The Collapse by Mary Elise Sarotte

Author:Mary Elise Sarotte [Sarotte, Mary Elise]
Language: ara, deu, eng, fra, rus
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2014-09-21T23:52:43+00:00

Following Harald Jäger’s decision to open the gates at the Bornholmer Street border crossing on the night of November 9, massive crowds flow through the final barrier gate of the checkpoint and over the bridge (top rear of photo) into West Berlin. (RHG Fo AnKae 541; photo by Andreas Kämper)

Not even Schabowski could resist seeing for himself what was going on. After getting late-night reports in Wandlitz, he had his driver take him back downtown on a brief tour of some of the border crossings, including Bornholmer. Schabowski then returned home to Wandlitz for the second time that night without having tried to interfere or indeed to do anything at the checkpoints. Schabowski later said that, after returning home, he spoke to Krenz on the phone and found Krenz was consoling himself with the belief that “the ones who are leaving today, they will come back.”74

Krenz would later say that he had spent that evening, after the late conclusion to the day’s central committee session around 9:00 p.m., issuing orders to open all of the border crossings.75 Evidence supporting this claim has not been found. Instead, the evidence that survives shows individual checkpoint officials making uncoordinated decisions. Bornholmer was the first location where the senior figure on-site opened the barriers, and after images of the massive crowd running across the bridge there started appearing on TV, it became harder and harder for the other border crossings to hold out.76 The anxious officials at Checkpoint Charlie had, after turning down the drinks offered to them by the café owner across the street, actually sealed off the border entirely with large rolling barriers. Before too long, however, they gave up trying to keep the barriers in place and let people cross. The staff at the Sonnenallee checkpoint had been using the let-off-steam protocol as well. The officials there had been keeping a detailed list of people expelled, but by midnight they ceased trying to keep track of people’s identities. Sonnenallee informed Stasi headquarters that, as of 12:17 a.m. on November 10, they were “opening everything.”77 One by one, border officials elsewhere along the Wall similarly let the crowds pass—although some guards viewed the concession as only a temporary retreat.

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