Short history of the fall of the Berlin Wall
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On the evening of November 9, 1989, the Wall fell in Berlin – and with it the frontier that had divided Germany for 28 years. The very same night, thousands of German Democratic Republic (GDR) citizens rushed to the border with West Berlin. Although they had no official order, the border guards opened the crossings. Complete strangers from East and West fell into one another's arms laughing and crying, spontaneously celebrating the opening of the Wall together. Germany experienced a night of jubilation, a night that was to change the world.
Willy Brandt, the honorary chairman of the SPD who had also been a popular mayor in the western part of the city for many years during the period of division, appeared at the Brandenburg Gate the next morning and announced a little later in front of Schöneberg City Hall: “Now what belongs together will grow together.” The newspaper headlines read: “East Berliners dance the night away on Kurfürstendamm,” “Berlin is again Berlin,” “Germany cries tears of joy – we reach out to one another.” In the days that followed, millions of GDR citizens headed westward in their Trabi and Wartburg cars – many of them travelled to the Federal Republic for the first time in their lives, visited relatives, explored cities and landscapes – as well as western “shopping paradises” with 100 marks of “Welcome Money” from the Federal Republic in their pockets.
What had happened? On November 9, shortly before 7 p.m., during an international press conference, Günter Schabowski, a member of the SED Politburo, had hesitantly announced a new, liberal exit rule live in front of television cameras. In reply to a question, Schabowski explained that as far as he was aware the policy would come into effect “immediately, without delay.” This news, which had not been approved in that form by the GDR government, spread throughout the GDR at lightning speed and triggered the opening of the border crossings in Berlin – and the fall of the Wall.
This historic day had been preceded by mass exoduses from the GDR during summer 1989 (via Hungary and Czechoslovakia) and remarkable demonstrations by the opposition movement within the GDR in which civil rights activists had publicized their criticisms and their demands for the first time (for example, during the Monday Demonstrations in Leipzig). Both these put a massive strain on the GDR's structures, especially when it soon became clear that on this occasion the Soviet Union did not have any interest – unlike in Hungary in 1956, Prague in 1968, or Poland in 1980 – in putting down the protest movement by force. The “gentle revolution” produced a kind of paralysis within the GDR government authorities. On October 18, 1989, the resignation of Erich Honecker, the man who had been SED general secretary and chairman of the State Council for many years, triggered a collapse of the SED regime that his successor Egon Krenz was also unable to stabilize.
However, the collapse of the GDR and German reunification 11 months later, on October 3, 1990, would have been practically inconceivable without the changes that had occurred in the Soviet Union from the mid-1980s onwards. The new state and party leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had introduced wide-ranging reforms in the USSR. Gorbachev also forswore the Soviet Union's hegemony over the Eastern Bloc and strove for greater cooperation with the West. Above all, Poland and Hungary seized the new opportunities. In May 1989, the Hungarians began cutting a substantial hole in the Iron Curtain. The complete opening up of the Hungarian frontier to the West then followed on September 11, 1989.
Following the peaceful revolution in the GDR, the reunification of the two German states moved nearer – an event that many people had no longer believed possible. Before that, however, the first free elections to the People's Chamber were held on March 18, 1990. The main issues during the election campaign were the method for and the speed of the desired unification with West Germany. On May 18, 1990, the Treaty on Economic, Monetary and Social Union was signed. Since the GDR's economic system was no longer capable of reform, the GDR assumed the economic system of the Federal Republic on July 1, 1990. Soon afterwards, consultations began in Berlin on the future shape of a unification treaty. Even before these negotiations were concluded, in a special session on August 23, 1990, the People's Chamber resolved that the GDR should accede to the jurisdiction of the Basic Law on October 3, 1990.
Because of the rights and responsibilities of the four Second World War victor nations towards Germany as a whole and Berlin, reunification could not be accomplished without their consent. In February 1990, the victor powers agreed to joint negotiations with the two German states. The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, September 12, 1990, regulated the international legal aspects of reunification. Germany thereby regained its full sovereignty.
During the evening leading up to October 3, 1990, thousands of people celebrated the GDR's accession to the territory of the Federal Republic in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin. Finally, after four decades, Germany's national unity was restored.
The Wall fell in Germany – and in the world beyond the Iron Curtain had fallen between East and West. At the end of November 1990, the NATO countries and the states of the Warsaw Pact signed the first comprehensive disarmament agreement on conventional forces at the CSCE summit in Paris. The Charter of Paris for a New Europe declared: “The era of confrontation and division of Europe has ended” and that “a new era of democracy, peace and unity” had begun. East-West conflict was officially declared over almost exactly two years after the fall of the Wall, on November 7/8, 1991, at the NATO summit conference in Rome. The Cold War was finally consigned to the history books.
By Janet Schayan, Deutschland online
