Ex-Austrian official who helped tear down the Iron Curtain dies at 82

Former Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock, who made international headlines nearly three decades ago when he cut through the barbed wire that represented the communist Iron Curtain, has died at the age of 82.

Mock and his Hungarian counterpart helped speed along the thaw in the icy relations between the West and the Soviet bloc when they snipped away the wire fence separating their countries.

Lauded by Austrian leaders as a key architect of the nation’s 1995 European Union entry, Mock was remembered most for the border ceremony on June 27, 1989. The moment he and then-Hungarian Foreign Minister Gyula Horn wielded wire cutters to demonstrate good neighborly relations was captured in photos that made front pages across the world.

At the time, there were few signs that the Iron Curtain would soon come down. But that symbolic opening between East and West was followed only months later with the first major event foreshadowing the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe.

After tens of thousands of East Germans turned their back on their hard-line communist homeland and flooded Hungary in a desperate bid to transit to West Germany, Hungary — the Soviet bloc’s most liberal member — opened its border with Austria and allowed them free passage.

Mock, a key figure of the centrist People’s Party, served as foreign minister from 1987 to 1995.

He is survived by Edith Mock, his wife of 53 years.