(dramatic music) (narrator) The Berlin wall.

For almost 30 years, it divided a country.

It separated families and destroyed lives.

To attempt to breach it was to risk death.

(speaking in German) ♪ Both its secretly planned construction and its sudden fall were preceded by events that were like a countdown in an intense race.

(speaking in German) ♪ Numerous personal accounts, journal entries, and letters reveal the true dimensions of the division of Germany.

(dramatic music) ♪ The Berlin Wall was very soon a thing of the past.

Just a few days after the fall in November 1989, the 155 kilometers of ominous reinforced concrete were nothing more than a quarry for souvenir hunters.

(speaking in German) (dramatic music) ♪ (Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk) The Berlin Wall was synonymous, worldwide, with the Cold War, with the bloc confrontations of the superpowers and, to a certain extent, also stood for Europe, a divided Europe.

In that regard, the fall of the Wall was then, of course, the iconic symbol that provided the images for people to identify with, where everyone was roaring "Hurray!"

♪ (narrator) On the morning of November 9th, 1989, still virtually no one could have imagined that within just a few months the Berlin Wall would be consigned to the cement dump of history.

♪ (tense music) ♪ Exactly one year before the fall of the Wall, the Cold War mindset was still firmly anchored in both the West and the East.

The Berlin Wall was accommodated in daily life.

West Berliners were used to leaving town via the transit routes through the GDR.

(conversing in German) ♪ (narrator) The West had tacitly accepted the GDR and thus the Berlin Wall.

Debating the merits of a reunified Germany was not on the agenda for politicians on either side.

♪ (Walter Momper) Reunification was often touted in soap-box oratory, but no one seriously believed it would happen.

And it really wasn't in sight.

The GDR was considered very stable, economically it was, relatively speaking, for the East, but actual change was nowhere in sight.

(narrator) In the late 1980s, the Berlin Wall was literally insurmountable.

The great gray bulwark included several barriers and alarm wires.

And yet, flight attempts were still made, most often with fatal results.

The West reacted with fierce headlines and "credit denied."

The GDR began to plan a high-tech Wall with sensitive microelectronics to replace nervous border guards.

(Frederick Taylor) They were obviously aiming to take out the human factor.

Nobody would need to observe, you would have this electronic wall that would react as if a house were being invaded by burglars but, of course, it's about people trying to escape the house not to break into it.

(crowd clapping) (narrator) In the late '80s, the SED regime was still taking great pains to uphold the façade of GDR success.

The tiny country even tried to convince the West that it was among the world's leading industrial nations.

♪ (Hans Modrow) The problem was, they actually believed that they understood the people, that they stood with the people, were loved, were respected by the people.

That was the problem.

They genuinely believed that they had built the best of all systems which, even if it wasn't perfect, was the only system that could possibly attain perfection.

And I think that was very much how they felt.

But the system was unresponsive and stuck.

It was stuck.

But I know, I don't think the old men saw that, old men don't.

(dramatic music) (narrator) Photographer Dietmar Riemann documented the feeling of inertia in his country.

He felt that life in the GDR was without prospects.

In January 1986, he and his family submitted an application for permanent resettlement to the Federal Republic of Germany.

♪ (Dietmar Riemann) Once again, I start a new journal.

Spent the morning bunkering coal.

I carted 2.2 tons, our annual allotment, from the street to the garden, and then shoveled it into the cellar.

The coveted heating material is very welcome on the one hand.

On the other hand, I expect our exit permits to come through any day now.

♪ I certainly wasn't the first to have applied for an exit permit.

I was one of very, very many.

And it was also clear to me, that I had now become an enemy of the East German state.

And that was what first set a thought process in motion that said to me: we're living in total agony.

There is no movement at all here.

(narrator) The option of legal exit from the GDR to the West had existed since 1975.

That year, Erich Honecker had signed up to the Final Act of the Helsinki Accords on Security and Cooperation, granting his citizens the right to freedom of movement.

(speaking in German) ♪ In fact, in the 1980s, we do see a massive spike in the number of applications for an exit permit, and of course the number of permits issued rose accordingly.

