a participant of the OWS protests in New York City in 2011. People participating, camping, organizing and reaching out produce a new, global political space that does not necessarily “want” the same thing. Whilst the protests in 1989 may still have been bundled together as a counter-movement against socialism, or, to account for protests such as those in South Africa as well, against regimes classified as “authoritarian,” protests seiz-

 Schneider, Apocalypse, 4.

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ing the square today act against and address much more opaque political antagonists. First and foremost, such protests share a struggle for space: “[T]he most common form of action amid the 2011– 2012 mobilizations […] reclaiming the public space.”⁸ That shared spatial struggle did not easily translate into shared causes and aspirations. For some in the OWS protests in 2011, the negation of political representation even became a crucial part of the overall strategy: “No demands means we understand that there’s nobody to negotiate with in the first place, that we neither have nor want any representatives to speak on our behalf […] making any demands opens the door to the belief that somebody can grant our wishes.”⁹ Instead of enforcing specific demands, the protest in itself becomes an end, and with it, the space it appropriates. After all, once protest strengthens its hold on a square, “countergeographies” of globalization are drawn,¹⁰ enforcing a disruption, but doing little to translate it into a political cause. What nevertheless makes the square attractive to those expressing discontent with the ramifications of accelerating globalization around the world is its capacity to lend unreal power to those who seize it. Like in 1989, the square also today allows mirroring to take place that gives people expressing discontent the idea that power is attainable by being part of an urban mobilization. For its own benefit, the production of counter-spaces of globalization on the squares raises images of being in charge. Yet, already during the protests, participants were skeptical about the impact of that power: “Images of that it promulgated of shutting down Wall Street and mounting a general strike became implanted in people’s minds, if even just to provide a measure of how those images failed to become manifest.”¹¹ And even if those seizing the square felt like “having rediscovered their agency, their collective power, their ability to act,”¹² as on Tahrir, the outcomes of their actions nevertheless sows doubts on that feeling of power. Regardless of this negativity of power, those producing a representative space cite and refer to protests on squares as powerful interventions. More so than in 1989, in the twenty-first century, the global practice of seizing the square is increasingly linked to new communication technologies that can construct a

 Tejerina et al, “From Indignation to Occupation.”  Anti-Bureaucratic Bloc (eds.). Occupational Hazards. The Rise & Limitations of Occupy Oakland. (Berkeley: Cal Press, 2012), 11.  Sassen, Territory.  Schneider, Apocalypse, 6.  Schneider, Apocalypse, 7.

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common moment in time and spread a shared protest culture.¹³ In 2011 to 2012, this meant that city centers under siege from Tahrir to Frankfurt to Oakland, kept referring to one another. When the encampment in Oakland was raided in October 2011, direct responses to the event were sent from Cairo, conjuring a common cause: “We stand with you not just in our attempts to bring down the old but to experiment with the new.”¹⁴ An experiment, in which the quest to seize the square became central, and in which protests raided as violently as those in Oakland turned into iconic points of references for protests in other parts of the world. “Frankfurt will definitely be closer to Occupy Oakland than all else that has been labeled Occupy in the Federal Republic [of Germany]. Instead of asking for permission, we will try this Thursday to take the squares.”¹⁵ Images of power that might be gained on the square, today flow digitally across the Atlantic, back and forth, allowing for a common discourse between those seizing the square in Cairo, Oakland, and Frankfurt. The political nature of the seized square is defined by a shared search for a decision space. A space is needed in which the several questions over which the individual feels powerless can be addressed and maybe even altered. In a time when the former alliance of identity and political space has already been dissembled by global transformations, the need for a space for self-enactment may only grow further. “To be at all – to exist in any way,” as Edward Casey introduces his philosophical history of space, “is to be somewhere.”¹⁶ And perhaps, the “horror vacui” that demands a space to exist is felt just as much by the surfacing global citizens of our time, reaching out to the city square to fill an unbearable political void. The finding that the square is a space of de-control is then by no means a contradiction of that need. It is even consequential: “Chaos is a primordial

 See for example Gerbaudo, Paolo. Tweets and the Streets. Social Media and Contemporary Activism. London: Pluto Press, 2012. On a more skeptical note, see Sassen, The Global Street. David Harvey put in more confrontationally: “[I]t is bodies on the street and in the squares, not the babble of sentiments on Twitter on Facebook, that really matter.” Harvey, Rebel Cities, 162.  Libcom. Letter from an anonymous friend the morning after the attack on the Oakland Commune. 27 October 2012. https://libcom.org/library/letter-anonymous-friend-morning-after-attackoakland-commune (29 March 2020).  Turn*left. Blockupy Frankfurt – let’s crack capitalism. 3 May 2012. https://turnleft.noblogs. org/2012/05/blockupy-frankfurt-lets-crack-capitalism/ (29 March 2020). Own translation: “Blockupy Frankfurt jedenfalls wird näher an Occupy Oakland sein, als an dem, was bisher in der Bundesrepublik unter dem Label Occupy gelaufen ist.”  Edward S. Casey. The Fate of Place. A Philosophical History. Berkeley (University of California Press, 1998), ix.

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place within which things can happen.”¹⁷ In the moment of global disruptions, the square may serve within a SpaceTime in which some form of a political decision can be enforced. Protests on the square introduce chaos, and thus do alter the established order. Crucially, for understanding the limitations of SpaceTime on the square, the political meaning of the square vanishes with the moment of chaos it embraces. “Chaos is not eternal. It occurs. But it occurs as a place – a place for things to be.”¹⁸ From this perspective, it is not necessary to give the space produced on the square a positive frame. It does not matter whether the squares are indeed “liberated space,”¹⁹ a “trial by space,”²⁰ or “signs from the future.”²¹ Their main function and meaning may simply be to ensure the possibility of change in a time when a coherent space for politics and identity has become more than uncertain. The spaces produced in protests are counter-spaces of globalization, where people seek political self-enactment in a world shaped by global transformations. The time of contemporary protests on the square is that of an uncertain presence, demanding to speak about an unwritten future. Together, the SpaceTime produced around 2011 was first and foremost disruptive; but it also allowed new things to emerge. The squares were appropriated and turned into iconic arenas. There, people suffering discontentment found each other, often laying claim to highly symbolic spaces and pushing for changes on a global level. This cycle of protests seizing the square from Cairo to Oakland ended with one particular explosive protest that I was able to witness at first hand. The seizure of the Maidan in 2013 to 2014 can be understood as part of a phenomenon that had unfolded globally in the years before.

Euromaidan’s Transnational Entanglements Its shared political purpose notwithstanding, twenty-first-century SpaceTime on the square remains just as heterogeneous as in 1989. While it may seem tempting to frame diverse protests in an increasingly interconnected world as “one” resistance, any analysis has to take the unique features of a seized square into account. Any theoretical paradigm seeking to explain all protests seizing the

 Casey, Fate of Place, 9.  Casey, Fate of Place, 9.  Anonymous. From Autonomous Space Towards Liberated Space. In Space Wars, available at the Mag Archive in “The Long Haul,” anarchist bookstore, Berkeley.  Lefebvre, Production of Space, 416.  Žižek, Slavoj. The Year of Dreaming Dangerously. London: Verso, 2012. See page 127.

