Fall of the Berlin Wall

After the Second World War, Germany was divided into four occupation zones and then, in 1949, into two states: the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), aligned with the Western powers, and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), under Soviet influence. Berlin, although located within East German territory, was divided in the same way. During the 1950s, millions of East Germans fled to the West via Berlin, taking advantage of the absence of a closed border between the two parts of the city, causing a demographic and economic haemorrhage for East Germany. To stop this exodus, East German authorities decided, on the night of 12-13 August 1961, to erect a wall of concrete and barbed wire separating West Berlin from East Berlin, officially named the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart".

Around 155 kilometres long, the Berlin Wall was reinforced over the years with watchtowers, guard dogs, minefields and a death strip patrolled by East German border guards under orders to shoot anyone attempting to cross it. Between 1961 and 1989, at least 140 people died trying to flee to the West, while several thousand others managed to escape, sometimes by spectacular means (tunnels, hot-air balloons, modified vehicles). The wall became the most tangible symbol of the Iron Curtain dividing Europe during the Cold War.

From 1985 onward, the reforms undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR, glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), weakened Soviet control over its Eastern European satellite states. In 1989, the Solidarity movement came to power in Poland following partially free elections, while Hungary opened its border with Austria in May, offering East Germans an unprecedented escape route. These events, combined with massive demonstrations in East Germany (notably in Leipzig), cornered the East German regime, then recently led by Egon Krenz following Erich Honecker's resignation.

On 9 November 1989, at a press conference, East German government spokesman Günter Schabowski confusingly announced that East German citizens would henceforth be allowed to travel freely to the West, wrongly implying that the measure applied "immediately". The news, relayed by the media, triggered an influx of tens of thousands of East Berliners toward the checkpoints. Overwhelmed and without clear instructions, the border guards eventually opened the gates that evening. Crowds of East and West Berliners then gathered atop the wall in a jubilant scene broadcast live around the world.

In the months that followed, the wall was gradually dismantled, largely by residents armed with hammers and chisels, who became known as "wall woodpeckers" (Mauerspechte). The fall of the wall paved the way for the official reunification of Germany on 3 October 1990 and hastened the collapse of communist regimes across the rest of Eastern Europe. More broadly, it symbolised the end of the Cold War, sealed by the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 and then of the USSR itself in December of that year.