Our Museum is hosting the travelling exhibition of the Pan European Picnic ´89  Foundation from July 17, 2002 until mid-September.

The exhibition entitled Pan European Picnic ´89, is the House of Terror Museum´s first temporary exhibition, which was opened with due solemnity by József Szájer, Vice-President of the National Assembly, László Tokés, Bishop of the Királyhágómellék Bishopric of the Hungarian Reformed Church, as well as Imre Pozsgay, former Minister of State. His son György Habsburg, who attended the opening together with numerous illustrious guests, represented the Picnic´s one-time patron, Ottó Habsburg.

Thirteen years have passed since the time when at 3 PM, August 10, 1989 several hundred citizens of the German Democratic Republic broke through the Austrian-Hungarian border near the city of Sopron. They breached the gate of the ˝iron curtain˝ in order to travel on from Austria to the German Federal Republic. The Hungarian Democratic Forum´s Debrecen branch and the political parties comprising the Sopron Oppositional Round-Table organized the Pan European Picnic, where this momentous event took place. Its purpose was to popularize the dismantling of the iron curtain and the notion of joining Europe and making the borders symbolic and passable.
It was not only the tens of thousands of people, demolishing the border and celebrating the dawning of freedom, who lent a helping hand to the escapees; even the border guards smoothed their progress. This sensational, spectacular and mass flight, as well as the government decision of September 10, was the deciding factor for the democratic transformation of the GDR, which lead to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.
The exhibition illustrates the history of the 1989 ˝break-through˝ by way of contemporary photographs, including the antecedents and consequences of the Picnic.