Weekend of Unbounded Freedom

This is an English summary. The full article is only available in German.

More than 2 million GDR tourists visited Western Germany this weekend, despite enormous traffic jams and hour-long waiting at the border posts. In Helmstedt, the traffic jam extended for 40 miles.

Town councils, who are responsible for paying out the DM 100 welcome money, hat to borrow money because they had not expected such an influx of tourists. Only a fraction of the visitors, 25.000 in all, want to stay in the West.

Since Thursday evening, the GDR supplied 4.3 million citizens with tourist visa, and about 2 million of them visited West Berlin.

The GDR foreign minister, Keßler, said on TV that border patrol have been ordered to protect the border without the use of firearms (which was common before).