The last hours of the Berlin Wall. Testimony of a foreign correspondent.

09:14 Checkpoint Charlie. This morning the border guards are especially friendly — they know us by now: we’re the Spanish Television (TVE) crew, crossing from one Berlin to the other several times a day. They know we’re carrying all the required permits from the Ministry for State Security. Still, we don’t escape the thorough search of the car, or paying the 25 DM per person, per day.

09:32 Friedrichstrasse, East Berlin. I’m with Esteban González (TVE cameraman), sound assistant José Antonio Herrero, and producer Cristina. On West Berlin radio we hear that East Germans are still fleeing to the West in their Trabants through the Hungarian border. We know exactly how they do it, because we spent the whole summer at that border and inside the occupied embassies. Today another demonstration is expected on the streets of East Berlin.

09:58 SED headquarters, the Socialist Unity Party of the German Democratic Republic. Gregor Gysi, a member of the Central Committee, answers a question for TVE: « We’re arriving late — out on the street, nobody’s listening to us anymore… whatever we do, this revolution can’t be stopped now. »

10:00 Egon Krenz opens the session of the Central Committee while Erhard Lauter, head of the passport division at the Ministry of the Interior, finalizes with State Security officials the new regulation allowing those who want to leave the country to do so in an orderly manner. Moscow has demanded this, to put an end to the summer’s spectacle of mass escapes and the embassy occupations in Budapest, Warsaw and Prague.

14:00 A driver delivers the document with the new regulation to the Central Committee. The idea isn’t that anyone who wants to can simply leave, but that departures — even if numerous — happen in an orderly way. Those who leave must understand they won’t be allowed back. A publication embargo is set until 04:00 on the 10th, when the news can be read on official GDR radio and distributed by press agencies.

16:00 After a cigarette break, Krenz reads the new regulation to the Party leadership. None of those present grasp the consequences of allowing travel to the West without restriction and with immediate effect. In fact, the whole point of regulating departures had been to control them.

17:30 Günter Schabowski, the Party’s new head of communications, has to leave the Central Committee meeting to give a press conference we, the foreign correspondents, have been called to. Egon Krenz hands him the paper on travel, but doesn’t warn him about the embargo. A TVE camera will capture « Schabowski’s mistake » — the man who set off the fall of the Wall.

18:50 International press conference. For half an hour, Schabowski has been speaking in a flat, monotone way about the Party’s extraordinary meeting. At the end, the correspondent for the Italian news agency, Riccardo Ehrmann, asks him about the travel regulation. Schabowski searches for the paper and reads it. A Bild Zeitung journalist asks him to clarify when the measure takes effect. Schabowski answers: immediately. Although the GDR government — under pressure from Moscow — had only intended to open the border to those wanting to leave the country for good (« Not for a tourist visit, » Schabowski tells Tom Brokaw of CBS), the Berlin Wall’s days are now numbered — in minutes.

19:15 Juan Antonio Sacaluga, head of International News for the evening bulletin, can’t believe what he’s reading on the wires, or what we’re telling him from Berlin. Even so, the editors agree to rearrange the running order, and Berlin leads that night’s newscast. The TVE correspondent’s report includes footage from the press conference, the demonstrations in East Germany, and the Trabants at the border.

19:20 A handful of Berliners approach the Bornholmer Strasse crossing, on the eastern side of the city. They demand to leave, to cross to the West: « Schabowski said we can. » But the border guards have no instructions — the new regulation hasn’t reached them yet: « You can’t cross here, not under any circumstances. » Tempers rise: « Schabowski said sofort, unverzüglich — immediately, » they shout, indignant.

21:30 West German television, which reported the news in its evening broadcasts, decides to send a live link to Checkpoint Charlie. Most East Berliners are still at home — they don’t believe what’s happening; they think it’s another trick by the regime, that it can’t be true.

21:50 At the Bornholmer Strasse crossing, the situation becomes untenable, and the checkpoint commander, Harald Jäger, decides to open the barrier to a few people, as a safety valve. The Stasi has given the order that if they try to return, they are not to be let back in.

22:15 The streets in the East remain deserted. We’ve crossed back and forth into the other Berlin once more, and this time the guards don’t even check our passports. On the other side, we meet a couple at the end of Unter den Linden, near the Brandenburg Gate. He’s wearing a Gorbachev pin on his lapel; she’s crying. We ask their daughter, a girl of about 10, why her mother is crying. The child tells us that tomorrow they’re going to visit her grandmother, who lives in Düsseldorf. Two and a half hours later, just past midnight, East and West Germans will embrace a few meters from here, beneath the Brandenburg Gate, after climbing over the Wall.

22:30 ARD calls it a historic day and goes live at the Wall. At Checkpoint Charlie we film West Berliners singing « Die Mauer muss weg, die Mauer muss weg… » (« The Wall must go, the Wall must go »).

22:35 We arrive with the TVE camera at the Bornholmer Strasse crossing, on the western side: calm here, but we can hear the shouts from the other side: « Open it now, open it, open it now, open it now… »

22:42 Hanns Joachim Friedrichs, anchor of the Tagesthemen on Germany’s first channel, announces: « Today is a historic day — the gates of the Berlin Wall are open. » Even though the live link to his own reporter, at another point along the Wall, shows otherwise, the anchor’s words on ARD will be the final push. At the Bornholmer Strasse crossing, there are now many thousands demanding to be let out.

22:50 Unter den Linden, the Soviet Embassy in the GDR. Igor Maximychev, the Russian ambassador in East Berlin, is afraid someone will lose their nerve and pull the trigger: « The danger was very great, » he says today — but he can’t call the Kremlin: it’s too late. It’s two hours later in Moscow, and his superiors would already be asleep after two days of celebrating the October Revolution. The ambassador admits: « It wasn’t advisable to speak with mid-level officials who might have given an inappropriate order. » Soviet tanks stationed in the GDR would stay in their barracks. Gorbachev’s ambassador takes a sleeping pill and goes to bed.

23:30 Harald Jäger, the officer in charge of the Bornholmer Strasse crossing, makes his decision: rather than order his guards to use their weapons, the checkpoint commander decides to raise the barrier. His men, frightened, obey. From the other side, Esteban, our cameraman, films East Berliners setting foot in the West for the first time, showing us — in disbelief — their ID cards stamped by the East German border guards.

23:35 In West Berlin: « Are you going to go back to East Berlin? » I ask a young couple jumping for joy. « Go back? Of course we’re going back. There’s no Wall anymore now, and besides, our baby’s asleep at home. »