Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall

by Anna Funder

On 9 November, thinking to deal with the crisis, the Politbüro met and decided to relax travel restrictions. People would be allowed to travel freely and be prohibited from leaving the country only in ‘special exceptional circumstances’. The session went into the night. At this stage the regime had taken to holding a regular press conference with the international media. That evening, Politbüro member Günter Schabowski needed to get to it. He hadn’t been at the session, but was hastily given a note of its decision to read out at the press conference. When he finished, there was no visible reaction among the journalists in the room; all pens were poised, the boom mikes floated in the air. Then a question came from the floor: ‘When will this new provision come into force?’ Schabowski has baggy eyes and a face like a bloodhound. Embarrassed, he looked at the paper. He turned it over but found no answer. ‘It will come into force…to my knowledge, immediately,’ he said. The decision was to have become operable the next day, after the border guards had been instructed on its implementation. But as soon as Schabowski had spoken it was too late. Within hours of his blunder 10,000 people were at the Bornholmer Bridge checkpoint on foot and in their Trabant cars, thronging the Wall. The light from the death strip showed up breath, exhaust. There was a symphony of horns. The guards stood at trigger point, but no orders came. Eventually, the supervisor decided to let the people through...