Günter Schabowski,"The Man
who opened the Berlin Wall" dies
at 86.
The former spokesman of the Politburo of the Central Committee of
East Germany’s ruling communist party in 1989, Günter Schabowski, died in the capital,
Berlin, on Sunday, aged 86.
Forever known as the “man who opened the Berlin Wall”
because of a faux paux made at a
press conference in Berlin on 9th November 1989, Mr Schabowski was
excoriated by his colleagues in the German Democratic Republic Government for
messing up the prime announcement on reducing travel restrictions between the
GDR and West Berlin and West Germany which had recently been legislated.
For most of the previous year there had been increasing public demands by the GDR population for reforms of the State and politics on the lines of what was taking place in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev but, the GDR leadership headed by long-time leader, Erich Honecker, tried to resist these demands. Unauthorised public demonstrations became larger and more frequent especially in Leipzig and Dresden. New political organisations were formed and gained support. Thousands travelled to Hungary, which allowed visa-free entry to GDR citizens, and began to besiege the West German Embassy in Budapest seeking entry to the West. Eventually, the GDR authorities agreed to allow those in Hungary to board special sealed trains which brought them to West Berlin.
 |
| Krenz (left) Schabowski (right) |
This severely undermined Honecker’s authority and he was forced to resign on October 18, 1989 and was replaced by Egon Krenz. Krenz, almost as much a muddler as Schabowski, floundered in the job unable to retrieve any public confidence in the Government.
 |
| Erich Honecker |
The revised travel measures, which both Schabowski and Krenz later claimed to have prepared earlier but, Honecker had refused to sign the legislation, were approved officially on November 9, 1989 and at a Politburo meeting that morning Schabowski was given a folder to bring to his Press Conference later in the day for the public announcement.
At the press conference, Schabowski droned on without
mentioning the new travel rules until near the end when he couldn’t find the
folder he had been given and began to waffle about the subject when an Italian
journalist asked him when the rules were to come into effect:
Schabowski: ... So, we want... through a number of changes, including the travel law, to [create] the chance, the sovereign decision of the citizens to travel wherever they want. (um) We are naturally (um) concerned that the possibilities of this travel regulation—it is still not in effect, it's only a draft.
A decision was made
today, as far as I know (looking toward Labs and Banaschak in hope of
confirmation). A recommendation from the Politburo was taken up that we take a
passage from the [draft of] travel regulation and put it into effect, that,
(um)—as it is called, for better or worse—that regulates permanent exit,
leaving the Republic. Since we find it (um) unacceptable that this movement is
taking place (um) across the territory of an allied state, (um) which is not an
easy burden for that country to bear. Therefore (um), we have decided today
(um) to implement a regulation that
allows every citizen of the German Democratic Republic (um) to (um) leave the
GDR through any of the border crossings.
...
Question: (Italian
journalist) At once? When...
Schabowski: (...
scratches his head) You see, comrades, I was informed today (puts on his
glasses as he speaks further), that such an announcement had been (um)
distributed earlier today. You should actually have it already. So, (reading
very quickly from the paper): 1) "Applications for travel abroad by
private individuals can now be made without the previously existing
requirements (of demonstrating a need to travel or proving familial relationships).
The travel authorisations will be issued within a short time. Grounds for
denial will only be applied in particular exceptional cases. The responsible
departments of passport and registration control in the People's Police
district offices in the GDR are instructed to issue visas for permanent exit
without delays and without presentation of the existing requirements for
permanent exit."
...
Question: (Italian
journalist) When does it come into effect?
Schabowski: (Looks
through his papers...) That comes into effect, according to my information,
immediately, without delay (looking through his papers further).
Labs: (quietly)
...without delay.
Beil: (quietly) That
has to be decided by the Council of Ministers.
...
Question: Does this
also apply for West Berlin? You only mentioned the FRG.
Schabowski: (shrugs
his shoulders, frowns, looks at his papers) So ... (pause), um hmmm (reads
aloud): "Permanent exit can take place via all border crossings from the GDR
to the FRG and West Berlin, respectively."
Alarmed about what was unfolding, Schabowski concluded with
more muddled responses:
"The question of travel, of the permeability therefore of the wall from our side, does not yet answer, exclusively, the question of the meaning, of this, let me say it this way, fortified border." Furthermore, "the debate over these questions could be positively influenced if the Federal Republic [of West Germany] and if NATO would commit themselves to and carry out disarmament."
