The Berlin Wall fell after a garbled press conference in 1989

The Berlin Wall went up in 1961 to stop East Germans fleeing to the West. For nearly three decades it split the city, families, and the wider Cold War world in two. By the autumn of 1989 the regime was already buckling: Monday demonstrations in Leipzig had swelled into the hundreds of thousands, and a mass exodus was draining the country as East Germans escaped through Hungary, which had opened its border with Austria that summer.

Its end, when it came, was almost an accident. On the evening of 9 November 1989, East German spokesman Günter Schabowski held a routine press conference. Handed a note about new travel rules he had not actually read, he announced that citizens would be free to travel west. Asked by reporters when this took effect, he shuffled his papers and said, “Sofort, unverzüglich” — immediately, without delay — fumbling a regulation meant to roll out gradually.

Western media reported the border was open, and crowds surged to the checkpoints.

At the Bornholmer Strasse crossing, the Stasi officer Harald Jäger found himself besieged by a growing crowd and could reach no superior willing to give an order. Overwhelmed and acting on his own, he became the first to raise the barrier that night. Other checkpoints followed. Berliners climbed onto the Wall and began chipping it apart. The peaceful breach helped topple communist governments across Central and Eastern Europe. Germany was formally reunified on 3 October 1990, eleven months later.