1989- The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe Page 7
The beginning of the end came when the SED decided to issue further “new” travel regulations, but ones that still included extensive fine print of the kind that had always prevented foreign travel. Notionally, East Germans had the right to leave the GDR, since their country’s constitution said as much. Yet “national security” exceptions—still in place in the regulations—had always stopped the exercise of that right.
The “new” travel regulations with their fine print received approval from the distracted party leaders on November 9.108 The top leadership was busy processing other problems, such as learning that it was bankrupt. On becoming head of the SED, Krenz had asked for an honest assessment of the GDR’s economic health (as opposed to the rosy reports that had been given to Honecker). He discovered that the GDR was “dependent to the greatest possible extent on capitalistic credit.” 109 Gorbachev was unhappy when he was informed of this, since East Germany was the USSR’s largest trading partner.110 The news was bad—even though Gorbachev had known the GDR was unhealthy, in contrast to the opinion of the CIA. As late as 1987 the CIA, making a significant mistake, stated in its Factbook that the East German gross domestic product per capita was $100 higher than that of West Germany.111
The bad economic news distracted party leaders from the travel regulations—including, importantly, from the fact that the wording of the most recent alterations was getting confusing as it passed through the hands of various authors. These alterations were not meant to end all restrictions, although they were beginning to sound that way. Yet the point that no one, at any stage in the alteration process, discussed such seemingly fundamental issues as consulting the Soviets about opening the border, or assigning extra border guards to duty to handle the increased traffic, or even telling border guards anything at all, showed that free travel was not the planned outcome. Gorbachev would later be amazed that the East Germans had opened the wall without consulting him; the deputy Soviet ambassador in East Berlin thought that the entire GDR leadership had gone mad; in reality, no one told the Soviets it would happen because they did not know themselves.112 Nor did anyone comment on the wisdom of opening the wall without getting compensation from the West for it, or doing so on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a Nazi attack on Jews and synagogues. In short, there were no signs that anyone realized that the new regulations were going to detonate under the wall on the evening of November 9.113
That evening at 6:00 p.m., a member of the East German Politburo who also served as its media spokesman, Günter Schabowski, was scheduled to hold a press conference. Shortly before the press conference began, he received a piece of paper with an update on the latest travel law alterations and the suggestion that he mention them publicly. Schabowski had not been present at any of the discussions about these “new” regulations and did not have time to read them. He decided to remark on them in passing toward the end.
Schabowski got around to the regulations only in the fifty-fifth minute of an otherwise uninteresting hour-long press conference. It was so uninteresting that U.S. anchorman Tom Brokaw, who was present at the conference, remembered that he was “bored” by it. Then, just as it was about to end, a journalist’s question about travel seemed to spur Schabowski’s memory. He tried to summarize the new regulations in a wordy and confused fashion in response. A number of incomplete sentences trailed off incoherently. Sprinkled among his long-winded phrases, however—“Anyway, today, as far as I know, a decision has been made, it is a recommendation of the Politburo that has been taken up, that one should from the draft of a travel law, take out a passage”—were unclear but exciting snippets like “leaving the GDR,” “possible for every citizen,” and “exit via border crossings.”
Schabowski was surprised to see that every journalist in the room suddenly wanted to ask questions. “When does that go into force?” shouted one. “Excuse me?” Schabowski replied, puzzled. “Immediately?” shouted another. The press spokesman, irritated, started flipping through the papers in front of him in search of an answer. The question was insistently repeated: “When does that go into force?” Visibly rattled, and mumbling to himself for a while as he tried to concentrate on the papers on his desk, Schabowski uttered the phrase “immediately, right away.”
Brokaw remembered that it almost felt as if “a signal had come from outer space and electrified the room.” The commotion intensified. Some journalists rushed out to file reports, not waiting for Schabowski to finish. A number of questions were called out all at once, among them, “What will happen to the Berlin Wall now?” Alarmed about what was unfolding, Schabowski answered with obvious relief: “It is 7:00 p.m. This is the last question.” Evasively, he concluded the press conference by responding to the wall question as follows: “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 of the GDR.” After this vague reply, he tried another approach. “We have always said that in that case, there are many other factors that must be taken into consideration.” Furthermore, “the debate over these questions could be positively influenced if the Federal Republic and if NATO would commit themselves to and carry out disarmament.” 114
As it was doubtful that NATO would disarm itself by breakfast, it is clear that Schabowski did not expect much to happen that night. His attempt to pour cold water on the speculation about the wall came too late, though, because a number of journalists had already left the room to spread the news they thought they had heard. And Schabowski himself left matters hanging when, true to his word, he ended the press conference fifty-four seconds after 7:00 p.m. He did not allow even a full minute of clarification. Little did he know that he had just lit the fuse on an explosive.115
Map 1.3. Divided Germany
TELEVISION TRANSFORMS REALITY
If the rising self-confidence of the East German population was the fourth major development in summer and fall 1989, the intersection of this confidence with the impact of mass media was the crucial fifth and final one.116 Television in particular played a special role. Of course, television broadcasters had had an enormous impact on international politics throughout much of the Cold War. In 1989, however, they were clearly causal factors in bringing down the wall, a new height of significance.
