Prayer for Peace in Leipzig

Crowds, hustle, a building with the number 89 illuminated, candles, calmness, peace, smiles, serenity …

24 years have passed since 9^th October 1989 when the Peaceful Revolution took place in Leipzig. About 70,000 protesters took part in that event and gave the decisive impulse for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Twenty years later (2009) Leipzig celebrated this event for the first time. Twice as many people took part in that event than in the Velvet Revolution. Such a successful event gave rise to a tradition called the Festival of Lights.

This year, the 5th Festival of Lights had as its theme the Prague Spring and the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. A delegation from our Church was invited to this important event.

The festival program started - just like 24 years ago – with a service at St. Nicholas Church. Thanks to the General Secretary of Gustav-Adolf-Werk, Enno Haakse, who looked after us the entire time, we were invited by the St. Nicholas parish to participate in the service. More than 1400 people listened in a crowded church, eagerly and attentively, to the sermon given by moderator Joel Ruml about the hunger for Gods' word (Amos 8:11). During the service we spoke, together with a student from Slovakia, briefly about the experiences of our families and our Churches with the past regime.

After the service, the writer and dissident Milan Uhde spoke in church about his experiences with the past regime and about the current situation in the Czech Republic.

The most eagerly expected event, for which over 30,000 people gathered in the square, was the Festival of Lights. The highlight of this celebration was the theater play about a young couple of doctors, who were affected by the backstabbing of communism and its later life in a reunited Germany.

At the conclusion of the whole event the audience lit a huge “89” with candles. The place was crowded, no matter which direction you looked. In order to ignite our candle, we had to work our way through the crowd. To push, in joyful struggle, towards the creation of a joint work of remembrance, was a very powerful experience.

Alžběta Matějovská