Berlin Wall anniversary: a press briefing on 9 November 1989 opened the border

The briefing that opened the border

On the evening of 9 November 1989, Günter Schabowski, spokesman for the East German Politburo, held a press conference in East Berlin at 18:53 to announce new rules for private travel abroad. When a reporter asked when the rules would take effect, he answered immediately and without delay. The regulation was in fact held back until the next morning for administrative preparations, a detail Schabowski did not know. Peter Brinkmann, Bild's correspondent in East Berlin, had pressed the question from the front row, and Brinkmann, now 81, recalled that the hall was packed and that the briefing was broadcast live.

From the briefing to the crossing points

After the announcement reached news bulletins, thousands of East Berliners made their way to the border posts and asked to be let through to the West. At Bornholmer Straße the crowd kept growing while no orders arrived, and the border guards eventually raised the barriers. Ewald Kenich, correspondent for the Austrian daily die Presse, tried to telephone his newsroom in Vienna, but the operators at the press centre could not get a line. He then ran with his notes to Checkpoint Charlie to cross into West Berlin. The Wall, which had split the city for 28 years, opened that night.

Why the regime loosened its rules

In the autumn of 1989 large numbers of East German citizens left through other Warsaw Pact countries, especially Czechoslovakia, which shares a border with West Germany. Under this pressure the communist government decided to ease exit rules for private trips. The sources say that more than one million people demonstrated in East Berlin five days before the Wall fell, demanding changes to the system, political freedoms and freedom of movement to the West. Egon Krenz, secretary of the East German Communist Party, stressed that the pressure from citizens gathering in front of the Wall had been especially strong.

Other dates in German history

On 9 November 1918, as the empire collapsed at the end of the First World War, a revolution that began with sailors at Kiel reached Berlin. Philipp Scheidemann, a Social Democrat, proclaimed the republic from the balcony of the Reichstag, while Prince Max of Baden announced the Kaiser's abdication, although the formal abdication was signed later. The same date is also linked with the Nazi pogroms against Jews in 1938. German reunification followed on 3 October 1990, a year after the Wall fell.

Anniversary coverage in Greece

The ERT archive is presenting a feature week from Monday 9 to Sunday 15 November 2026. It includes a 2009 episode of the current affairs show Correspondents, with reporting by Kostas Argyros, who was in Berlin in November 1989. The episode combines archive footage, interviews and accounts of daily life in East Germany. The same feature week marks the death anniversary of Yannis Ritsos on 11 November and the founding of the Orchestra of Colours by Manos Hatzidakis on 14 November 1989.