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The Berlin Wall opens
East Germans cross freely for the first time
After an East German official announced new travel rules by mistake, crowds gathered at the border and guards opened the gates. The Wall's fall led to German reunification in 1990.
East Germany built the Berlin Wall in August 1961 to stop its citizens from fleeing to the West. For decades it split the city, and people who tried to cross were shot or arrested. By autumn 1989 mass protests, a wave of emigration through Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and weakening support from the Soviet Union had left the government under heavy pressure.
On the evening of November 9, East German official Günter Schabowski announced at a televised press conference that new travel rules were in effect. Asked when, he said it appeared to be immediately. The regulations had been meant to take effect the next day with an orderly process, but crowds went to the checkpoints.
Overwhelmed border guards, notably at Bornholmer Strasse, eventually opened the gates late that night. Berliners from both sides climbed on the Wall and began to chip at it in the following days.
The opening did not itself end the East German state, but it sped up the political changes that led to German reunification on October 3, 1990, and it became a defining image of the end of the Cold War in Europe.