November 9, 1989: The commanders of the border troops and passport control units could not believe it. For 28 years, they had made sure that the Berlin Wall remained impassable for most people in the GDR. Then, shortly after seven o’clock, they learned from the television that the border crossings were suddenly supposed to be open. They had not received any information or orders from their superiors on this matter.
The border crossing Bornholmer Straße was located between Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin and Wedding in West Berlin. Harald Jäger was in command on that evening. He immediately inquired about new instructions. His superiors, however, knew nothing. The reason: The travel regulations that the leading SED functionary Günter Schabowski had just announced should not have been published and implemented until the next day.
As soon as 7:30 p.m. fifty to hundred East Berliners stood in front of the border crossing Bornholmer Straße. Jäger was supposed to send them away until the next day, but no one left. After all, Schabowski, one of the GDR’s most powerful politicians, had declared that travel abroad was possible immediately and without preconditions.
At 8 p.m., the most watched news broadcast on TV in West Germany, the Tagesschau, reported: "GDR opens border." The group in front of the barrier grew into a crowd in the following hours. Cars lined up in front of the border crossing. Some only wanted to know whether the freedom to travel did in fact apply. Others loudly demanded it. At the border crossing, around 35 uniformed officers faced thousands of people who wanted to cross to the other side. It was impossible to stop them. Harald Jäger recalls: "The people would have run us over and beat us with our own rubber truncheons!" Looking back, a colleague puts it even more seriously: "If the masses come into full motion and we were to shoot, then we will hang there in front on the flagpole."
At 9:20 p.m., Jäger received the order to release the "most rebellious" to West Berlin and to stamp the photos on their identity cards. They were not to be allowed back into the GDR and thus, without suspecting it, were to lose their citizenship. But the so-called Ventillösung, in English "valve solution", created a new problem. Because only a few were allowed to pass, those who stayed behind demanded even louder: "Open the gate, open the gate!"
The crowd pushed one fence in front of the crossing to the side. Jäger feared for the lives of his staff. At 11:30 p.m., he reported: "It cannot be held any longer, we have to open the border crossing." In the next three quarters of an hour, approximately 20,000 people streamed across the Bösebrücke into West Berlin. By midnight, the other border crossings in Berlin were also open. The pictures of people overwhelmed with joy went around the world. What was at first only a news story became reality: the GDR had opened the border. Individual decisions and selective events contributed to this step on November 9, 1989. But above all, it was the success of the at first only few, then many courageous people who carried out the peaceful revolution.