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square independently from its spatial and timed embedding is as misleading in interpreting protests as it was for protests in 1989. Instead, the mode of comparison applied here for protests in China and Germany in 1989 needs to be translated to understand more recent protests that seized the square. Otherwise, the political nature of a singular event may be reduced to outstanding features that do not capture the inherent conflict driving a protest. The importance of this point becomes clear once the protest in Kyiv from 2013 to 2014 is scrutinized. The protests on Maidan that made headlines between 2013 and 2014 had global origins, and also transnational repercussions, while at the same time unfolding in a particular context. To better understand the SpaceTime produced in Kyiv, the logic applied for the analysis of the lead-up to protests in 1989 can be briefly applied here. Taking into consideration the economic sphere, international relations, and developments in global civil society provides a starting point for analyzing the global transformations that engendered the protests on Maidan. For now, this global perspective on the origins of the protests can only be presented as an outline, however it may exemplify the mode of analysis needed to understand protests seizing the square today. In economic terms, the increasing acceleration of the globalization of business and production since 1989 fostered discontent not only in Ukraine but around the globe. Undergoing a shock of liberal reforms after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, people in Ukraine remained starkly dependent on the subsidized supplies of specific resources – especially of gas – from Russia, while not being able to replace the technological landscape inherited from the Soviet times with more competitive technology.²² With a large Ukrainian-speaking population that had been employed in the agrarian sector, still making up 50 percent of the labor force in 1999,²³ the burdens of restructuring the Ukrainian economy were distributed highly unequally. A significant increase in unemployment hit the agrarian sector in the first decade of the twenty-first century and, thus, the Ukrainian speaking population.²⁴ While East Ukraine still benefited from a pros Though Russia invested “90 % of total foreign direct investment in Ukraine’s aluminum industry, over 80 % in its oil refining capability, and slightly over 50 % of total foreign investment into its telecommunication infrastructure.” See Mills, Frederick. Understanding the Euromaidan: The View from the Kremlin. In Ukraine’s Euromaidan. Analysis of a Civil Revolution, David R. Marples and Drederick V. Mills (eds.). Stuttgart: ibidem, 2015, 239 – 260.  World Bank. Ukraine: Poverty Assessment, Poverty and Inequality in a Growing Economy. Washington, D.C., https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/8803 (29 March 2020).  Translating into a rather Western-oriented population in the West and a Russia oriented population in the East, see Haran, Oleksij. Innenpolitische Bestimmungsfaktoren der Außenpolitik. In Die Neue Ukraine. Gesellschaft – Wirtschaft- Politik. Simon Gerhard (ed.). Weimar: Böhlau, 2002. See, in particular, page, 270.

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perous Russian economy, the Western regions suffered the full consequences of economic restructuring after 1989. These local developments unfolded against the backdrop of economic globalization, which today paradoxically lets more people participate in terms of global consumption than ever before,²⁵ whilst at the same time seeing the gap in wealth distribution growing worldwide.²⁶ The unequal developments in Ukraine were in line with a larger global growth of economic inequalities that reached a high point after the financial crisis of 2008. An exploration of global conditions for protests in Kyiv in 2014 certainly also needs to take shifts in the international security architecture into account. Ukraine received a considerable amount of Western assistance in reforming the Ukrainian state in the years before the uprising;²⁷ by hosting the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) European Championship together with Poland in 2012, a strong signal for European integration was made. The students protesting against the president’s decision to reject the association agreement with the European Union in the early stages of the protests followed a period when Ukraine was moving closer to the European Union.²⁸ This, in turn, undercut the interests of the Russian Federation, especially militarily. With Ukraine moving closer to the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the strategically important fleet base on Crimea was in danger of being lost to the Russian military. Moreover, the westward orientation of Ukraine’s development meant, in fact, a rejection of Russia’s strategy for post-Soviet integration. Though the Cold War was long over, the strategic interests of Russia regarding Ukraine certainly mattered when it came to the causes of and reactions to the protests on Maidan.

 Nederveen, Jan P. Multipolar Globalization. Emerging Economies and Development. New York: Routledge, 2018.  Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the twenty-First Century. The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2013. In particular pages 430 – 467; Milanovic, Branko. Global Inequality. A New Approach for the age of Globalization. The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2016.  Leitsch, Duncan. Assisting Reform in Post-Communist Ukraine 2000 – 2012. The Illusions of Donors and the Disillusion of Beneficiaries. Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2016.  It is questionable, however, whether this issue alone would have translated into the mass protests that resulted from these first gatherings. A small study of Ukrainian sociologists, for instance, had found little evidence of European politics playing a central role for Ukrainians just the year before. See Kyiv International Institute of Sociology). What Issues is the Population of Ukraine most Concerned About? 15 March 2012. http://kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id= 88 (29 March 2020).

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Globally, society integrated increasingly through migration and new communication technology in recent years, which was also the case in Ukraine.²⁹ With the end of the Soviet Union the massive growth in migration was noted: “Official accounts of migration – that usually underestimate the real magnitude of this phenomenon – indicate that, on average, more than 140 thousand Ukrainians left the country each year between 1995 and 2001.”³⁰ While these migration numbers slowed down in the next decade, the amount of younger people going to Western Europe grew, contrasting the earlier migration patterns of older generations going east to Russia.³¹ Tensions due to these regional transformations finally translated into a protest that carried heavy nationalistic connotations on a square that had significant meaning for the history of Ukraine.³² However, the urban space of the capital was appropriated, from early on, mostly by students who were well informed about if not part of the Occupy! movements in the West that had occurred in the previous years. From this quick skimming through the preface to the protests in Kyiv, it should be apparent that no globalization theory of universal “neoliberalism” can account for the actual factors driving discontent to the Maidan Square. Also, the “Millennial” born in Kyiv would likely tell a different socio-economic history as the one born in New York City. While various factors concerning globalization that played a role for protests the years before can be cited, their actual impact on the life of people in Kyiv is distinct. Not quite in sync with the global rhythm of 2011 that drove protest to the square after the financial crisis, the late 2013 to 2014 protests in Kyiv related to the same breaking point in time that had also fostered discontent in other regions before. As a late repercussion of protests seizing the square 2011 (Occupy!), in 2012 (Frankfurt), and 2013 (Istanbul), the protests in Kyiv can be seen as part of a SpaceTime that dealt with broken promises of liberal paradigms and the political ramifications they provoked in their respective contexts.

