Why did the Berlin wall fall in 1989?

 

The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9.11.1989

For twenty eight years, the Berlin Wall stood for a division between East and West. But why did it fall?   

When Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee, he wanted to introduce domestic reforms that would renew the Stalinist system. This meant that Gorbachev called for technical innovations, the closure of loss-making enterprises and the improvement of consumer goods channels. In a speech he criticized the mistakes of the KPDSU, in this speech he assured the Eastern Bloc states outside the USSR of their independence and to respect them. But the GDR government stuck to the old laws. But the GDR citizens found out about the reform. That's why they went on vacation to the brother states of the DDR. In addition, the GDR was doing very badly economically. It paid part of the rents, basic foodstuffs etc. from its own state budget. From its own state budget, which meant that it lived above its means for years. In addition, the products produced in the GDR were a third of the level of the FRG. In order to improve the economic situation, the SED government saw only one way, namely to produce more at a lower price. But at the beginning of the sixties, the supply problems grew and more people fled every day. This was followed by the construction of the Berlin Wall, which was erected to turn the underperforming economy back into an efficient economic system. But this failed, leading to protests such as the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig and Berlin. Because the Monday demonstrations had many supporters, especially young people, 70,000 demonstrators came together in Leipzig on the day of the decision (9.11.1989). The fact that so many demonstrators came together broke the will of the security forces to act. In addition, there was the press conference on freedom of travel at which Günther Schabowski, the first chairman of the Sed government, read out the draft law on freedom of travel. In response to a question from a journalist, Günther Schabowski said that the law would apply with immediate effect. As the conference was broadcast live on television, thousands of DDR citizens flocked to the Berlin Wall to wait for the border to open. As the border police received no instructions, they were left to decide for themselves whether they wanted to open the border. As a result, the Berlin Wall came down and many people streamed into the West.

 

Tom