In September through November of 1989, East Germany experienced what came to be called the October Revolution, in which the forty-year-old communist government fell with remarkably little violence. The church, especially the Nikolai Church of Leipzig, played an important role in encouraging and keeping nonviolent the increasingly large demonstrations that followed its Monday evening prayer services for peace.

The church’s involvement sometimes took courage. On October 9 it appeared that things might get very bloody, as the people were becoming bolder in the wake of Mikhail Gorbachev’s recent visit and leader Erich Honecker had given written orders for a “Chinese solution”--shooting up the crowd. The Lutheran bishop warned of a bloodbath, and doctors cleared hospital rooms to accommodate the wounded, but the leaders at the Nikolai Church decided not to cancel the prayer service for that evening.