 On the role of diaspora and digital communications on the Maidan, see Krasynska, Svitlana. Digital Civil Society: Euromaidan, the Ukrainian Diaspora, and Social Media. In Marples et al, eds, Ukraine’s Euromaidan, 177– 198.  World Bank, Ukraine, 16.  World Bank, Ukraine, 15.  The Guardian. “Architects of revolt: the Kyiv square that sparked Ukraine’s insurrection.” 2 August 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/apr/08/architects-revolt-kiev-maidansquare-ukraine-insurrection. (29 March 2020).

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Being in Kyiv in 2014 It was primarily the disruptive power of protests seizing the square that became visible in Kyiv 2014. Being there to document the events, I noted the following on 7 February: “The space they built, police and ultras, is apocalyptic. Burned facades, catapults, the ground full of black slick [from the burned tires]. Police buses are completely destroyed and used as barricades. Those who are still here seem to be tired. Police seems tired as well. It is a stand-off, and it is unclear how it could end peacefully.” As it turned out, there would indeed be no peaceful end to the protests. More than a hundred died defending the apocalyptic space described above a couple of days later. After the then-president Yanukovych fled to Russia, a civil war took hold of the Donbas. The range of the global impact of the protests in Kyiv can still not be understood fully today, since Russia re-emerged as an antagonist to Western liberal democracy with dire implications spreading from Syria up to the White House in Washington DC. The transnational nature of the Maidan protests in Ukraine in 2014 is also apparent from the first interview held with a participant there. Olesya K. joined part of the early protest crowd that stood on Maidan in the middle of November, demanding that President Yanukovych sign an association agreement with the European Union. “At first it was just about our president signing that contract. He didn’t sign it. […] So, more people came to the square and said that they would now spend the night there, because they want[ed it] to be this peaceful protest.”³³ Already known for its critical role in the Orange Revolution, students headed to the square in the middle of Kyiv that would soon turn into a conflict zone with national and regional repercussions. The early nights and days on the square had little impact, with only a few people joining the protests and an agenda that was relatively limited. This changed once news of police violence against students circulated. From the night of violence on 30 November on, Maidan developed the typical dynamics of representational space in a seized square: “People came to the Maidan to see what was there and ended up staying.”³⁴ Thus, the protests grew and became independent from the motives of early mobilizers such as Olesya. Among the

 Interview with Olesya K. on the Maidan, 7 February 2014. Like many other students I met on the Maidan, the international outlook from the square came natural to her. She was fluent in English, as she had spent semesters abroad in Holland before. Protests and international attention attracted even dragged some of those studying in abroad back to Kyiv in order to participate.  See Marci Shore. The Ukrainian Night. An Intimate History of Revolution. New Haven (Yale University Press, 2017), 51.

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people joining the square were also more and more expats living in Kyiv and international journalists.³⁵ By the time of my arrival in mid-February, the square was filled with tents and people laying an insistent claim to Maidan even in the -30C degree cold.

Iced Space Production From my own observations,³⁶ the square in the middle of the city was shaped by the needs and routines of protesters enduring the most unfavorable conditions. At the same time, the ice-cold weather was also used to produce the spatial environment protesters dwelled in. For instance, the water from the melted snow and ice produced by the barricades on fire on Hrusheskyi Street was directed to European Square some meters below. There it was kept frozen overnight to provide new ice blocks to support the barricades surrounding Maidan Square. Behind these ice barricades, a tent city evolved. Next to the first tents set up near the Independence Monument, a tent equipped with an altar could be found. Close to it, yet another specialized tent was set up: the IT tent. People had donated computers and routers to ensure communication lines for the protesters. A wireless network was available, and anyone could use the computers. The IT tent was one of the first tents to appear on the square, as students from the beginning had sought to communicate their protests via social media. These insights into the space production on Maidan in 2014 reflect the sophistication of the protesters that engaged in the struggle to keep the occupation of the square going. Members of “Automaidan” (“Avto Maidan”) supplied the square. Identified as a lifeline for the protests, the crew came under a lot of pressure during the occupation.³⁷ The spokesman of the crew was kidnapped and only reappeared after a week, marked by what were clear signs of torture.³⁸ Cars associated with the protest were set on fire, and other drivers who had their cars filled with wood and old tires to support the Maidan protest were monitored and stopped as they drove through the city. However, in the cold nights of the protest, the

 Kyiv Post, “Expats in EuroMaidan crossfire: Many actively support protests,” 2 July 2014.  See Palm, Daniel. Der Maidan als Raum der Selbstbehauptung. Cee Ieh, #214 (2014). https:// www.conne-island.de/nf/214/11.html (29 March 2020); Palm, Daniel. Euromaidan. Leftfreedomreign, 2014b. https://leftfreedomreign.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/euromaidan/ (29 March 2020).  See also the account by Shore, Ukrainian Night, 72– 78.  Dmytro Bulatov was among many activists that were forced to flee Ukraine due to repression against protests. Kyiv Post, “More Ukrainians fleeing political strife at home,” 7 February 2014.

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continuing supply of wood and food was essential for the protesters, and thus the supply chain continued to operate throughout my visit. The mornings were filled with the sound of chainsaws cutting through wood and anyone on the square would leave with the smell of smoke on their clothes. In contrast to the Tiananmen protest, the occupation of Maidan was also equipped with a functioning and well-maintained mobile toilet system. Furthermore, doctors offered medical services on the square,³⁹ while the free kitchens on the square tried to keep control over hygiene standards. Appropriation of space also spread to the nearby streets and public buildings, as protesters felt the need to expand the reach of their activities. As one protester put it: “I have a wish that this territory would grow all the time and that the borders of Maidan would expand.”⁴⁰ One of the first buildings occupied was the workers union headquarters. At the time of my visit, it was well guarded, as only a few days before my arrival a mail bomb had exploded there. In the occupied National Theater close to the European Square, the “Ukrainian House,” reunions and discussions took place and several sleeping rooms were available to recover in. Here, the veterans of the Afghanistan war took shelter after their shifts as guards on the barricades around the square.⁴¹ Next to this militant corner, a “Free University” was founded, even offering a library that consisted of donated books.⁴² The occupation of the square and the Ukrainian House was complemented by the occupation of the town hall. There, the Svoboda opposition party and other right-wing organizations knew how to use the government building: as a symbolic place. Of minor practical importance for the protests, it was covered with nationalist symbols and flags displaying affirmations with Nazi insignia to shed the territory in a particular political light.⁴³ The deliberate use of the town hall to shape images about the political nature of the protests could be misleading though.

 Kyiv Post, “EuroMaidan doctors tend to protest,” 7 February 2014.  Interview with Maidan participant quoted in: Otrishchenko, Natalia. Beyond the Square. The Real and the Symbolic Landscapes of the Euromaidan. In Marples et al, eds, Ukraine’s Euromaidan, 152.  On the nationalist and violent prone groups on the Maidan, see Onuch, Olga. Maidans Past and Present: Comparing the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan. In Marples et al, eds, Ukraine’s Euromaidan, 27– 58. Also, on the same matter, see participant and historian William Risch. EuroRevolution: A Historian’s Street-Side Observations. In Marples et al, eds, Ukraine’s Euromaidan, 107– 122.  The Day, “A Place for Reason,” 2 September 2014.  Mapping the different units of the counter-space in Kyiv at the time: Kyiv Post, 01 January 2014, 3.

