Two forgotten men brought down the Berlin Wall

Here in Berlin, 35 years ago today, at a dull press conference in a dreary conference room a short walk from my hotel, an East German politician made a rookie error which brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Half a lifetime later, it’s easy to forget that this seismic shift was the result of a bizarre accident – the unlikely collision of two snap decisions by two men whose names are now almost forgotten. As Berlin throws a party to celebrate the 35^th anniversary of what Germans call the ‘Friedliche Revolution’, how many of these revellers are aware that their ‘Peaceful Revolution’ was shaped (or even caused) by the impulsive actions of two relatively unknown individuals: a Stasi officer called Harald Jäger and a politburo apparatchik called Günter Schabowski?

Like Run Lola Run, the German movie which replays several versions of the same robbery, showing how the smallest deviations can lead to entirely different outcomes, the story of the Mauerfall (as Germans call the fall of the Berlin Wall) shows how the coincidental choices of two ordinary men had extraordinary consequences which still shape the world we live in.