Light Festival In Leipzig, 9th October 2009 Editorial Image

Light festival in Leipzig, Germany - 20th anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution on October 9th 1989. After prayers for peace in four Leipzig churches on 9 October 1989, some 70,000 people gathered in the city centre carrying candles in order to demonstrate for their human rights and more freedom in the GDR, in spite of the threat that police would be ordered to open fire on them. Thousands of police and soldiers were in position, ready to break up the demonstration by force, but everything proceeded peacefully. As a result these events, which came to be described as the Peaceful Revolution, became a major milestone on the way to the fall of the Berlin Wall, to German reunification and to a unified Europe.