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A Space for Unlikely Alliances The fact that elected opposition parties allied with all manner of protesters, from anarchists to nationalists, is the stand-out feature of the protests on Maidan. Differences in ideals between parties and anti-parliamentarian opposition were set aside to work together for the exceptional moment of the occupation. All three opposition parties joined the protests occupying the main square in November. They mobilized for a massive turnout of people each Sunday, and opposition leaders strove for representation on the square by holding speeches on a stage. The struggle to represent the chaotic masses on the square was fought out each Sunday. Throughout the rest of the week, the occupation persisted under sporadic leadership. In this way, the protests on Maidan in 2014 were a combination of both Leipzig’s rhythmic weekly appropriation of the square and the enduring claim to it that was evident in Beijing 1989. A crucial part of the ad hoc infrastructure developed on the square was the newly formed “squads” system. These squads were a paramilitary organization consisting of over 40 smaller groups formed by protesters, anarchists, and party members, particularly from Svoboda and the Right Sector.⁴⁴ Crucially, veterans from the Afghanistan war also took part. Each of these squads took care of a different barricade. They were willing to patrol and defend the square against the police. This inspired a remarkable attitude among protesters: “People saw some months ago, here on the Maidan, that they have some power. And if some bastards will try to take the power from people, people will fight.”⁴⁵ This militant will to endure led to unlikely alliances between self-proclaimed anarchists, groups wearing neo-Nazi symbols, and populist parliamentarian parties such as Svoboda. After the first eviction of the square in December, these very different groups became unified in their cause against Yanukovych and in their objective to defend the square against the police: It would be really dumb if Svoboda would come to Anarchists and go like: You suck, no you suck, so what? There would be a clash on Maidan? We don’t need that […]. Come on; everyone knows here that we all are against a common enemy, which is the corrupt government.⁴⁶

 Interview with an art student on the Maidan under the condition of anonymity.  Interview with an art student on the Maidan under the condition of anonymity. Quote on record.  Interview with a self-proclaimed anarchist on the Maidan on the condition of anonymity. Quote on record.

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Similar to the protests on Tiananmen Square and Nikolaikirchhof, protests on Maidan produced a space where dissenters could turn to. Though motives were varied and an agenda for the time after the protests was lacking, protesters on the square were capable of disrupting the established rule: “When Viktor Yanukovych fled Kyiv in February 2014, the constitutional order was disrupted, and in important aspects, the state ceased to function.”⁴⁷ In its unique local features, protests on Maidan were as radicalized as the Tiananmen protests in 1989, while at the same time reaching out to a Western ideal like the Leipzig protests, and causing a disruption of order comparable to both. This disruption enforced on the Maidan had consequences impossible to anticipate for those starting the protest in November 2013. By February 2014, the political conflict manifesting on the square raised the prospect of a violent outcome: “On the brink of civil war,” titled a magazine distributed among protesters on the square, while nine dead connected to the protests were counted, and hundreds injured, detained or missing.⁴⁸ International diplomats thus rushed to Kyiv, offering mediation.⁴⁹ Yet, the moment of de-control that was fostered through the protests on the square could not be tempered. In a violent night, several hundred people were shot dead defending the square against special forces and the Ukrainian military. Why exactly the square was not raided but was left with a couple of dozen protesters to stand amid the burning leftovers of the counter-space on Maidan is not clear to me. Though Yanukovich had adopted a take no prisoners approach when raiding the square, somewhere someone hesitated to shut down the square for good. Singing religious songs through the night and standing in a circle in the middle of the square, the last remainders of the protests stood their ground until dawn.⁵⁰ In the morning, Yanukovich fled to Russia and Ukraine slipped into a civil war that persists in varying degrees until today. Though nationalist rhetoric and strategies took over after the Maidan protests, the impact of the disruption introduced by protests cannot be limited to

 Paul D’Anieri. Establishing Ukraine’s Fourth Republic: Reform after Revolution. In Beyond the Euromaidan. Comparative Perspectives on Advancing Reform in Ukraine, Henry Hale and Robert Orttung (eds.). Palo Alto (Stanford University Press, 2016), 3.  Yanukovych in a speech to parliament on 29 January 2014.  Kyiv Post, 9 February 2014.  Time. “The Maidan’s Last Stand: Ukraine’s Protesters Resist Police Crackdown.” https://time. com/8128/kiev-protests-maidan-europe-yanukovych/. (29 March 2020).

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national borders. “Not only did these events make Putin look weak,”⁵¹ as noted by Hale, they also opened up old division lines in shaping today’s world order. The subsequent actions taken by the Russian government solidified a critical stance against the interests of the West, engendering anti-liberal regimes in former Soviet states and, in particular, in Russia.⁵² With Russia again heading an anti-Western pole in world politics, the local protests on Maidan had visible impacts that still shape global affairs today. But European history has also been shaped significantly by Kyiv 2014. The fact that the call for solidarity by protests on the Maidan remained without a response across Europe indicates that the integrative growth of the European Union may have reached its limits. People on the Maidan wore banners with symbols of the European Union. They thus displayed their imagined political sense of belonging, while no European demonstration of such community made headlines at the time. Europe, as an idea of transnational community, was promoted and desired on the Maidan but was not shared by civil society in the West. In conclusion, it can be argued that protests seizing the Maidan contributed to a particular form of globalization from below and needs to be seen in a global context that reaches back to 2011. Situating the Maidan in such a global setting breaks with most prominent telos of globalization, often termed “Neoliberalism.” This, again, breaks with the literature on the topic. Transnational perspectives on social movements on the squares and streets enforcing “alter-globalization” still remain to be told from the 1990s on, and rely mostly on experiences drawn from the transatlantic region.⁵³ In consequence, mobilizations in and around 2011 were mostly thought to have been caused by the changing economic conditions for a new global generation, with sharply rising social inequality

 Henry Hale. How nationalism and machine politics mix in Russia. In The New Russian Nationalism. Imperialism, Ethnicity and Authoritarianism 2000 – 15. Pal Kolstø and Helge Blakkisrud (eds.). Edinburgh (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 243.  Laurelle, Marlene. Russia as an anti-liberal European civilization. In Kolstø et al, eds, The New Russian Nationalism, 275 – 297.  As argued in this book, the heterogeneity and lose organization of protests in 1989 was already operating within the mode of the ten years later celebrated as the “post-modern prince” of Seattle 1999. See Gill, Stephen. Towards a Postmodern Prince? The Battle of Seattle as a Moment in the New Politics of Globalization. In Millenium: Journal of International Studies 29:1 (2000): 131– 140; Falk, Richard. Anarchism without ‘Anarchism’: Searching for Progressive Politics in the Early 21st Century. In Millenium: Journal of International Studies 39:2 (2010): 381– 298. This ‘Anarchy’ and global reach of the dissenting squares in 1989 contrasts the telos that alter-globalization movements at the end of the 1990s were the starting point for contemporary “global” protests. See, for instance, della Porta, Donatella and Tarrow, Sidney (eds.). Transnational Protest & Global Activism. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004.