The zenith of their influence was November 9. Schabowski’s mumbled comments suggested that travel rules had been liberalized. But the wall was not yet open; that would only emerge as a result of a combustible mixture—namely, overly optimistic reporting combined with the willingness and desire of the newly self-confident East German population to believe in it and risk a trip to the border on the basis of it. If I can see it on television, it must be true, or at least true enough, ran the mantra of the evening. With no more than that belief as their defense, hopeful East Germans braved the armed border. How did media reports turn into reality on November 9?
Journalists, hating to miss the scoop of a lifetime, had rushed out of Schabowski’s press conference at 7:00 p.m. and reported the most favorable possible interpretation: the Berlin Wall was open. The wire agencies, on which news organizations around the world relied for their own reporting, sent out this message loud and clear. Reuters was first, at 7:02 p.m., followed by the Deutsche Presse Agentur two minutes later. Even as these messages were going out, Brokaw was conducting a prearranged interview with Schabowski. The two had agreed to speak right after the press conference, and now the American, believing that the Berlin Wall had just been opened, was determined to get an unequivocal statement to that effect out of the East German. Trying to secure a clarification, Brokaw summarized to Schabowski what he understood to be the new rule: “It is possible for them [East Germans] to go through the wall.” Schabowski, running on little sleep and unnerved by the fuss that the final minutes of his press conference seemed to be causing, cut the American off with a more cautious statement: “It is possible for them to go through the border.” Since the laws of East Germ
any had always permitted its citizens the possibility of going across the border—though hardly anyone received permission to realize that possibility, of course—Schabowski was safe in putting it this way. But he would not be drawn into making a clear statement about the wall. However, when Brokaw subsequently uttered the phrase “freedom to travel,” Schabowski responded in broken English with the words “yes, of course, it is no question of tourism. It is a permission of leaving the GDR.”
Brokaw and his team decided they had enough, despite the strangely incomprehensible reply. Shortly thereafter, he and his crew headed to West Berlin and the Brandenburg Gate, and prepared for a later live broadcast back to the United States. Later that night, the anchor reported that East Germans “could now cross the wall.” A local television team filmed Brokaw making this broadcast, so Germans on both sides of the border could see it as well.117
Because of the time difference to the United States, Brokaw’s staff had hours to mull over the wire reports and the Schabowski interview footage before the “hit time,” or start of broadcast, of the full NBC Nightly News program. The West German television channels did not have that luxury. One of them, ARD, had to decide what to broadcast from the 7:03 p.m. wire reports on its evening news show at 8:00 p.m. At first, the channel staff decided to take a relatively cautious approach, guessing that the wall “should become permeable.” A long report on Kohl’s arrival in Poland for a state visit, originally intended to be the lead story before the Schabowski press conference, dominated the program.
For the 10:42 p.m. news broadcast, though, the ARD staff decided to go big. The moderator, a man named Hanns Friedrichs who enjoyed the status that Walter Cronkite had in the United States, solemnly intoned at the opening of the show, “One has to be careful with superlatives … but this evening, we may risk using one.” Then, forgetting the superlative altogether in his excitement, he proclaimed, “This ninth of November is a historic day. The GDR has announced that, starting immediately, its borders are open to everyone.” Declaring that “the gates in the wall are wide open,” the show cut live to Berlin. Breathless television viewers did not know what to expect.
They got some confused footage, and then one lonely and uncomfortable-looking correspondent, Robin Lautenbach, standing in front of the still-lifeless Invaliden Street border crossing. Although it had been three and a half hours since the end of the Schabowski press conference, the wall was devoid of crossers or celebrants. Lautenbach looked painfully aware that Friedrichs had just tossed him a hot potato. Berlin reality was failing to live up to media-fueled expectations. Lautenbach and the show did their best to fill time. The program cut to a prerecorded report about the wall. Then Lautenbach tried interviewing West Berliners who said they had heard that East Germans had gotten out. Next the show repeated footage of the press conference and finally even gave the sports report. After trying one last time to get some exciting news out of Berlin, the program essentially had to admit defeat, informing viewers that the big surge of people “has perhaps not yet happened.” 118
The journalists had gotten out ahead of reality. But reality was making a determined effort to catch up. An enormous number of East Germans had the ability to watch shows like this one and listen to radio reports, despite the fact that doing so was theoretically forbidden. Chernyaev remembers Kohl estimating that about 90 percent of East Germans watched West German television.119 Western analysts speculated that the GDR regime tolerated this massive illegal viewing because it quieted protest against travel restrictions. East Germans could partake in a virtual “nightly emigration” to the West via their television sets every evening instead of actually trying to leave.120
Map 1.4. West Berlin (American, British, and French Sectors) and East Berlin (Soviet Sector)
Now, however, in the context of 1989, television was not a placating but rather a motivating factor. Viewing television coverage in the early evening and then seeing increasingly more confident announcements like that of Friedrichs later, East Germans became convinced that they could in fact cross the border. Some even rushed out while in pajamas or with children asleep in another room, since they only wanted to look at the West while it was possible, not leave for good.