For the SED regime, that did offer a means of releasing pressure to some extent.

♪ (narrator) The border crossing at Berlin's Friedrichstrasse station became one of the most famous departure points for "exiters."

It was called "the palace of tears."

Those leaving here for the West were subjected to a tortuous interrogation.

But that didn't stop people from exercising their "right to exit" in growing numbers.

(Dorothea Kraus) In the '80s, it became increasingly clear where the difficulties of the GDR lay, how the interplay of restriction and observation, combined with the economic difficulties, created a crucible in which more and more people said, "No, we won't go along with that!"

♪ (narrator) The real threat to the GDR power structure, however, came not from within, but from Moscow.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Soviet Communist party.

He was intent on reforming the Communist System.

(Frederick Taylor) The gerontocracy in the Soviet Union ended with the election of Gorbachev who was from a much younger generation and bringing change to a system that knew it had to change.

(narrator) His guiding principals: "glasnost," openness, and "perestroika," reconstruction.

Gorbachev was intent on profound social reform.

That was also an admission that the Communist road had become very rocky indeed.

Feeling betrayed, "little brother" GDR met Moscow's change of course with reactionary panic.

When the old guard within the SED realized what was going on in Russia, they banned Russian publications from being available inside East Germany, because they were afraid of the infection spreading there.

(narrator) In the changing political climate, Soviet periodicals that appeared in German in the GDR were subjected to strict censorship controls.

♪ Journalist Ingrid Ebert from Forst in Brandenburg was an enthusiastic reader of the Soviet magazine Sputnik.

A publication of Russia's international news agency Novosti, it brought a whiff of free press to the GDR.

Until November 18th, 1988.

♪ (Ingrid Ebert) Sputnik has been banned.

To learn from the Soviet Union means to learn victory!

Or maybe not, after all?

♪ L. came to visit.

He wanted to know what I thought about the Sputnik ban, and how I appraised the political situation.

I found that very odd, and tried to steer the conversation towards other topics.

♪ (narrator) The Brandenburg Gate, a uniquely iconic symbol of the division of Germany and the city of Berlin.

With Gorbachev at the helm in Moscow, western powers hoped that the time was now also ripe to broach the issue of the Wall.

But when, on June 12th, 1987, U.S. president Ronald Reagan pointedly chose the Brandenburg Gate as the setting for an inflammatory speech aimed at Moscow, politicians in the West were not amused.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate.

Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate.

(cheering, applause) Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

(cheering, applause) (Frederick Taylor) His speech, it was undiplomatic; it was frank.

Some people at the time thought it was naive, which it probably, in a sense, was.

He came out like the little boy who sees that the emperor has no clothes.

He came out and said, "What is all this?

Why do we still have this?"

The majority of West German society had long since turned its attention to Paris, London, New York, or wherever, away from the East, which had virtually vanished from the political agenda.

(dramatic music) (narrator) Three months after Reagan's speech at the Brandenburg Gate, SED head Erich Honecker was received in the Federal Republic on a state visit.

The official protocol provided for a motorcycle escort with just seven bikes instead of the usual fifteen.

The honor guard for Honecker was also a somewhat pared down version of the standard.

♪ (Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk) It started with things like, would Honecker be received in Bonn as the head of a sovereign state, and what protocols should apply?

There were many discussions.

That was only half a state visit.

Officially it was a working visit, because the Federal Republic hadn't actually recognized the GDR as a state; the constitution stood betwixt and between that, so to speak.

♪ (narrator) Erich Honecker ignored the nuances in protocol and used the visit to make a public presentation of the sovereignty of his state.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl also took a diplomatic tack, avoiding any mention of the Wall.

♪ (speaking in German) ♪ (narrator) In 1989, a young East Berliner put the assertions of the SED regime to the test.

20-year-old Chris Gueffroy took the risk and climbed over the Wall.

Ten bullets sealed his fate.

Chris Gueffroy was the last in the history of Berlin Wall deaths.

(dark music) (Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk) The GDR always wanted to be perceived by the international community as a magnificent sovereign state, and such horrific occurrences didn't fit that image, made for bad press.

