or diplomatic mission in question and resolve the matter quietly and deftly, but with intensifying misgivings about what the new informal approach might mean for the continuing "Häftlingsfreikauf" programme and more broadly for the future of the "German Democratic Republic". By the time Priesnitz became Wolfgang Vogel's official western interlocutor in 1988, Vogel could no longer be confident of the ground rules from which he was meant to be negotiating on behalf of his government. As news of what was happening spread among the dis-satisfied, the number of would-be emigrants turning up at western embassies continued to grow. Then, in May 1989, an even less constrained escape route opened up when the Hungarian government removed the barbed wire and other physical barriers guarding the Hungarian border with Austria. Hundreds of East Germans turned up, mostly in family groups, "for camping holidays" in fields adjoing the border and abandoned their tents and Trabants in order to walk across the border. By August an estimated 2,000 had crossed to the west in this way. The knock-on effect in East Berlin was a further surge in the numbers storming western embassies. The West German diplomatic mission, overwhelmed by the numbers, closed its gates to the eastern citizens at the start of August 1989. It was not the first time that diplomatic staff had been driven to take this step in recent months, but the logistics situation were nevertheless becoming more unmanageable than ever. On 7 August 1989 Walter Priesnitz was sent east for urgent discussions with Wolfgang Vogel to determine a way forward. But Vogel, it seemed, was powerless to help. The leader was absent from his office, recovering from a gall-bladder operation, and party comrades deputising for him were not mandated to take decisions concerning the crowds attempting to emigrate by gaining access to the West German mission. Priesnitz implored his eastern counterpart to find a solution: "Mr Vogel, we are living in 1989, not 1984. If this is all you are in a position to do, that means the end of the German Democratic Republic". Vogel made no attempt to contradict him. When, later that month, Honecker returned to his office, he made it abundantly clear to Egon Krenz, who had emerged as his deputy and likely successor, that the problem of East German dissidents escaping to West Germany through the proliferating channels by now opening up was a problem for