Austria–Hungary border

Burgenland changes sides

Burgenland was for centuries part of Hungary, though settled largely by Germans under a mostly Magyar ruling class. After World War I the mainly German-speaking parts of western Hungary were ceded to Austria and became Burgenland, a federal state of Austria from 1921. It was carved from parts of four old Hungarian counties.^[1]

Hungary kept most of the area around Sopron (Ödenburg) after a plebiscite in 1921. That cost Burgenland its natural capital and cut its north–south links, and Eisenstadt became the capital in 1925.^[1] From 1938 to 1945, after the Anschluss, Burgenland was split between two provinces of Nazi Germany, and it became an Austrian state again in 1945.^[1]

The first hole in the Iron Curtain

By 1989 Hungary’s western border was part of the Iron Curtain. On 2 May 1989 Hungary began taking down the electronic surveillance equipment and barbed wire along its western border.^[2]

On 19 August 1989 the Hungarian Democratic Forum and the Paneuropean Union held a “Pan-European Picnic” near Sopron to demonstrate for open borders, with the MEP Otto von Habsburg and Hungarian minister of state Imre Pozsgay as patrons. The border was symbolically opened for the event, word spread among East Germans waiting in Hungary for a chance to flee, and about 700 of them crossed into Austria.^[2]

On 25 August Hungary announced it would open its border to East German refugees, and did so on the night of 10–11 September 1989. The decision forced East Germany’s government to change its travel rules.^[2]