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worldwide.⁵⁴ While these findings will matter for any analysis of discontentment that also led to protests in Kyiv, bundling together shared causes for protests under the banner of alter-globalization against “Neoliberalism” runs the risk of restricting attention to superficial similarities. Analysis could then lose touch with the crucial differences in developments and local features of protests in a global moment, just like much of the literature on 1989 did. The Maidan protests offer manifold insights into how seizing the square today is shaped by regional cultures and cleavages while responding to global developments. Instead of interpreting protests on the squares according to ready-made ideas about world affairs, interpretations based on concrete insights into the nature of counter-spaces are needed. In this way, the squares can be understood, epistemically, as windows into contemporary globalization. Each window will provide insight into different aspects and angles on globalization and its discontents. Taken together, they form a kaleidoscope of contested globalizations as seen from the squares.

Towards a Contemporary History of Seizing the Square One of the key theoretical insights emerging from the evidence provided here concerns the mode of globalization that is enforced by seizing the square. If, as argued, protests seizing the square are first and foremost disruptive events, the outcomes of such protests are not predictable. Globalization is then not shaped by agents of democracy on the square working towards any goal, nor leaving a specific point in history behind. the global impacts of protests on city squares are far more open to interpretation. Consequently, the present work has sought to avoid situating the protests of 1989 within any teleology, whether it be called modernization, democratization, or Westernization. With the rejection of inherent goals, the SpaceTime enforced on the square is to be understood as a fragmented yet unifying process that shares broad patterns along with local particularities and differing outcomes. If indeed globalization does not lead towards any defined goal, the consideration of time and hence a diachronic comparison of protests seizing the square becomes complicated. Once protests are not situated on a timeline developing in a specific direction, outbreaks of dissent only offer insights into a certain moment in time. One way of dealing with a global history of protests on the squares

 Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century. Also, see Burawoy, Michael. Facing an unequal World. In Current Sociology. 63:1 (2014) 5 – 34.

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is thus to compare those moments in which global rhythms and interactions intensify and synchronize. As argued here, 1989 was one such global moment, leading to a shared SpaceTime for protests in Beijing and Leipzig. Arguably, such a moment was also at hand in 2011. How these two moments and the respective counter-spaces produced on the squares can be compared diachronically is far from an easy question to answer. While contemporary protests may refer to protests in 1989 as a “marker” for shared memories, the importance of 1989 in “making” the global moment in 2011 can be questioned.⁵⁵ One way to relate the SpaceTime of 1989 with that of 2011 without falling into a recycled telos might be to account for the diverging and yet at times synchronous rhythms of globalization across world-regions.⁵⁶ Learning more about different rhythms of time around the world and the reasons for their convergence at moments like 1989 and 2011 may allow for the writing of global histories of protests seizing the square without hypothesizing a general line of development. Further research will also need to show how rhythms before and after global moments gave rise to the production of the SpaceTime in 1989 or 2011. To the political sciences, it will be of interest how exactly a new order is established after the disruption of the old one. How does the synchronization of rhythm in a global moment break up again into diverging orders like in East Germany and China? History writing, on the other hand, will be interested in connecting diachronic events and narrating the time in between global moments such as those in 1989 and 2011. The difficulty here is to account for the complexity of any global developments that would allow for a comprehensive narration of the early twenty-first century while not losing interest in the histories unfolding on the ground. Where, exactly, is it mandatory to draw the lines between synchronism and distinct rhythms in say China and Europe after 1989? Do the echoes of 1989 hold a similar importance to the more regional rhythms after a global moment? Finally, the study of social movements will certainly dwell on the agency of those who set up spaces of dissent. How far can protests enforce moments of disruption and thus shape globalization from below? Is there a way to compose distinct rhythms so they fall in line across world regions? These are only the most urgent questions that emerge after the findings presented here. In fact, one crucial finding of this book is that a genuinely global history of protests seizing the squares is still to be written.  An optimistic take would argue for a “long” 1989, see Kosicki, Piotr H. and Kyrill Kunakhovic (eds.). The Long 1989. Decades of Global Revolution. CEU Press, 2019.  On the idea of rhythm and time in a spatial perspective, see Rau, Susanne. Rhytmusanalyse nach Lefebvre. In Taktungen und Rhythmen, Sabine Schmolinsky, Diana Hitzke, and Heiner Stahl (eds.). Berlin: De Gruyter 2018, 9 – 24.

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This invitation to write a global history of protests seizing the square needs to avoid any renewed teleology. The fact that people in 2011 again turned to the squares does not lead to the conclusion that democracy is underway. As already seen in the aftermath of the Tiananmen protests in 1989, also protests such as those on Maidan, Tahrir, Gezi, or even the Occupy! movement all raise doubts about the capacity of protests on city squares to spur on democratization. Since protests on the squares engendered disorder and change around the world, the uncontrollable dynamics engendered globalization as a pluralistic encounter. Recent protests on squares can be described, first of all, as a concrete form of dissatisfactions that, in the end, translated into diverging, and at times repressive, reform projects. Instead of assembling contemporary protests into narrations of teleological democratization, particularities and actual impacts of each seized square must be considered. Diverging aspirations lay within the political nature of the seized squares. Together, they inform the conflictual SpaceTime they emerge in.⁵⁷ For instance, the role of religion varied within the protests in 1989 and 2012. It played its role on Tahrir,⁵⁸ while not having any larger role in OWS protests forming from New York City across the transatlantic region. Then again, in 1989, the connection of protests to the church is apparent, while religion on Tiananmen Square does not seem to have played a major role. In yet another angle of interest, the roles that gender played in Tahrir and Tiananmen offer significant local differences that have to be accounted for. Maybe most importantly, the whole matter of violence makes the dynamics on the squares quite different around the world. One ruling regime may be willing to enforce military violence to shut down protests; other regimes may not be able to act with such open aggression. Specific circumstances may thus lend protests more options to produce an impactful counter-space in one regime than in another. Such particularities are of interest for any global history that wants to operate beyond abstract concepts limiting its analysis to general (and often enough Western biased) concepts such as “Neoliberalism” or “Democratization.” The political nature of the square, its political culture and impact, may depend on context more heavily than on any

 Thus, a global history of the seized city squares may very well contribute to a specific line of sociological thought that accentuates conflicts. See Schlichte, Klaus. Der Streit der Legitimitäten. Der Konflikt als Grund einer Historischen Soziologie des Politischen. Zeitschrift für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, 1:1 (2012): 9 – 43.  On the role of religion in protests on the square, see for example, Juergensmeyer, Mark, Dinah Griego, and John Soboslai (eds.). God in the Tumult of the Global Square. Religion in Global Civil Society. University of California Press, 2015.

