1989

Chapter 5's own Wall existed to seal the one loophole in East Germany's own emigration crisis — Berlin's open sector border. In the summer of 1989, an entirely different country reopened a different loophole hundreds of miles away, and the same underlying pressure that had built the Wall in the first place found a new way out.

Hungary Reopens the Door

On 2 May 1989, Hungary began dismantling its own border fortifications along the Austrian border; on 27 June, its foreign minister and Austria's own foreign minister symbolically cut through the fence together. The move encouraged an estimated 100,000 East Germans to travel to Hungary hoping to slip through to the West. On 19 August 1989, at a staged event near Sopron known as the Pan-European Picnic, Otto von Habsburg and Hungarian officials opened a border gate for three hours — 700–900 East Germans crossed into Austria with no intervention from Hungarian guards, in what became the largest single escape movement from East Germany since the Wall itself went up in 1961. From 10 September onward, Hungary allowed unrestricted crossings outright. Czechoslovakia became a second real route: fourteen "Freedom Trains" carried some 12,000 East German refugees out through Prague between 1–8 October, and over 50,000 people left the country in the single week of 4–5 November alone.

The Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig

Domestic pressure grew in parallel. Weekly Monday prayer meetings at Leipzig's Nikolaikirche grew into real, sustained street demonstrations beginning 4 September 1989 — 70,000 people marched on 9 October, and the crowds kept growing even after the events later in this chapter, reaching an estimated 500,000 by 11 November.

Gorbachev's Visit: A Different Kind of Soviet Answer

Gorbachev traveled to East Berlin for the GDR's 40th anniversary celebrations on 7 October 1989. Crowds gathered along his route chanting "Gorbi, help us" — a direct appeal to the Soviet leader over the head of East Germany's own government. Soviet troops present in the city remained confined to their barracks throughout the commemorations, on Gorbachev's own explicit orders.

Honecker Falls

Erich Honecker, the SED's own leader since 1971, was removed from power on 18 October 1989, replaced by Egon Krenz — a real, direct consequence of the mass protests and the 40th-anniversary unrest just eleven days earlier.

9 November 1989: A Bureaucratic Mistake Opens the Wall

The Wall itself came down not through a negotiated political settlement or a military event, but through a genuine bureaucratic accident. At a press conference that evening, government spokesman Günter Schabowski — who had not been personally involved in drafting the new travel regulations and had only just been handed a note by Krenz with no further instructions on how to present it — was asked by ANSA reporter Riccardo Ehrman whether a planned relaxation of travel rules was a mistake. Another reporter then asked when the new rules would actually take effect. Schabowski answered: "As far as I know, it takes effect immediately, without delay."

East German border guards, watching the press conference broadcast live, were left with no real orders at all. They made frantic calls up their own chain of command; initial instructions were only to stamp passports with a special revocation mark rather than to actually open the gates — but no one in the East German government would take personal responsibility for authorizing lethal force against the swelling crowds. At the Bornholmer Straße crossing, the checkpoint's own commander, Harald Jäger, made the real, individual decision to simply open the gates around 22:45–23:30 that night rather than continue holding back a crowd he had no way to control. East Germans swarmed through, greeted on the western side with flowers and champagne; within hours, West Berliners and East German youth alike were standing together on top of the Wall itself.

Hands-On Exercises