Deutsch 102 am Aquinas College

One of the first events that lead to the fall of the wall was the Sinatra Doctrine which allowed Eastern Bloc governments to make their own decisions to a greater extent. This event was very important because it lead to another that caused the fall; that being the opening of the Hungarian border. The opening of the Hungarian border allowed for thousands of Germans living in East Germany to flee to the west. At that point many attempts were made to stop this, but they were futile. Finally churches throughout East Germany rallied with peaceful protests that lead to replacement of the leader of East Germany with a more liberal communist. On the day that the wall fell one East German reporter was questioned when the borders were going to be opened. After being flustered over the question, the reporter answered that it was immediately. This caused hundreds of thousands to flood the walls, while all the guards at the wall had no idea what was going on. The moment was tense because the guards had been trained for their whole life to shoot to kill when anyone had tried to escape, however thankfully there was not a massacre.

Sigmund Jähn was the first German in space. Sigmund was an East German Cosmonaut. Growing up he wanted to become a printer, but became a pilot in the military. He then studied at Gagarin Military Air Academy in the Soviet Union. In 1976 Jähn was selected to train as the first cosmonaut in the Soviet Intercosmos program On Aug. 26, 1978, Jähn lifted off with Soviet cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky aboard Soyuz 31. On the space station Salyut, he conducted scientific experiments before returning to Earth on Soyuz 29 on Sept. 3, 1978. East Germany viewed Sigmund as a hero.