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more general economic or political trend that might be found to cause protests on the square. The need for plurality in history writing brings about epistemological insecurity. Due to the diverse issues of protests seizing the square in rapidly changing global dynamics, a global history of seizing the square will always be precarious. As it cannot claim to have one true interpretation nor offer the sole explanation for protests on city squares, the history that was presented here and that awaits further development is, in a manner of speaking, always ripe for revision. New local histories added to the ones on Tiananmen, Leipzig, and Kyiv may alter the way the histories of all three have been looked at. Deeper understandings of the various rhythms of globalization may change the global setting the occupied squares were situated in and may change crucial parts of the interpretation presented here. Alternative or complementary primary sources may make the histories of the square as narrated here unsustainable. All these caveats, however, do not undermine the need for the comprehensiveness that was sought here. In a globalizing world under manifold political pressures, and in the revision of much taken-for-granted knowledge, an optimistic take on the capacity of global history writing can claim the following: Inclusive research and critical reflection must be ready to continuously re-learn its own lessons. This self-critical stance is especially important for studying the SpaceTime of those daring to challenge established orders on the squares. Writing about the SpaceTime on the squares stands in contrast to former narrations of certitude, which wished to speak from a more developed point of view than others. In that sense, the city square holds a real, epistemic power, which may bind together so far disconnected histories of civic engagement around the world. Fostering such transcultural understandings of protests on squares can finally translate into a global sociology, informed by political motives and practices appropriating city squares throughout an increasingly interconnected world. By working comparatively and making use of the concepts presented here, ideas regarding protests on the city square can be further developed to serve as analytical tools for contemporary times. More protests can be studied and other questions raised – feeding into a sociology that is as interested in better understanding the particularities as well as in exploring global entanglements of squares seized in times of discontent. As applied here for the global moment of 1989 in China in Germany, a global study of seizing the square has to reveal the patterns in transformations shared around the globe while at the same time being attentive to the local conditions and responses to them. To the latter point, it is important to stress once again that differences are not to be taken as differences of a non-intelligible nature, but as differences that ought to be explicated. That is to say that the local is not to be reified as an exotic

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point of view. Instead, it is to be used to complement a global history that seeks to account for more than the local. Any theory that claims to fully explain the emergence of protests on city squares will, anyways, be undermined by the spontaneity and chaos that comes with such disruptive moments as 1989 and 2011. The unexpected upheaval at the heart of protests on the square stands in contrast to the desire for control and predictability that universal theory strives to achieve. Any theoretical formulation on the relationship between globalization and the occupied squares will need to account for this moment of the unpredictability of its own subject of study. The SpaceTime produced on the squares undermines any abstract space of universal theory-building. It can only be studied starting from the concrete observations on the square, and by uncovering the global linkages that are found to play their role. Motives for protest differ, times change, and common visions for the future remain hard to come by. Seizing the square does not ensure a controlled shift to a preformulated new order and it defies universal theory. Such considerations of heterogeneity and of an epistemological nature should not obscure the global elements within the seized squares. These global elements can be direct linkages such as the overlap of activists on different squares, explicit references to one another, or the use of established transnational networks. But global linkages may also be more subtle. Like the iconography of the occupied square that travels via audiovisual media and digital lines from one place to another, thus shaping common practices and beliefs on the occupied square – or it can be a diffusion of embodied practices from one alter-globalization protest to the next. By adding new histories of protests seizing the square, and by asking more precise questions about their global linkages, we will be able to learn more about the mode of globalization that evokes and responds to protests on the square. In return for giving up celebrating protests on city squares as a liberating force and letting go of the positivist aim of gaining generalizable knowledge about it, studies of the SpaceTime on the square may serve as a common ground to account for the multiple narrations of history today. That SpaceTime is openended without a specific direction or given content. It thus may be suitable as a platform for exchange and dialogue across the often still regionally determined epistemological boundaries of history writing. The most important conclusion about the SpaceTime of 1989 is that, in certain moments, a space of disruptive chaos is produced for new things to emerge. The seized city squares of 1989 were precisely this: a space for new politics to emerge. But new horizons may only become visible with the collapse of old ones – and sometimes the fall of the old already consumes the opportunity for anything truly different to materialize. Seizing the square should hence not

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be a question of political belief, nor one of moral contemplation. Seizing the square merely means to prioritize the chance for altering the order of things over the suggestive force of safety inherent in what already is. As Foucault put it in his reflections on counter-spaces, it is not so much the moral question of the desirability of space diverging from the norm that should be important to civilization, it is the question of maintaining the possibility for such counter-spaces to exist in the first place. Because without them, “dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure, and the police takes the place of pirates.”⁵⁹

 Foucault, Other Spaces, 27.

Acknowledgements Producing this book was a collective effort. It would not exist without the interest and comments of so many people I came in contact with by travelling, presenting, protesting, and discussing. Special thanks for vital support during the course of my work, more or less chronologically, to: Mark Juergensmeyer, who had an open ear in the very first stage of this endeavor. Dominic Sachsenmaier, who was the supervisor a PhD student can only wish for. Selçuk Esenbel, who liked and supported my work instantly. Klaus Schlichte, who helped with constructive comments. Thanks to the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences for financing the research period of this book. Thanks to my caseworkers at Jobcenter Neukölln and Arbeitsagentur Berlin Süd for letting me finish it. Thanks to my friends in China for helping me find orientation in a foreign world. To the DAAD for financing the extended research stay in Beijing. Thanks to the service at IISH and Saskia Paul at ABL for finding the files I needed in the archives. To the SpatioTemporality research group for the instant interest in my thesis and help in publishing it. To the reviewer for the thorough comments on the script. Thanks also to my parents, for they only met because they, too, sought pirate adventures. And to Anna, who was always there for me when I got up from my desk after too many hours of writing. You are my partner in love and thought.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682601-007

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227

List of abbreviations In order of appearance: NGO U.S. CCP GDR SED IISH ABL RVG IR FRG CPSU NSDAP FAZ LVZ ASUCUB USSR CCTV CNN SZ OWS UEFA NATO

Non-government organization United States Chinese Communist Party German Democratic Republic Socialist Unity Party (“Sozialistische Einheits Partei”) International Institute of Social History Archiv Bürgerbewegung Leipzig Robert-Havemann-Gesellschaft International Relations Federal Republic of Germany Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Leipziger Volkszeitung Autonomous Student Union of Beijing Universities and Colleges Union of Soviet Socialists Republics Chinese Central Television Cable News Network Süddeutsche Zeitung Occupy Wall Street Union of European Football Associations North Atlantic Treaty Organization

