It was the most significant day and joyous moment in recent German history: on the night of November 9, 1989 the seemingly insurmountable Berlin Wall came down. The fall of the global symbol of the division between East and West was a momentous event and turning point in history, not only for Germany and Germans.
"It was simply unbelievable!," recalls Dainis Mjartāns of the peaceful revolution that he 35 years ago eye-witnessed. The then 24-year-old was one of the few Latvians that were in Berlin when suddenly the Wall was gone and people were celebrating together on both sides of the inner-German border and atop the infamous bulwark.
"It felt like three New Years had fallen on one day," he says. When eye-witnessing the breaching of the grim barrier that divided Germany for 28 years, two months and 28 days, Mjartāns was amidst the historic events that were about to change the world and the lives of many people, including his own.
"We were three Latvians who had all graduated from the Latvian Gymnasium in Münster and were studying in West Berlin at the Free University, each at its own faculty. On that fateful day, we rushed to the wall together, when we found out that the border seemed to be open soon", he describes the once-in-a-lifetime event that has carved vivid lasting images into his memory.
At around 22:00 in the evening, Mjartāns and his companions took the subway and headed to the border crossing point at Bornholmer Strasse. Upon arriving there, the three Latvian exiles saw how masses of people were pushing their way from East Berlin across the border.
Many of them were setting foot on West Berlin territory – an island of freedom in the middle of the communist GDR – for the first time in their lives and longed for all things western. The opening of the wall was almost beyond their imagination, even though the people knew that it
was time for a change and have already dared to take their protest on the street.
Where there was a wall, there was a way
"People came and came. More and more arrived. A few meters behind the border, many stopped and looked around in disbelief. After all these years, they suddenly had the opportunity to get to the other side of the wall. It was difficult to understand and comprehend what was going on inside them," says Mjartāns, reminding that the Wall, barbed wire and the orders to shoot at those who tried to escape from Eastern Germany, previously prevented any access to the free world.
Over the course of the Wall’s existence, tens of thousands of people tried to flee, and hundreds paid for their attempts with their lives.
What allowed and prompted tens of thousands to cross over to West Berlin was an announcement East Germany's government spokesman Günter Schabowski (1929-2015). At a now famous press conference, the state official announced the GDR’s new travel regulations designed to contain a mass escape movement and calm the state's disgruntled citizens, thousands of whom had fled to the West via Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the turbulent summer and autumn of 1989.
But due to a misunderstanding, Schabowski incorrectly answered a follow-up question on the timing of the new policy – and accidently announced that the travel restrictions for East German citizens would be lifted immediately.
It was the beginning of the end of the socialist-ruled German Democratic Republic (GDR). The sensational and unexpected news spread instantaneously, not least because the press conference was being broadcast live and covered closely by West German media that also oversimplified what Schabowski had said.
Germany’s flagship TV news program Tagesschau on the public broadcasting channel ARD went on air at 20.00 with the sensational headline “GDR opens border”.
On the Eastern side, people were rushing out into the streets and began congregating along the inner-German border in Berlin, plain curious to cross over and visit the western part of the divided city. Unable to contain and halt the swelling flow of crowds any longer, panicky GDR border guards gave up their resistance, stood aside and let the people pass through. Not a single shot was fired at the border when thousands were flooding towards the crossing points, although it could have ended very differently.
The border crossing at Bornholmer Strasse was the first to open at around 22:30. By midnight, all crossings in the city were open – including the internationally famous Checkpoint Charlie. The events completely spiralled out of the East German government’s control and the course of history could not be stopped any more.
A quick trip to the East and back
While East Berliners poured joyously in to the Western half of the city, where they were welcomed with cheers when spilling out into the streets, Mjartāns and his companions set off in the other direction. The three Latvians were curious and after a while decided to have a look at what was going on in East Berlin.
Amidst the great confusion at the border crossing they managed to easily pass the border guards and walked to Alexanderplatz – a large public square where just some days before the fall of Wall the peaceful demonstrations against the East German regime had culminated with a mass protest of around half a million people.
"It was dark, and only a few lights were on in some apartments. For us it was a symbolic march towards the east, we were possibly the only West Berliners who took the opportunity to cross the border in the opposite direction that night“, Mjartāns says about the short and visa-free forbidden excursion, recalling that the vast square in Berlin Mitte – nowadays one of the liveliest places in the German capital – was almost deserted.
"On the way back, the line at the border crossing was very long. We were worried that we might not be able to return to West Berlin anymore. But we slipped past the GDR border guards, who seemed to be completely apathetic," Mjartāns says of his memories – which he some years ago also shared to a bigger audience at an event of the German Embassy in Riga.
Some people even drove across the border in their 'Trabis' – the legendary classic East German Trabant car. No one knew how many of them will just visit and how many will stay, but most of the border crossers returned home again later.
Dancing on the Berlin Wall
Once back at the Wall, the three Latvians experienced moving scenes. West Berliners were hoisting East Berliners up to the top of the barrier that had divided them for decades. The cheering crowd tooted trumpets and danced euphorically atop the Wall, complete strangers embracing one another warmly on the streets and exchanging hugs and kisses with tears of joy in their eyes.
Berlin was de facto being reunited. "We watched in disbelief", Mjartāns remembers, adding that it was a wildly happy, unforgettable night.
The events of 9 November 1989 effectively removed the Wall as a barrier between East and West, but it did not physically disappear at that point. It was still unclear whether the structure dubbed as the "anti-imperialist protective wall“ by the East German regime would be removed. While numerous so-called Mauerspechte – people equipped with pickaxes and sledgehammers that were chipping off chunks of concrete on their own initiative – hammered the first holes into the Wall, the masses continued to exert public pressure.
Thousands of people gathered in the following days at the iconic Brandenburg Gate and demanded the demolition of the steel and concrete barrier which ultimately began only on 13 June 1990.
Among them were also Dainis Mjartāns and other exile-Latvians, some of whom had previously sprayed political graffiti and slogans on the Berlin Wall that called for freedom for the Baltic States. "We also spent the next evenings at the Wall because we considered it important to be there at that time and once even climbed up on it", says Mjartāns, highlighting in retrospect that "for me and many Latvians it was actually clear at the time: If the wall falls, Latvia will become independent again. The opening of the wall was therefore a very emotional experience for us.“
At that time also several remarkable photos were taken and published in German newspapers. The pictures show young people with the red-white-red Latvian flag in their hands standing among people with the German flag in front of and on the top of the Wall.
"It was like a reminder of our shared history and a message for the future of an indivisible Europe," says Mjartāns, who later worked for Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty in Prague before returning to Latvia to work in different capacities in the media environment, when looking at the old pictures.
One came down, the other rose up
The fall of the grim dividing-line between Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe and the West indeed altered the course of history, poignantly marking the end of Germany’s division that had begun with the building of the Wall on 21 August 1961. The events of 9 November 1989 led not only to the demise of the GDR, but also to German reunification and became a symbol of the popular upheavals that swept across East Germany and Central Europe, ultimately leading to the implosion of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Iron Curtain that had split Europe since the end of the Second World War.
This is also commemorated by fragment of the dismantled Berlin Wall that was set up in Riga. The 3.70-meter-high and 2.6-ton concrete structure was brought to the Latvian capital in autumn 1990 for a special exhibition In 1992 it had been incorporated into a memorial ensemble together with a fragment from a concrete wall from the 1991 Barricades in Riga.
Located on the northern fringes of Kronvalda Park on Elizabetes iela, the monument near the Riga World Trade Center – which used to be former headquarter of the Central Committee of the Latvian Communist Party – is intended to remind all about those historic days.
