The Power of Miscommunication

At the height of the Cold War, Berlin, for capital of the German Republic and the Reich, was the gauge of how hot or cold it was.  However, by 1989, the Communist bloc was failing.  At first, this was economic malaise, but it was beginning to spread elsewhere.  There was no work, and not enough bread.  Due to a legal loophole, thousands of East Germans fled into Hungary, nominally part of the Communist bloc, and from there, cross into West Germany.  To stem this, the East German government decided to issue temporary permits through the “Anti-Fascist Wall” what they officially called the Berlin Wall,  This was meant to appease any would-be defectors.  The idea was that these were intended to be temporary visas for a later, unspecified date, with no real intent to implement it.  They hoped the people would be placated while they figured out what to do to stem the exodus. 

Unfortunately, the German Democratic Republic, as East Germany was called, forgot to brief the man who was supposed to deliver the news on live television.  Günter Schabowski was an East German politician who served as an official of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, the ruling party during most of the existence of the German Democratic Republic.  Starting out as a journalist, in 1981, he became a member of the SED Central Committee.  In 1985, after leaving Neues Deutschland, the newspaper he founded, he became the First Secretary of the East Berlin chapter of the SED and a member of the SED Politburo.  He also served as member of the Volkskammer from 1981 to 1990.  He was a hardline Communist, and a brutal man. 

In October 1989, Schabowski, along with several other members of the Politburo, ousted SED leader, Erich Ernst Paul Honecker.  Honecker was the prime  mover for the creation of the Berlin Wall, and the architect of the border guard’s shoot to kill policy.  Egon Rudi Ernst Krenz, Honecker’s long-time deputy, took over, Schabowski became his deputy.  As part of the effort to change the regime’s image, Schabowski, as a former journalist, was named the regime’s unofficial spokesman, and he held several daily press conferences to announce changes.  He had already been in charge of media affairs for the Politburo.  Because Schabowski had spent most of his career in communist-style journalism, where reporters were told what to write after events had already happened, he found it difficult to get used to Western-style media practice of answering questions in an open setting. 

On the 09^th November 1989, shortly before that day’s press conference, Krenz handed Schabowski a text containing the new, temporary travel regulations.  The text stipulated that East German citizens could apply for permission to travel abroad without having to meet the previous requirements for those trips, and it allowed for permanent emigration across all border crossings, including those between East and West Berlin.  The text was supposed to be embargoed until the next morning.  It was also about a future policy that may not be implemented. 

This was the first time Schabowski had read the text, because he was not at earlier meetings, when it was drafted and discussed before the full committee.  However, he felt comfortable discussing it at the press conference.  He said that all one needed to do to conduct a press conference was to be able to speak German, and read a text without mistakes.  How wrong he was.  When he read the note aloud at the end of the press conference, one of the reporters asked when the regulations would come into effect.  Schabowski assumed, wrongly, that it would be the same day based on the wording of the note, and he replied after a few seconds’ pause, with uncertainty, “Das tritt nach meiner Kenntnis ... ist das sofort ... unverzüglich”, “As far as I know ... effective immediately … without delay.” 

The next questions was whether the new regulations also applied to travel between East and West Berlin,  Schabowski looked at the text again and discovered that they did.  When cornered in subsequent interviews, he reiterated what he said earlier.  The news was broadcast on West German public national television channels.  They showed parts of Schabowski’s press conference in their main evening news reports.  This meant that the news was broadcast to nearly all of East Germany as well, where West German television was widely watched.  The news then spread like wildfire with news reports continuing to repeat the news throughout the night. 

As the night progressed, thousands of East Berliners began proceeding to the six border crossings along the Berlin Wall and demanded to be let through.  Live television reported on the gathering people which only increased the numbers of East Berliners coming to the gates.  The crowds vastly outnumbered the border guards, who tried initially to stall for time.  No one was willing to order deadly force, especially with the news and such a vast crowd.  Finally, at 1130h, Stasi Officer Harald Jäger disobeyed orders from his superiors, and opened the Bornholmer Straße border crossing of the Berlin Wall. 

The fall of the Berlin Wall was the key event leading to the end of the East German regime, a state that had been crumbling for many weeks as citizens had been fleeing through intermediate countries surrounding East Germany.  When the gates were opened, for all intents and purposes, East Germany ceased to exist.  The Berlin Wall stood from 1961 to 19989.  It was a monumental physical and ideological barrier between the Capitalist West and Communist East.  What treaties, the threat of nuclear war, and revolution could not tear down, one man who did not attend a meeting and read a brief managed to do so.  We should never underestimate the power of incompetence in communication.