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682601-009

Index Beijing 11 – 16, 24 f., 29 f., 38, 43 – 45, 48, 50, 52, 60 – 66, 71, 73 – 75, 77, 86 – 90, 93 – 107, 110, 113, 115, 118, 120 – 128, 130 – 141, 161 – 163, 168 – 173, 178 f., 184 – 186, 200, 204, 209, 228 Chai Ling 87, 100, 103, 105, 107, 122, 135 f., 141, 160, 170, 172 f., 178 China 6, 9, 11 – 13, 15, 17 f., 24 – 29, 32, 40, 42, 44 – 55, 58 – 69, 71 – 77, 86 – 90, 93 – 95, 97 – 116, 118, 120 f., 123 f., 126 – 129, 131 f., 138, 159, 161, 167, 170 – 173, 178, 180, 184 – 186, 194, 204, 206, 209 – Chinese 6, 11, 13, 24 – 27, 29, 48 – 51, 58, 60, 63 – 65, 69, 73 – 75, 86 – 88, 90, 93, 97, 99 – 104, 106 – 108, 110, 113, 115 – 118, 120 f., 125 – 132, 136, 161, 171, 186, 228 – People’s Republic 60 – 62, 65, 67, 69, 89, 128 f. – PRC 67, 89, 107 Chinese Communist Party 11, 53, 60, 107, 228 CCP 11, 25, 46, 49, 53, 58 – 60, 62, 64 – 66, 69, 87, 118, 120, 122, 125, 127, 130, 179 f., 185 f., 228 City 1, 3, 8, 11 f., 15, 33 f., 39 f., 45, 51, 57, 79, 86, 90, 95, 100, 102 f., 110, 122 f., 127 f., 130, 133 f., 136 – 139, 144, 147, 153, 156, 158 f., 168, 174, 176 f., 182, 184, 186 – 188, 190, 192, 196, 198, 203, 205 – 207 – city center 2, 4, 16, 22, 91 f., 104 f., 109, 118 f., 123, 125, 132, 143 – 147, 150, 155 – 158, 163, 176, 183, 190, 192 Civil Society 7, 9, 11 – 13, 18, 45, 66 f., 71 – 75, 77, 79, 86, 89 f., 180, 185 f., 188, 194, 196, 202, 205 Cold War 16 f., 24, 45, 58 – 61, 63, 65, 75, 118, 184, 195 Communist Party 47 f., 58, 64, 69 f., 96, 106 f., 228

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110682601-010

Democracy 1, 3, 13, 18, 20, 25 f., 73, 86 – 89, 91, 94, 97 – 99, 101 – 107, 110, 123 f., 126 – 128, 130 – 132, 138 f., 143, 161, 167, 170 – 173, 178, 197, 203, 205 – minzhu 13, 73, 104, 110, 130 Deng 11, 17, 25, 47 f., 50 f., 58 – 60, 64 f., 69, 73, 75, 86 f., 89, 99 f., 102, 105 – 108, 114, 179 f. Erich Honecker 12, 75, 92, 117 Eurocentrism 17 f. – Eurocentric 8, 14, 18 Europe 1, 3 f., 8 f., 12 – 14, 17, 21, 24, 28, 30, 42, 47, 53, 59 – 66, 69, 79, 84, 86, 89 – 93, 98 f., 106 f., 111, 114, 184 – 187, 196, 202, 204 European 3 f., 9, 17 f., 20 f., 23 – 25, 27, 30, 63, 65, 92, 98 f., 106, 195, 197 – 199, 202, 228 Foucault, Michel 35, 208 Frank Richter 142 f., 149, 174, 182 German Democratic Republic 12, 20, 55, 65, 75, 228 – East Germany 12, 20, 22, 44, 47, 53, 57 – 60, 62 f., 65, 67 f., 70 – 74, 77 – 79, 106, 108, 110, 113 – 116, 119 f., 147 f., 159, 180, 182 – 186, 204 – GDR 12, 20 – 22, 46 f., 53 – 59, 61 f., 67, 70, 72 f., 75, 77 f., 80, 83 – 86, 90 – 92, 108, 110 – 116, 118, 120, 144, 148 – 151, 166, 174, 181, 183, 228 Germany 4, 12 f., 15, 19 – 24, 28 f., 32, 40, 42, 44 f., 53, 55, 58, 62, 65, 68 – 71, 75 – 78, 84, 108, 113, 115, 118, 120 f., 148 f., 159, 176, 184 – 186, 192, 194, 206, 228 – German 3, 5, 19 – 24, 29 f., 55 f., 58, 60, 62 – 65, 67, 69 f., 72 f., 78, 91, 108 f., 111 – 113, 115, 118, 136, 147, 149, 165, 182, 184, 186 Glasnost 12, 59, 63, 65, 75, 115 f., 185

230

Index

Global 1 – 4, 6 – 19, 22 f., 27 – 34, 38, 41 – 47, 49 f., 53, 55, 57 – 59, 66 – 69, 71, 73 – 75, 77, 83, 89, 93, 97, 99 f., 104, 106 – 109, 111, 116, 120, 132, 180, 184 – 197, 202 – 207 – globally 10, 12, 19, 46, 66, 71, 92, 114, 185, 188, 193, 196 Globalization 1 f., 4 – 8, 10 f., 14, 17 f., 27, 41, 44 – 47, 53, 55, 58, 75 f., 184, 186 – 191, 193 – 196, 202 – 207 – accelerating globalization 4, 7 f., 12, 15 f., 33, 45, 71, 188 – 191 – globalizing 1 f., 47, 55, 180, 206 Global Moment 1 f., 7, 10 f., 30 – 36, 38 – 40, 43 – 45, 66, 77 f., 86, 93 f., 99, 107 – 109, 113 f., 116 f., 120, 141, 153, 159 f., 168, 179 f., 182, 186 – 190, 203 f., 206 Global Perspective 2, 4, 6 – 10, 14 f., 18 f., 27 – 31, 41 – 43, 46, 98 f., 194 Goddess of Democracy 103, 132, 138 – 140 Gorbi 46, 60, 77, 100 f., 121, 160

– Modernization 11, 16, 19, 24 – 28, 41, 48 – 50, 52, 73, 96, 98, 203

Hu Yaobang 87, 90, 95 – 97, 122 – 125, 128 f., 133, 161, 169, 178

Perestroika 12, 60, 63 – 65, 75, 101, 108, 115 f., 185 Protest 1 – 16, 18, 21 f., 24 – 30, 32 – 34, 36, 38 – 44, 52 f., 59, 61, 65, 67, 69, 71, 75, 77, 79, 82, 84 – 87, 89 – 93, 95 – 126, 128 – 133, 135, 137 – 139, 141 – 207 – Protest cycle 3, 190 – Protesters 1, 4, 11, 14, 32, 77, 84, 91 f., 95, 97 – 102, 105, 107 f., 112 – 114, 116, 118 f., 122 – 125, 127 – 131, 133, 137 – 141, 144 – 149, 151, 153 – 160, 162 f., 165, 172 – 176, 178 f., 181 – 184, 198 – 201 – Protesting 34, 39, 79, 90, 111, 116 f., 120, 135, 138, 151, 154, 156, 160, 168, 177 – 179, 181, 184 f., 195, 209

