Alois Mock, Austrian Who Helped Tear Down Iron Curtain (Literally), Dies at 82
By ALISON SMALEJUNE 6, 2017
Alois Mock, the longtime Austrian foreign minister who snipped open the Iron Curtain
with a wire cutter months before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, died on Thursday.
That summer, East Germans began escaping the bloc through Hungary
and into Austria, while thousands more massed in Hungary, many at the West German Embassy in Budapest.
They were eventually allowed across into Austria in early September, paving the way for similar scenes in what
was then Czechoslovakia before the East Germans themselves brought down the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989.
After graduating in law from the University of Vienna, he rose in the conservative Austrian People’s Party, which,
along with the Socialists (later the Social Democrats), dominated politics in the country for decades.
Although Mr. Mock’s stance was shared by the powerful German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich
Genscher, who died in 2016, Serbia saw their actions as unjustified interference.
