Above the bottle you see a poster of the Neckenmarkt Winery Days from 1989 and two maps of the border between Burgenland, Austria and around Sopron, Hungary. The town of Neckenmarkt is also on the map.

Hans Iby is a winemaker from Neckenmarkt. In August 1989, like every year, he and Karl Schöll had organized the Neckenmarkt Winery Days. In the early hours of the morning, they are leaving the winery hall.

“All of a sudden a young guy drops to his knees in front of us and shouts: ‘Where am I?’ […] Because the night before was pretty festive and with lots of wine involved, I thought he probably had a bit too much of that good red Blaufränkisch wine. Karl said to him: ‘Aha, you had a little too much, did you?’ ‘No!’ he says ‘I escaped! Over the border! Where am I?’—‘You’re in Austria.’ That was it. That’s how the wave of refugees started for us here.”

The young man had managed to escape from behind the so-called Iron Curtain—the border that then divided Europe into East and West. After the Second World War, two blocs were formed in Europe—the capitalist, liberal democracies under US influence in the West, and the states ruled by the communist Soviet Union—today Russia—in the East. The conflict between the two blocs was known as the “Cold War”.

The border was heavily surveilled and secured. With time, lots of people tried to escape from the East to the West—a dangerous undertaking that could cost a person their life. By the late 1980s, the communist stronghold was just about to collapse. In spring 1989, Hungary started to dismantle its border stations.

Many citizens of the GDR, the communist dictatorship in Eastern Germany, attempted to reach West Germany by going through Hungary and Austria—one of them was Uwe, the young man Hans Iby and Karl Schöll encountered in Neckenmarkt, that early morning in August 1989.

After eating breakfast together, they went with Uwe to the local authorities so he could apply for asylum—but it took quite some time before they found an office where the authorities even knew what to do in such a case. Uwe told them about a campground in Sopron where hundreds of people were waiting for a chance to escape across the border.

Hans Iby, Karl Schöll and others were determined to help. They drove to the campground and handed out maps marked with an escape route through the forest, and tied red markers to the trees to help them find the way. In the period before the border finally opened—which was about a month—every day between 50 and 100 refugees from the GDR arrived in Neckenmarkt, where they were welcomed and taken care of.

Hans Iby was later the mayor of Neckenmarkt fifteen years long. He kept in contact with many of the refugees from the GDR for many years to come. On display here are some of the things Hans Iby kept, such as papers documenting one refugee’s entire journey to West Germany, a postcard and a letter.

When the borders were opened, many people’s lives changed in many places. New opportunities suddenly emerged for places that used to feel like they were at the “end of the world”. The borders remained open for many years—until 2015, when they were shut again in response to the influx of refugees from Africa and Asia; and again in 2020 due to the Corona Virus.