Nobody has any intention of building a wall (1961)
Walter Ulbricht at a press conference on 15 June 1961, two months before construction began
History · The 20th century
The fall of the Berlin Wall
9 November 1989
End of the Cold War — the opening of the inner-German border
On the evening of 9 November 1989 East Germany's border with West Berlin was opened, twenty-eight years after the barrier went up overnight on 13 August 1961. Pressure had been building all year: Hungary opened its frontier with Austria in the summer, thousands fled through Prague and Warsaw, and Monday demonstrations in Leipzig grew into hundreds of thousands. Erich Honecker was forced out in October. A new travel regulation was announced at a press conference by the politburo spokesman Günter Schabowski, who, asked when it took effect, read from his notes that it applied immediately, without delay. Crowds gathered at the crossing points and at Bornholmer Strasse the commander Harald Jäger, unable to reach anyone for orders, raised the barrier. Germany was reunified on 3 October 1990.
How to spot them
- ▸A barrier put up overnight in August 1961 and opened one evening in November 1989
- ▸A press conference answer of immediately, without delay, read from a misunderstood note
- ▸Monday demonstrations in Leipzig with the chant We are the people
- ▸Crossing points named Checkpoint Charlie and Bornholmer Strasse
- ▸Less than a year later the two German states became one
What happened
A 1963 speech to a crowd outside the Schöneberg town hall ending in four German words (1963)
Kennedy's Ich bin ein Berliner, 26 June 1963
A 1987 demand made at the Brandenburg Gate to Mr Gorbachev (1987)
Reagan: tear down this wall, on 12 June 1987, the city's 750th anniversary
Monday evening prayers at the Nikolaikirche that grew into marches of 300,000 (1989)
Leipzig, autumn 1989; the chant was Wir sind das Volk, we are the people
A spokesman leafing through his notes and saying, as far as I know, immediately (1989)
Günter Schabowski at the 9 November press conference, having not attended the meeting that drafted the rules
A border officer at Bornholmer Strasse who raised the barrier without orders (1989)
Harald Jäger, facing a crowd of thousands, opened the first crossing at about 11.30 p.m.
Rostropovich playing Bach alone at the concrete, days after it opened (1989)
The cellist flew in from Paris and played at Checkpoint Charlie on 11 November
Quick-fire facts
- •The barrier was built from 13 August 1961 and ran about 155 km around West Berlin
- •At least 140 people died at the border in Berlin; the last, Chris Gueffroy, was shot in February 1989
- •Erich Honecker, East German leader since 1971, was replaced by Egon Krenz in October 1989
- •Hungary opened its border with Austria in May and formally in September 1989, letting East Germans leave via a third country
- •The Brandenburg Gate crossing did not open until 22 December 1989
- •David Hasselhoff sang at the Wall on New Year's Eve 1989, a detail British quizzes enjoy
- •The East German state, the German Democratic Republic, ceased to exist on 3 October 1990, now the Day of German Unity
- •The legal settlement was the Two Plus Four Treaty, the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, signed in Moscow on 12 September 1990
- •Mikhail Gorbachev's refusal to use Soviet troops to prop up the eastern bloc, informally the Sinatra Doctrine, made 1989 possible
- •Sections survive at the Berlin Wall Memorial on Bernauer Strasse and as the painted East Side Gallery
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Stiftung Berliner Mauer — Berlin Wall Memorial
- Chronik der Mauer, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung — Chronicle of the Wall
- Mary Elise Sarotte — The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall