East Germany

Action of the World Council of Churches more than four decades ago raised the profile of environmental issues, and in the process helping to galvanise the ecological movement in communist East Germany, says Ekklesia associate Dr Stephen Brown. This became the soil for the independent ecology groups in the 1980s as one of the forms of dissent that culminated in East Germany’s 1989 peaceful revolution.

Germany's biggest Protestant gathering has opened in Dresden with calls to learn from the experiences of non-violence in the former GDR.

The churches contributed to the peaceful revolution in central and eastern Europe as well as to the ending of the apartheid regime in southern Africa, says Konrad Raider. Now the ecumenical movement has accepted the challenge to overcome violence as its special vocation.

The political and social shock waves caused by weeks of pro-democracy protests in East Germany followed by the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, were felt around the world, says Stephen Brown. They still resonate today, and have important theological implications.