Today’s edition of The Independent has a fascinating feature on Harald Jager, the Stasi Lieutenant-Colonel who took the decision, on the night of 9th November 20 to open the Bornholmer Strasse gate in the Berlin Wall, separating east from west.
It is hard to imagine the confusion at that gate on that night, with the East German political regime falling apart by the hour, under no strategic control and with no communication to those who would have to deal with the consequences on the ground.
So the member of the Politburo speaking for the regime, Gunter Schabowski, declared at one point – on live television – that East Germany would open its borders to those with the correct travel documents – and then just said people could go at once, with no obstruction.
So what were the border guards to do? They had no instructions and their superiors were unable to give them any.
A crowd built and swelled at the Bornholmer Strasse gate. The guards were armed. The history of attempted crossings from the east was a violent one, strewn with fatalities. What to do?
Jager was afraid of a stampede but even more afraid of a bloodbath. Eventually he chose to give the order to open the gate – and the human river ran westwards.
Jager cried – not as we westerners might imagine, with joy at the end of repression but with horror and disappointment that his fellow easterners wanted to go west, wanted to be with the west, were open to the demon of capitalism.
He cried too with a sharp sense of failure, not just of the regime he and many believed was building the better of the two Germanys but with a sense of personal failure.
This is the heart of the interest of this interview with Tony Paterson, helping us to understand the other, the genuinely different perspective of an honest man who believed in the rightness of what the communist regime was trying to do and who was therefore devastated by the failure that led to the opening of the border.
What happened for Harald Jager in the minutes and hours following his decision is interesting yet again and perhaps surprising – as is the future he went on to lead before his current retirement.
The Independent’s story, as far from stereotype as you can get, is The guard who opened the gate and made history.
