Schabowski dies in Berlin

Günter Schabowski, the man responsible for the fall of the Berlin Wall, died in Berlin yesterday. He was 86.

On November 9, 1989, at, what had been up to that point a long boring press conference, Schabowski read from a note that he had just been handed, that GDR citizens would be granted permission to visit the Federal Republic.

He was asked again to repeat what he had said and this time he said the rule came into effect 'immediately'.

People began to arrive at the Berlin crossing at Bornholmer Straße, the crowds grew and eventually the man in charge on the night at Bornholmer Straße, Harald Jäger, instructed that the barrier be lifted. 

Shabowski was born in Anklam, Pomerania, now in Mecklenburg Vorpommern. By trade he was a journalist and was at one stage chief editor of Neues Deutschland - the official daily paper of the ruling SED. He was later a member of the Central Committee of the SED.

Writer and politicial activist Christa Wolf in 2009 said that Schabowski was one of the worst of the East German politicians.

After unification he denounced the GDR regime and communism.

The management class.

Jäger volunteered to work as a border guard and later attended the University of State Security in Potsdam. His final thesis to graduate before attaining the rank of major in 1981 had the following title: "The Education of specialist forces, security and counter-terrorism in the border customs offices of the Customs Administration of the GDR as a prerequisite for targeted and differentiated inclusion of the members of the customs administration of the GDR in the system of counter-terrorism at the border crossing points of the GDR."