Katharina Führer

156

Lefebvre, Henri 16, 33 – 41, 193, 204 Leipzig 2, 7, 11 – 16, 18, 21 f., 24, 29 f., 38, 43 – 45, 57, 66, 73, 77 – 83, 86, 90 – 93, 107, 109 – 121, 141 – 159, 163, 165 – 169, 173 – 178, 181 – 186, 200 f., 204, 206, 228 Local 3 f., 10, 12, 15, 22, 29 f., 32, 38, 41 – 43, 64, 73, 75, 79, 81, 91, 103, 108, 110, 163, 166, 176 f., 185, 188, 195, 201 – 203, 205 – 207 – translocal 10, 38, 93, 185 Maidan 1, 4, 193 – 203, 205 – Euromaidan 37, 193 f., 196, 198 f., 201 Mao 46 f., 129, 138 Maoism 65, 74 Modern 6, 8 f., 13, 18 – 20, 24 – 26, 28, 68, 73, 87, 97, 128, 131, 137, 189, 202 – Modernity 24, 26 – 29

National 1 f., 4 – 10, 16, 18 – 24, 26, 28 – 32, 38, 41 – 48, 52 f., 64, 68 f., 71, 83, 89, 92, 96 f., 102 – 104, 127 – 130, 132, 144, 147, 161, 187 f., 190, 197, 199, 202 – transnational 3 f., 8, 10, 16, 18 f., 21, 29, 38, 40 – 43, 46, 66, 71, 74, 79, 91, 115, 185, 190, 193 f., 197, 202, 207 Nikolaikirche 12, 22, 73, 80 – 84, 86, 90 – 93, 111, 113, 115 f., 118, 141 f., 145, 151 – 153, 155, 157, 163 – 165, 181 f., 188 Nikolaikirchhof 14, 39, 77, 82 – 86, 90 – 93, 109, 111 – 113, 116, 118, 120 f., 141 f., 144 – 160, 163 – 168, 174 – 176, 178, 181 f., 185 f., 201 Occupy 3, 118, 188, 190 – 192, 228 – Occupy! 3, 188, 190, 196, 205 – OWS 188, 190 f., 205, 228

Rau, Susanne 33 – 36, 38, 149, 198, 204 Regional 5, 14, 24, 27, 32, 38, 42, 45, 58, 104, 120, 181, 185 f., 196 f., 203 f. – transregional 6, 10, 12 Revolution 3, 8 – 11, 18 – 23, 33, 46, 48 f., 52, 54, 57, 60 f., 64, 66 f., 69, 71 – 73,

Index

88, 108, 111, 119, 128, 132, 143, 146, 150, 164, 183 f., 194, 197, 199, 201, 204 – revolutionary 18, 27 f., 47, 60, 97, 99, 115, 128, 138, 145, 188 – revolutions 3, 8 – 10, 23, 37 Samizdat 78 – 81, 83 f., 92 f., 110, 114, 143 f. Seize 1, 4 f., 8, 34, 36, 178, 184, 186, 190 – 192 – seized 1 f., 10 f., 19, 30, 33 – 37, 39 f., 43, 66, 97, 120 – 122, 133, 155, 159 f., 180, 185 – 188, 190, 192 – 194, 197, 205 – 207 – seizing 1 – 4, 7 – 10, 14 f., 27, 32 – 38, 40, 44, 75 f., 86, 99, 124, 130 – 132, 137, 147, 155, 159 f., 164, 168, 178, 185 – 194, 196 f., 202 – 208 Socialist Unity Party 12, 63, 67, 228 – SED 12, 20, 59, 61 f., 65 – 67, 70, 72, 115, 117 – 120, 144 f., 147, 173, 180, 182 – 186, 228 Soviet 9, 21, 46 f., 53, 57, 59 – 65, 67, 70 f., 75, 79, 84, 91, 98 – 102, 104, 108, 114 – 116, 131, 194 – 196, 202, 228 Space 1 f., 4 – 19, 22 f., 25 – 29, 32 – 44, 67, 71 f., 77, 82 – 86, 91, 109, 121 f., 127 – 129, 133 f., 136, 139 – 141, 144 f., 147, 153 – 155, 159, 162 f., 166 – 168, 174 f., 182, 184 – 188, 190 – 193, 196 – 201, 204, 207 f. – counter-space 2, 7, 10, 16, 33 – 36, 39, 43, 45, 121, 133 f., 141, 147, 153 f., 160, 168 f., 184, 186, 189 – 191, 193, 199, 201, 203 – 205, 208 SpaceTime 2, 7 f., 11, 13 – 16, 18 f., 28 – 30, 34 f., 42 – 45, 76, 120 f., 184 – 190, 193 f., 196, 203 – 207

231

Square 1 – 16, 19, 22, 24 f., 27, 29 f., 32 – 45, 66, 73, 75 – 77, 82 – 86, 91 f., 95 – 105, 111, 113 – 116, 118, 120 – 142, 144 – 147, 149 – 173, 176 – 180, 182, 184 – 194, 196 – 208 State 3, 6 – 9, 11 f., 21, 23 – 28, 30, 33, 37 – 39, 41, 45 – 49, 51 – 56, 62, 64, 66 – 68, 70 – 75, 77 f., 80 f., 85 f., 88 – 98, 101 – 104, 106 f., 109, 111 – 114, 117, 119 – 121, 124 – 126, 130 f., 136 f., 142 f., 145 – 148, 150 – 155, 162 f., 165, 168, 171, 173 f., 178 f., 181 – 184, 186, 190, 195, 201 f., 228 – Nation state 7 f., 21, 23 f., 28, 32, 41, 66, 68 Tiananmen 11, 13, 24 – 26, 29, 49, 51, 73 f., 77, 86 – 90, 93, 95 – 97, 99 – 108, 116 f., 121 – 141, 144, 159 – 162, 166, 169 – 172, 180, 186, 188, 199, 201, 205 f. – Tiananmen Square 2, 11, 13 f., 24 – 26, 29, 39, 45, 52 f., 65, 73, 77, 86 f., 93, 97, 99 – 102, 104 – 108, 110, 116, 120 – 137, 139 – 142, 145, 154, 159 – 163, 166 – 168, 170, 172, 178 f., 184 – 186, 201, 205 Walter Ulbricht 61 f. World War 68, 77 – Second World War 23, 63, 68 – 70 – World War Two 60 Wu’er Kaixi 107, 167 f., 170 – 173, 178 Zhao Ziyang 50, 52, 58, 89, 94, 101 – 103, 137, 179