The Berlin Wall purportedly came down by
mistake on November 9, 1989, thanks to East German Politburo member, Guenter
Schabowski. While explaining the contents of a revised travel law
approved by the Politburo during an interview, he said, “Private travel into
foreign countries can be requested without conditions (passports or family
connections); permission will be granted instantly.
The following day, the East German
leadership, judging it impossible to return to the previous state of affairs, ratified
overall travel liberalization. The communist regime risked international
criticism and the established Berlin Wall fell in an instant. This
historic example proves that there is always the possibility of sudden change
in any situation.
Schabowski’s
Announcement
At 6:55 PM on November 9, 1989, at the end
of a tedious hour-long daily press conference, Schabowski began to explain the
revised travel law. Prior to his announcement he had not reviewed the
contents of the document, having only been handed it just by Party Secretary
Egon Krenz, and after reading the first half, he proceeded on to do a rough interoperation
of the latter portion, announced, declaring, “Private travel into foreign
countries can be requested without conditions (passports or family connections)
and permission will be granted instantly. Permanent relocations can be done
through all border checkpoints between the GDR [German Democratic Republic, or
East German] into the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany].”
When asked by an Italian reporter when the regulation would take effect,
he replied, “As far as I know this is effective immediately–without
delay.”
Fielding follow-up questions from reporters
as to if this also applied to West Berlin, he replied, “This applies to
all border crossings between the GDR and the FRG and West Berlin,” a rash statement
and huge blunder on his part. Follow-up questions continued, but there
were no further replies and the conference ended with innumerable unanswered questions.
Collapse
of the Berlin Wall
After the end of the press conference, the
reporters were naturally very curious about the unforeseen circumstances, but
there was no official statement. New reports varied drastically, with reporters
taking a great deal of creative license in their interpretations. At 7:05 PM, the
Associated Press was the very first to report that East Germany had opened the
border followed by a report corroborating this by West Germany public
broadcasting channel ARD during their 8 P.M. news broadcast.
Many East and West Germans witnessed
firsthand Schabowski’s press conference and the TV news report. According
to their accounts, rumor quickly spread that “all travel restrictions have
been lifted and exit visas are no longer necessary.”
East Germans crowded at the border post to
inquire about the validity of the announcement, but the guards were unaware and
unable to form coherent replies. As the evening wore on, the number of
people crowding around the Wall grew from a few thousand to tens of thousands, demanding
that the border be opened. Amid escalating tension with the citizens, border
guards acquiesced to their demands and lifted the barricade at 10:30 PM, having
received no orders from their superiors to halt. Concurrently, citizens from
both sides were scaling, and then
smashing, the wall together.
Even the Minister of Internal Affairs, who
received the report from the border guards, did not know about the situation,
but followed their decision. Around
midnight, nearly every border crossing opened and Berlin erupted into a festive
atmosphere, with horns, dancing and cheering. Over the next three days,
East German soldiers drilled holes in the wall and made new border crossings.
For two weeks three million people visited West Berlin and West Germany. The FRG bestowed DM 100 worth of “welcome money” to visitors from the GDR.
In order to receive these funds, throngs of East Germans flooded into West
Germany and West Berlin; 4.3 million people cross over in three days in the first three days with
only a simple passport check. The
following 10 days would see 50 different locations open for crossing along the
border.
The East German government’s original
intention was to expand the methods to grant travel permission, in response to the East German citizens’ complaints, and decrease
the number of people illegally leaving the country. They never intended to
grant complete freedom to travel. This is why General Secretary Egon Krenz
promised Gorbachev , during his November
1st visit to the Soviet Union, that he
would not limit East Germans from traveling to foreign countries so long as
they did not carry cash with them. Originally, it was the responsibility of
Erich Mielke, head of the Ministry of State Security in
East Germany, to draw up a revised bill for the travel law, but he had been
fired just a few days prior. Instead, two government officials from the
Ministry of State Security, and two government officials from the Department of
Interior, submitted a complete draft of this bill on November 8th, which
stated, “Application for personal travel to foreign countries is now permitted,
without any special prerequisites.”
