In August 1989, the Iron Curtain began to crack. Thousands of East Germans were overstaying their summer vacations near Lake Balaton, resolved not to return. Fearing the coming winter and their resources already stretched thin by Romanian refugees, the Hungarian government had to act. The solution took the form of a ‘pan-European picnic’ near the Austrian–Hungarian border town of Sopron, which would temporarily suspend border controls and give the East Germans a chance to flee to the West. A German refugee crisis in the heart of Europe seems incredible today. But reconstructed mortality data shines a light on the dire state of East German health in the 1980s.
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