Ten years ago today, in the early hours of the morning, the East German Volkskammer voted itself out of existence in a chaotic overnight session. In doing so, the first freely-elected parliament in East Germany removed one of the last barriers to the reunification of the country that happened six weeks later.
Today's anniversary will pass unnoticed by most Germans, who are instead preoccupied with the trial of three neo-Nazis accused of kicking to death an African-born immigrant in a formerly East German city last June.
On trial with the three accused is the legacy of the vanished German Democratic Republic and the reunification of Germany, a simmering brew of economic depression and violent intolerance.
According to the prosecution case, Frank Miethbauer and Christian Richter, both 16, and Mr Enrico Hilprecht, 24, were walking drunk through Dessau on June 11th shouting neo-Nazi slogans. Around 1 a.m. they encountered Mr Alberto Adriano, a 39-year-old Mozambican with German nationality.
Mr Adriano was on the way home from his job at a meatpacking plant when the three youths set upon him, kicking him and shouting "Blacks out" and "Get out of our country", a federal prosecutor, Mr Joachim Lampe, claimed yesterday.
Although Mr Adriano stopped moving after being kicked for five minutes, the three continued to kick him until the police arrived, said Mr Lampe.
He said the defendants "were aware that Adriano could die, but on the basis of their xenophobia this was unimportant to them".
Mr Adriano immigrated to what was then East Germany in 1980 and had a German-born wife of 12 years, Angelika, and three children.
As juveniles, Miethbauer and Richter face a maximum sentence of 10 years, while Hilprecht faces a life sentence with possibility of parole in 15 years.
Miethbauer and Hilprecht showed no reaction as the charges against them were read to the court, but Richter could not suppress a grin.
"All three showed absolutely no remorse," said Mr Ronald Reimann, lawyer for Mr Adriano's widow, Angelika.
"That was so shocking for me and my client that she had to leave the courtroom early," he told reporters outside the court.
A court official said yesterday that the judge hearing the case had received a note from an 84-year-old local woman, in which she wrote that her generation had not rebuilt Germany after the second World War in order to "hand it over now to the Africans".
Federal authorities have taken over the prosecution of the case as part of an attempt to crack down on extreme right-wing violence. There have been two other race-motivated murders already in Germany this year.
Court officials have promised a speedy trial to demonstrate how seriously the government views racist crimes.
Germany's chief federal prosecutor, Kay Nehm, has called the rise in extreme-right violence a security threat, especially for the 7.3 million foreigners who make up 9 per cent of the German population.
One state away in Thuringen, the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder, today begins the third day of his meet-the-people tour of eastern Germany. It is aimed at raising popular support for the fight against the "far-right thugs who are giving eastern Germany a bad name".
"On this trip, I want to make it clear that without a civic response against right-wing extremism, we won't make it," Mr Schroder said yesterday, reminding the eastern German population that it was their uprising that brought down the socialist regime and lead to the reunification of Germany 10 years ago.
The Chancellor's strategy is to encourage local government to act against right-wing extremists on its own, rather than wait for initiatives from the federal government in Berlin.
Mr Schroder has vowed to tackle the extreme-right groups that have established dominance over whole neighbourhoods in eastern states, declaring them "national liberated" or "foreign-free" zones.
He has set himself a difficult task, in view of the sense of political betrayal that lingers in the minds of eastern voters.