"The question of travel, of the permeability therefore of the wall from our side, does not yet answer, exclusively, the question of the meaning, of this, let me say it this way, fortified border." Furthermore, "the debate over these questions could be positively influenced if the Federal Republic [of West Germany] and if NATO would commit themselves to and carry out disarmament."
The rules were not scheduled to become operative until the
following day but, the press conference
was being broadcast on live television including West Berlin and West German
channels which almost everyone in the GDR was watching. Before long, the guards
at Bornholmer Street were outnumbered by thousands of people wanting to cross
to West Berlin; the same thing was happening at several other checkpoints.
Overwhelmed and worried for their own safety, border guards reasoned that the
use of violence might quickly escalate and become uncontrollable.
Attempts were made to contact authorities but, superiors
told them that the rules hadn’t changed. The People’s Police, National Army and
Ministry of the Interior all passed the buck to each other and failed to give
any coherent direction. The border guards decided instead at around 9 p.m. to
let a trickle of people cross the border, hoping to ease the pressure and calm
the crowd. The guards would check each person individually, take notes and
penalise the rowdiest by refusing them re-entry. They managed to do this for a
while, but after a couple of hours the enormous crowd was chanting, "Open
the gate, open the gate!"
After more debate, the guards decided that raising the
traffic barriers was the only solution. Around 11:30 p.m. the gates were opened
and everyone was allowed to cross. Throughout the night, other crossings opened
in much the same way. Every opening meant more people flooding into the west
and more images beaming back east, in turn sending more easterners onto the
streets. Thus ended the decades-long Cold War division of Germany.
Elections were held in March 1990. The SED (Socialist Unity
Party) had reorganised as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and pushed
out most of its veteran members in hopes of rehabilitating its image. In the
event the PDS was heavily defeated by the Alliance for Germany, a centre-right
coalition dominated by the GDR branch of the CDU, massively financed by Helmut
Kohl’s West German CDU, and running on a platform of speedy reunification with
West Germany. A "grand coalition" of the Alliance and the revived eastern
Social Democrats elected the CDU's Lothar de Maizière as Prime Minister on
April 12. Following negotiations between the two German states, a Treaty on Monetary,
Economic, and Social Union was signed on May 18 and came into effect on July 1,
among things replacing the East German mark with the Deutsche Mark (DM).
The treaty also declared the intention for the GDR to join the Federal Republic
by way of the Basic Law's Article 23 and indeed laid much of the ground for
this by providing for the swift and wholesale implementation of West German
laws and institutions in the GDR.
In mid-July most state property - covering a large majority
of the GDR economy - was transferred to the Treuhand, an organisation
set up by Bonn, which was given the responsibility of overseeing the
transformation of GDR state-owned business into market-oriented privatised
companies. This resulted in the brutal demolition of many viable GDR industries
creating large scale unemployment which was entirely unnecessary and crippling
the eastern economy from which it has still not recovered. Many skilled workers
and academics transferred to West Germany adding to the economic decline.
On August 31 the Unification Treaty set an accession date of
October 3 (modifying the State Creation Law to come into effect on that date).
The Unification Treaty declared that (with few exceptions) at accession the
laws of the GDR would be replaced overnight by those of West Germany. The
Volkskammer, GDR parliament, approved the treaty on September 20 by a margin of
299-80--in effect, voting the GDR out of existence.
Eight years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Schabowski
and two other Politburo members were jailed on charges of tolerating the former
regime's fatal shootings of escaping East Germans along the border. Unlike six
other accused former Politburo members, Schabowski said during the trial in
1997 that nothing could justify that "even a single person" had had
to pay for trying to flee with his or her life. He also claimed to have
contributed to a process of de-escalation during 1989. Early in 1990, he was
excluded from the East German left's successor grouping, the Party of
Democratic Socialism (PDS). Schabowski was freed in 2000 after a pardon issued
by the then Berlin mayor Eberhard Diepgen.
Schabowski went on to write several books and gave lectures
recounting the communist collapse. He rebuffed accusations by communist
contemporaries that he had become a "traitor. "They hate me, the
diehards," he reportedly told Germany's political magazine
"Cicero" in 2006, saying they did so because he had "grappled
with communism and its creation, the GDR."
Vladimir Putin's view on the Berlin Wall:
Vladimir Putin's view on the Berlin Wall:
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