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'Learn Polish'

October 17, 2014

'Learn Polish' was one of the graffiti slogans that appeared in East Germany in the early 1980s. The Polish trade union movement Solidarity encouraged the opposition there to press for political reforms.

https://p.dw.com/p/1DVaJ

The call was aimed at breaking the silence about the imposition of martial law in Poland in the East German media in 1981. Until then, there had been solidarity with the Polish people. The hunger strike by some 300 prisoners at the Stasi jail in Cottbus in support of the Polish trade union movement shortly after the beginning of martial law in Poland was another instance.

15.10.2014 DW Doku Lernt Polnisch Gefaengnis 1
Nearly 20 men were locked up in this part of the former Stasi prison in Cottbus were. Former inmates bought it 10 years ago and converted into a memorial.

But there was little contact between the Polish and East German oppositions and the courage of East Germans has been forgotten over the years. Civil rights in the East Germany of the 1980 talked about the "Polish revolution" and hoped to bring about a similar upheaval in their own country. As we know today, they were a bit premature.

Roland Jahn, the current head of the Stasi Records Authority, was arrested in 1982 for fixing a Polish flag with the inscription "Solidarity with the Polish people" to his bike. Unlike in Poland, where Solidarity was a mass movement that also received financial help from the West, the East German opposition could not count on a lot of support and therefore remained quite insignificant. It limited itself to buying the release of political prisoners from jail and offering them a new life in the West.

15.10.2014 DW Doku Lernt Polnisch Neujahrskarte
East German opposition activist Thomas Kretschmer made batik cloths made with the inscription "Learn Polish" from bed sheets and sent them as a New Year cards. He got four years in prison.

Rosalia Romaniec (DW) and Magdalena Gwóźdź (TVP) tell the story of the early years of a movement that ultimately laid the foundation for the peaceful revolution in East Germany. Twenty-five years later, Polish and East German opposition figures joined hands in Gdansk, the city where it all began.

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The original poster calling for a hunger strike in the Cottbus prison in support of Solidarity in 1981.