The fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, is universally remembered as a night of euphoria and joy in Berlin, but for the city’s police forces, it’s also remembered as the night they played a key role in reunifying the city, making up new standards and rules on the fly.
Berlin’s authorities — in the East and West — started that Thursday with no inkling of what was coming their way over the next 24 hours, but before the night was out, almost all of them had gained impromptu experience in crowd control, ad hoc border crossings and, in some cases, conflict mitigation.
Rainer Bornstein, 54, head of Berlin’s 35th police precinct, was a 34-year-old police superintendent detailed on the night watch for the precinct covering the border crossing at Invalidenstrasse and the part of West Berlin bordering the historic Brandenburg Gate.
Fresh from vacation, Bornstein started his shift going through old paperwork. He was not unaware of the political changes in Eastern Europe, particularly the mass flight of East Germans westward through the now open borders with Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The news had kept him glued to the television during his vacation.
“I’ve never had a vacation where I watched so much TV,” he said.
That didn’t mean, however, that he was ready when the news came that an East German Politburo member, Guenter Schabowski, had shocked the world and announced that East Germans had been given the right to travel freely. Nor did he and his colleagues quite know how to handle reports that a border crossing at Bornholmerstrasse was open or that some people had actually climbed atop the Berlin Wall.
Georg Schertz, 74, now retired, but then the head of West Berlin’s police, had a similar experience. Not anticipating any major events that night, he was attending a birthday when he heard the news. He rushed to a meeting where West Berlin officials realized they were still unclear what was actually happening.
Bornstein, meanwhile, had already been to the Brandenburg Gate to try to talk a handful of West Berliners into coming down from the Wall, for fear of a potential international incident.
He was called away to the Invalidenstrasse crossing, however, as more and more West Berliners gathered there. Indeed, some had clambered onto a building next to the Wall, leading to fears they could fall into the Spree River on the freezing night.
“Time didn’t play any role for me that night,” Bornstein said. “It was one thing after another.”
Guenter Leo, a unit chief with the East German border guard, recounted the night in a special exhibition set up by Berlin’s police.
“Our chief told us that he could not reach anyone and that he had no further information,” Leo said.
Lacking guidance, Leo said border guards decided there would be no violence that night, but that still left them unclear as to what they should do next.
Pressure was building and there were now reports of East Berliners streaming into the city at other crossings. East German guards at Invalidenstrasse finally let through some of the rowdier members of the crowd on their side, but that only built up the hopes of those who remained in the East.
Watching this, Bornstein realized that he could soon have hundreds of East Berliners coming through his crossing, but he realized he would have nowhere for them to go, given the press of West Berliners on his side. Also, influenced by the news he’d watched on vacation, he assumed that the East Berliners would be coming through as refugees.
With that in mind, he began trying to clear the roads and finding directions to get them to refugee facilities elsewhere in the city.
“On my side, I had 5,000 people ... and the Easterners just wanted to get through,” he said. “The word that was used a lot for that night is wahnsinn [craziness], and that’s how it was.”
When the first Trabis came through, however, the passengers said to a man that they just wanted to see some sights and then get home, since they had to work in the morning. Bornstein quickly trashed his maps and sent an officer to East Berlin — a major breach of protocol — to arrange an orderly border opening.
When Schertz reached Invalidenstrasse, he found one of his officers sitting on the Wall to help direct traffic. Since the Wall was technically in East Berlin, he called immediately for his officer to return to the West, but an East German officer who Schertz had seen before called over: “Don’t worry, we’re handling this together.”
“I couldn’t believe my ears,” Schertz said.
At some point, Bornstein thought to ask how the situation was at the Brandenburg Gate and was shocked to find that the handful of people who had been there earlier had grown into a mass of people.
Schertz said that location, which had no proper crossing, was almost a major problem.
“For about 24 hours, the situation there was hanging by a thread,” he said. “Then things turned euphoric and the situation calmed down.”
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