The decades-long Cold War division of Germany ended shortly before 11:30 p.m. on the night of November 9 at the Bornholmer Street border crossing in East Berlin. No prominent East or West German politicians were there. No representatives of the four occupying powers were present. Why did it happen there? Divided Berlin contained a number of crossing stations, but a constellation of factors made Bornholmer Street the hot spot. The buildings around the Heinrich-Heine Street crossing, for example, included a number of desirable new residences that had been given to members of the police or army. They would hardly storm the wall, and their neighbors would be more afraid to do so. The crossing at Friedrich Street train station catered to foreigners. But Bornholmer Street was not only in a central and accessible location, it was in a central location for the opposition. The percentage of those who failed to vote in the surrounding neighborhood (a sin in the eyes of the SED, which sought electoral participation as close to 100 percent as possible for its rigged elections) was higher there than elsewhere—a clear sign of rejection of the ruling regime.
Bornholmer Street border guard Harald Jäger had been on the job since 1964, and had never dreamed that what was about to happen was even possible. He was inside the station that night as usual, eating some dinner on the job and watching Schabowski’s press conference on television, when what he heard just before 7:00 p.m. made him choke on his food. He was dumbfounded by Schabowski’s remarks, and he was not alone.121 After telling his fellow guards that Schabowski’s words were “deranged bullshit,” Jäger started calling around to find out if anyone knew what was going on. His superiors assured him that travel remained blocked as always. But by 7:30 p.m., Jäger and his team were busy trying to wave back would-be crossers, telling them that the border was not open. The guards received reinforcement when a police van with a loudspeaker pulled up and started announcing the same message, but the crowds kept growing. Jäger and his colleagues were armed and in theory could use deadly force. He and others had received an oral order not to shoot, however, presumably after the public condemnation of the shooting of Gueffroy. It seems that Gueffroy’s unknowing legacy, the result of his death at age twenty, was the unwillingness of the East German border guards to use the deadly force available to them on November 9.122
An enormous crowd built up, and the situation grew increasingly ugly. The border guards were massively outnumbered, and police efforts to dispel them had failed utterly. This situation was repeating itself at other checkpoints as well; the guards at the Invaliden Street crossing called up armed reinforcements in the form of forty-five men armed with machine guns. But it was at Bornholmer Street that events came to a head soonest. After more phone calls, Jäger and his team started to let a trickle of people through, a few at a time, in the hopes of easing the pressure. They would check each person out individually, take names, and then penalize the rowdiest by refusing them reentry later. At about 9:00 p.m., his team started this process, putting stamps on the faces of the photos of those to be kept out. They managed to do this for an hour and a half, by which time the truly massive crowd was ominously chanting “open the gate, open the gate!”
By a little after the time that the television anchorman Friedrichs was going on air at 10:42 p.m., the border guards at Bornholmer Street were realizing that their attempts to reduce the pressure by processing a few individuals at a time were simply not working. After debating among themselves, Jäger decided that the only course of action (other than mass violence) was to open the barriers, and he told his men to do so. A massive surge ensued. Later, Jäger’s team would estimate that several thousand people pushed their way out within just thirty minutes. The division of Germany was over.
Had Lautenbach been standing in front of Bornholmer Street at that time rather than the Invaliden Street
border crossing—which lacked an officer willing to take such initiative around 11:00 p.m.—he would not have wanted for amazing pictures. Luck was instead with reporter Georg Mascolo and his cameraman Rainer März of Spiegel-TV, who took the pictures of a lifetime at the Bornholmer crossing. Their video footage would later appear around the world and feature prominently in documentaries such as the CNN history of the Cold War.123
Other crossings in Berlin and between East and West Germany proper opened in the course of the night in much the same way: individual guards, fearing crowds and unable to get clear instructions, decided to raise the traffic barriers.124 And every opening meant more people flooding into the West in front of cameras, which meant more images beamed back to the East, which in turn sent more people out on to the streets to see for themselves; it became a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Stasi headquarters, in a rushed report prepared the next day, estimated that 68,000 East Germans crossed from East Berlin to West Berlin on foot, and another 9,700 cars had driven over. Of those, some 45,000 people and 5,200 vehicles had returned home by 4:00 a.m. on November 10.
By far the biggest single site of crossing was Bornholmer Street. Jäger and his colleagues estimated that 20,000 people had exited there. Optimistically, they also reported that all 20,000 had returned. The idea of keeping some out proved to be unworkable; those who had left children at home broke down in tears when told that they could not return. Jäger let them back in on his own authority. No questions were ever asked of him afterward.125
The scenes in East Berlin repeated themselves elsewhere in the country. A further 5,404 people and 2,192 vehicles crossed into the West from places elsewhere in the GDR; of those, only 1,099 people and 335 vehicles had returned by 4:00 a.m. The Stasi report found that the reason for the massive emigration was clear: the impact of the mass media. As the report stated, it “was obvious that the decision to travel can be traced back to the reports in Western media.” 126 The Stasi had often blamed behavior that it found objectionable on the instigation of the Western media; but the comments of those who came to the border that night suggest that in this case it was accurate, if unintended.