That Night Was Not in the Plan

A child listens; a parent reads. This page answers the questions that come after the story. The script is available during playback.

What this is about

Here is how the story explains its words to a child. A wall is a long high thing built so people cannot cross. A checkpoint is a place where they check if you may pass, and then let you through. A press conference is when you call reporters together to tell them something. A travel pass is what a country gives you ahead of time to say you may go abroad.

This is about the night of November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall opened. Three questions are being answered — what happened · what things were like then · what it meant.

The heart of it sits between the second and the third. Nobody had planned to open that gate that day. One paper puts it plainly: a travel-rule reform meant to loosen things only on the surface was handled so badly that it produced "the accidental opening of the Berlin Wall" (DOI: 10.1080/09644009308404327). Another study says the whole thing "began with a misunderstanding" (DOI: 10.1017/cbo9780511607714.011).

But "they got lucky" is not the conclusion. People had been demanding the right to leave since 1975, the wall opening was that demand winning, and painting the night as a sudden accident erases the fourteen years in front of it (DOI: 10.5823/jarees.2006.34). This piece does not rule for either side. What remains when you set both down together is the conclusion — history does not go to plan, and that does not mean it goes any old way. This is neither a hero story nor a shrug.

What things were like — the night did not come from nowhere

• On August 13, 1961 the border to the west was formally closed. The remaining checkpoints were staffed by the state security ministry, and one study of those posts leaves a question behind — who, in the last instance, allowed or denied passage (DOI: 10.1177/0022009415577004). Before the wall, many residents of the divided city worked in "the other" Berlin (DOI: 10.1515/9783110210576).
• People lost their lives trying to cross the wall. There is a book on that subject alone (DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199546305.001.0001), and after unification German courts had to hear homicide charges against border guards (DOI: 10.1093/ejil/9.3.540). The script touches this once, with no description.
• Even in early 1989, Honecker said the wall would stand another hundred years (DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195072754.003.0001).
• On May 2, 1989 Hungarian soldiers cut the wire. In mid-August 661 people crossed into Austria at once, and the rest crowded into the West German embassies in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw, where the tent camps alone held thousands (DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195072754.003.0002).
• Those who stayed met at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig for the Monday five o'clock peace prayers. On October 9, 1989 the state closed the highways, cancelled the trains and lined the streets with more than 6,000 armed troops. That evening 7,000 people prayed in that church and three others in the centre, then walked the ring road with those waiting outside, and no crackdown came (DOI: 10.1093/jcs/csw050). The Monday marches ran to 42 over 1989–91 (DOI: 10.2307/2950679).
• ⚠️ One number was left out on purpose. A paper shows that 70,000, long given as the turnout that day, is clearly wrong — not faked, just a first estimate that hardened without checking (DOI: 10.1515/jbnst-2011-5-603).
• People leaving made the people who stayed louder. Usually it is the reverse; in East Germany the mass exit became a focal point that ignited the voice of protest. The same book calls this a "surprisingly bloodless" revolution (DOI: 10.1215/9780822387923).

What happened — the evening of November 9

• At about 7 p.m., some 300 journalists from around the world were packed into a room in East Berlin for a routine press conference, run by the Politburo member Günter Schabowski (DOI: 10.4324/9781351307369-5).
• The draft he read said this — "Applications for private trips abroad may be submitted without further preconditions… Permission will be granted immediately." The news was not meant to be released until the next day, and the journalists, unbriefed, were stunned. Free personal movement had been added to the bill only at the last minute, and the leadership hardly realised what they had set in motion (DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195072754.003.0001).
• ⚠️ From here the detail comes from a review. The piece about Sarotte's book reports it this way — Schabowski had missed most of the Politburo meeting and did not have the text to hand. Only when an Italian journalist asked about travel did he raise it, and to the next question, "when does this go into force," he hurriedly read out the phrase that caught his eye — "right away." The same piece reports that Harald Jäger, in charge of the Bornholmer Strasse checkpoint, phoned his commanding officer at 11:30 p.m. to say he would let the people out, and opened the gate when the officer disagreed (DOI: 10.1162/jcws_r_00644).
• Bornholmer Strasse was the first border crossing to open that night — this one fact rests on separate research, not the review (DOI: 10.4324/9781003722458-7).
• The opening was "a complete surprise" (the study above). The same review makes the point sharply — had West German intelligence known, would the chancellor have been on a state visit to Poland the day before?

Questions a child may ask

"Didn't it fall because Reagan told them to tear down the wall?" That speech is nowhere in the 40-paper shortlist — though "we have no evidence" and "it is false" are different things. The piece about Sarotte's book reports that the book argues against the common view that communism lost because the West, and Reagan in particular, contained it, and the reviewer then adds his own reservation — "the truth may be more complicated" (same review).

"So did Gorbachev bring it down?" The evidence says two things. As he began letting the Soviet bloc states handle their own affairs, a military response grew less likely and the cost of protest fell (DOI: 10.1017/cbo9780511755941.007), and Honecker stepped down under that pressure in October 1989 (DOI: 10.1057/9781403982810_6). Nothing in our sources says he brought the wall down.

"What happened to the families that were split apart?" Two things in the shortlist speak to it — an ethnography of kin, state and nation in the two Berlins (DOI: 10.1017/cbo9780511607714), and oral histories of people who crossed to the other side for the first time after the wall opened. The first thing those people talked about was always wondering what lay over there (DOI: 10.1017/9781782044109.013). Figures such as how many households were divided are not in the shortlist.

"So when did Germany become one country?" Support for unity grew within weeks of the opening (the study above), and unification came on October 3, 1990 (DOI: 10.1093/ejil/9.3.540). One paper argues the regime began collapsing in the regions rather than in Berlin, led by surprisingly low-ranking officials — which also explains how peaceful it stayed (DOI: 10.1080/09644009308404316).

What is evidence and what is a story people tell

Well established — the dates and the quoted text in the two sections above.

Where it splits — how far "accident" can be pushed. One side reads the botched cosmetic reform as the cause of the opening; the other calls that a telling that erases the emigration movement running since 1975 (the two studies above). This piece stops at what both sides share — the opening that night was not planned, and fourteen years had piled up in front of it.

⚠️ Widely believed, not supported — whether West German television could be received had no effect on the likelihood of protest (DOI: 10.1177/0022343314554245). Left out — descriptions of shooting, surveillance and fear, and the order to stock blood at Leipzig hospitals on October 9, for reasons of tone; the weather, the faces and the cheering that night, because there is no evidence for them.

⚠️ Not written because the evidence is missing — no source states outright that no shots were fired that night. The script says only two things instead: the gate was not broken down but opened, and scholars call this a "surprisingly bloodless" revolution. Nor is the reform called a "staged" loosening — what the sources say is that it was cosmetic, that the announcement was set for the next day, and that free movement went in at the last minute.

⚠️ Where the honour went — on the twentieth anniversary it was Chancellor Merkel, Gorbachev and Wałęsa who walked across the Bornholmer bridge (the study above). The name of the man who opened that gate is not on that list. It is not in the script either — the sources say nothing about what became of Jäger.

Something to try together

Think of one thing today that did not go to plan, and talk about what was already in place when it happened.