This regulation only greatly simplified the
procedure for passport and visa issuance; it did not permit going to foreign
countries without a visa. Because one must hold a special visa to go abroad,
even if one has a passport in East Germany, it was thought that the process for
visa issuance would regulate the speed at which people may gain freedom to
travel. Furthermore, the new travel law
said nothing about the Berlin Wall. The Berlin Wall was constructed after World
War II and was under the management of four major powers, and so East Germany
was not in any position to decide anything about it. On November 9th the
central committee for the Socialist Unity Party passed the draft of the new
bill for the travel law. Immersed in preparations for a special committee that
would take place in mid-December, Krenz gave the bill to Gunter Schabowski,
showing off his achievement. At the time, the East German government’s plan was
to first create a rules of operation for the new travel law and give orders
about the law to guard posts on the border before making an official
announcement about the law. Krenz had told Gorbachev when they met on November
1st that the new travel law would be in place before Christmas with this plan
in mind.
The manner in which the East German border was
opened was not in accordance with the government’s original intention, but
Krenz acted as though it had been the plan all along. It was difficult to
reverse the situation, and Krenz himself had not long been in office. He was
worried that his popularity would drop. Krenz called the Soviet Embassy on
November 10th to explain, and Ambassador Kotschemassow reprimanded him asking
how the situation could suddenly be this chaotic. Krenz protested that opening
the East German border was the plan all along and that the Soviets had known
that. “But this wasn’t supposed to
happen,” Kotschemassow retorted. “You opened the border between East and West
Germany, but the Berlin Wall is under the jurisdiction of the four major powers
after World War II.”
“That’s a theoretical issue,” Krenz
responded, hesitantly. In the end, East Germany and the Soviet Union had no
choice but to go along with the situation.
The West German leaders crowded around the
Wall itself, but after a few days there was not one East German leader who went
to go visit the Wall. The East German government’s mistake brought the
incompetence of its communist regime to light and control of the situation went
into the hands of the protesting public.
Background
of the Opening of the Berlin Wall
The opening of the Berlin Wall can be
directly attributed to the personal mistakes of First Secretary of the East
Berlin chapter of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany [SED] and member of the SED Politiburo, Schabowski, but
there are underlying reasons that lie with the Communist leadership of East
Germany.
First off, the East German leadership never
stabilized. Krenz was sworn in as head of Ministry of State Security, and three
weeks later Willi Stoph was fired from the Cabinet. The day before that, the
central committee ordered a large-scale reshuffling, but a responsible
leadership with experience in managing the Affairs of State never took shape.
The mistaken Schabowski, known as a member of the reformist party together with
Prime Minister Hans Modrow, had been appointed as press secretary of the
Politburo two days prior. He did not attend the central committee meeting
regarding the travel law, did not know what happened at the meeting, and had no
experience with respect to that law.
Second, the East German leadership
underestimated the situation. There was not one person that thought that the
opening of the wall would mean the start of the end of East Germany. In fact, Schabowski
thought that since this policy was very popular, the East German citizens would
start to trust their government and everything would become stable.
Third, Krenz thought that the only way to
soothe the complaints of the East German citizens was to allow freedom to
travel. He worried that closing the border would cause a dive in his own
popularity. He was not well known amongst the general public and heard
criticisms that he was just “more of the same”. He wanted to be known to the
public as a reformist, and even told Schabowski that the bill would be a hit.
Krenz did not want to tarnish his image.
Fourth, Krenz could not turn the situation
around, so he decided to use the policy to try to escape from the situation.
The open border could raise his popularity, and through the policy he hoped to
get billions of Deutche Mark [DM] from the West German government in financial
aid as a cost for the open border. He also hoped that there would be a limit to
how many East German immigrants both the West and East could accommodate, an
assertion that West Germany’s Social Democratic Party of Germany had made
before. Therefore, he decided to announce that the plan to open the wall had
been his own idea. But his hopes were dashed when the wall fell and the
communist regime collapsed due to the demands of its own citizens.
* The views expressed in Guest Columns are not necessarily those of Daily NK.
