xLech Walesa was an electrician at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, and a trade union activist. In August 1980, he was instrumental in negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdańsk Agreement between striking workers and the government, and he became a co-founder of the Solidarity trade-union movement. Solidarnosc's popularity in Poland soared, and the Communist leadership was looking increasingly beleagured. In Germany, however, support for the Catholic labor movement was not whole-hearted. The government in Bonn was reluctant to throw its weight behind Solidarnosc at a time when Germany's ties to the Eastern Bloc were starting to improve.
