The record
Two segments the GDR gave away free to a Hungarian opposition party weeks before it dissolved — which vanished from a Buda park in 2004 and turned up in the garden of the charity that housed the refugees of 1989.
Hungary opened the Iron Curtain on 27 June 1989, months before the Wall came down, and the Austrian-Hungarian border became the way out for thousands of East Germans that summer. At home the party had already turned: János Kádár was removed, a reform wing took over, and new parties were permitted, among them the Alliance of Free Democrats, founded in 1988.
Expecting to do well in the first free elections since 1947, the Free Democrats announced a public festival on Heroes' Square in Budapest for 31 March 1990, and wanted pieces of the Berlin Wall there as a sign that freedom had won. They approached Limex, the East Berlin firm handling the sales, and balked at a price of several thousand marks a segment. So they wrote to the GDR culture minister asking for twelve segments free of charge. The request reached the prime minister, Hans Modrow, two weeks before the Hungarian election, by which time Modrow himself had only days left in office after the East German poll of 18 March. The foreign ministry was asked for an opinion. The official who wrote it had little enthusiasm for a group the old cadres declined to recognise as a party at all, but advised approval on foreign policy grounds, since the applicants' insistence could not be brushed off. Two segments were agreed instead of twelve, and the newly elected GDR government formally resolved it on 6 April 1990 — after the festival.
The segments came anyway. Gábor Demszky of the Free Democrats became mayor of Budapest that year, and the gift was set up on the hill in the Tabán park in Buda, where it stood until 2004 and then disappeared. In 2009 the district administration could say only that the pieces had been carted away; when and where, nobody knew. They were traced with the help of the German embassy in Budapest to the garden of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service, where they had been erected in 2004 at the instigation and under the direction of Father Imre Kozma.
Of all the recipients in this catalogue, the charity has the strongest claim to have helped cause the event the object commemorates. On 14 August 1989 it opened the first camp for East German refugees, in the garden of the church at Zugliget in Budapest, after the West German embassy had to close through overcrowding; over three months it cared for some 48,600 people. Kozma, who set that camp up, is remembered for the sentence: the gate stands open, and more than that, the heart. The exodus through Hungary is generally counted among the pressures that forced the border open in November, and Helmut Kohl said the first brick of the Wall was knocked out by the Hungarians. German visitors come to the garden to see the segments.
How did it get here?
Two segments granted free of charge by the outgoing GDR government by resolution of 6 April 1990, after a request from the Alliance of Free Democrats for twelve; set up in the Tabán park in Buda in 1990 and moved in 2004 to the garden of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service at the instigation of Father Imre Kozma.
Sources & verification
Hungary: the day the fall of the iron curtain changed history — Sovereign Military Order of Malta ↗
The camp opened at Zugliget on 14 August 1989 and the care of some 48,600 East German refugees over three months.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Milestones — Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta ↗
The charity's own account of its 1989 refugee operation.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide, site entry ↗
Hungary's opening of the Iron Curtain on 27 June 1989 and the political changes that preceded it, the Free Democrats' planned festival of 31 March 1990 and their approach to Limex, the request to the GDR culture minister for twelve free segments and its passage to Hans Modrow, the foreign ministry opinion, the grant of two segments resolved on 6 April 1990, the erection of the gift in the Tabán park until 2004 and its disappearance, and the German embassy's identification of the segments in the garden of the Hungarian Maltese Charity Service, erected there in 2004 under Father Imre Kozma.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide ↗
The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.
Source accessed 2026-09-17 · Source record 161
Last verified: Not yet verified
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