Schabowski reacts before his trial in Berlin in this November 13, 1995 file picture.

AFP
Berlin
Former East German bureaucrat Guenter Schabowski, who died yesterday aged 86, went down in history for his improvised answer in 1989 that inadvertently brought down the Berlin Wall.
The former spokesman of the Politburo central committee of East Germany’s ruling communist party died in the reunified capital, his widow Irina told news agency DPA.
His death came just days before the 26th anniversary of the joyous border opening.
After months of mass protests against regime and East Germans fleeing in their droves via Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the Politburo asked the government in 1989 to prepare a law loosening restrictions on travel outside the country.
It was nearly 7pm on November 9 when Schabowski pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and read out a decree stating that visas would be freely granted to those wanting to travel outside or leave the Stalinist state.
“As of when?” asked an Italian journalist.
Schabowski hesitated and then improvised: “As far as I know ... as of now.”
The press conference was carried live by television networks and within minutes news bulletins were proclaiming that “The Wall has fallen”.
Thousands of East Berliners started streaming towards checkpoints leading to West Berlin, where baffled East German border guards, unsure what to do, kept phoning for instructions.
Eventually as the crowds grew ever larger, one barrier went up and bewildered East Berliners, who had been unable to cross freely for 28 years, staggered into the West.
Less than one year later, on October 3, 1990, East and West Germany would reunite as one country, ending four decades of Cold War division.
“I wouldn’t say I was a hero who opened the border – truth be told, I acted to try to save the GDR,” he told reporters in 2009, referring to the German Democratic Republic, as communist East Germany was officially known. “On November 9, I was still a committed communist.”
Schabowski was expelled from the party early in 1990 for bringing down the Wall, and then sentenced to prison in 1997 for his earlier complicity in the shoot-to-kill policy enforced by border guards against those trying to flee to the West. He was pardoned in 2000.