So at some point the SED leadership said that has to stop; it's generating too much bad press and they won't give us any more loans.

(narrator) Soon after, on April 28th, 1989, Erich Mielke, Minister for State Security, issued an "internal directive" rescinding the firing order.

♪ (Mielke speaking in German) ♪ (narrator) And yet, the Wall still seemed built to last forever.

In the spring of 1989, the number of exit permit applications continued to rise monthly.

But there was still no right to leave, permits were more an act of clemency.

In April 1989, Ingrid Ebert and her husband submitted an application for a visit permit to West Germany.

(Ingrid Ebert) Wilfried's mother turns 70 in May.

She's invited us to Wolfsburg.

We submitted an application and had to go to the district department of the People's Police.

It was basically an interrogation.

"What do you do in your free time?

Do you collect coins?

Where do your children stay when you travel?"

We dutifully answered every question.

Anything to avoid negative attention.

You needed a specific occasion, with an invitation, the timeframe was limited and you had to apply to the authorities for a permit to take the trip, and permission could be denied, for whatever reason.

(dramatic music) ♪ (narrator) However, in the spring of 1989, the fate of the Berlin Wall was decided hundreds of kilometers away.

On the 2nd of May, a Hungarian general announced at a press conference that the border fortification between Hungary and Austria would be dismantled, with spectacular consequences.

And then I thought, things really are changing here.

The GDR isn't the giant prison it's always been, now they're being forced to let the people out.

(soft music) (narrator) Writer Walter Kempowski had spent six years in a penitentiary before fleeing to the West in 1956.

In early May 1989, he followed the proceedings in Hungary with astonishment.

♪ (Walter Kempowski) Pictures from Hungary, where border fences are being dismantled.

Six photo journalists shot footage of Hungarian soldiers showing no emotion as they cut through the barbed wire.

These are the same soldiers who usually guard the borders, we're told.

♪ (narrator) The sensational news of a hole in the Iron Curtain was simply ignored in the GDR.

Meanwhile, domestic newscasts featured SED top brass bathing in the glory of the May 1st celebrations.

(dramatic music) Dietmar Riemann sensed it would be his last May 1st in the GDR.

So he took his camera and went out to photograph the decorations.

♪ (Dietmar Riemann) It was good to have one last condensed experience of how devoted an embarrassingly broad swathe of the GDR populous is to its leaders.

That reaffirmed to me that the existing social order in this country is not going to change for a very long time.

♪ I was already gone.

During the four years of waiting for the exit permit, I'd already ceased, internally, to be a citizen of the country"" (train horn blows) ♪ (narrator) In the meantime, Ingrid Ebert and her husband had received a travel permit to visit his mother in West German Wolfsburg.

They arrived there on the afternoon of May 7th.

The GDR had called an election for the same day.

♪ (Ingrid Ebert) In the evenings, we'd gather in front of the television, anxiously anticipating the election results, making bets.

Then the result: 98.85% of all valid votes "for established cohesion, for strong Socialism, and for certain peace."

Who's kidding whom here?

♪ (narrator) Local elections in the GDR were known in the vernacular as "ballot folding," a cynical reference to the "yes only" polling system.

The official outcome was always just shy of 100% for the right choice.

But in May 1989, proof of SED election fraud came to light for the first time.

At least 7% of voters had, in fact, cast a brave "no" vote.

Distrust in the state was now pervasive.

♪ (Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk) The proof of election fraud reverberated very deeply in circles loyal to the system and the party, because they were really shaken up.

They didn't call the voting system as such into question, but they said, "My god, what's so terrible about admitting that 10, 15, maybe 20% of the population are against the system?

That would still have meant a huge approval rate.

♪ (Dieter Riemann) There had been the odd protest here and there, but very few people took part in such activities.

I, as an "exiter," have great respect for those who have given open expression to their discontent.

And still nothing has arrived in our mailbox.

Psychologically, we're in a pretty desperate situation at the moment.

♪ I remember before that last election, I see this SED "Comrade" out in front or our house.

"We'd like to ask you to come with us to the polls."

So we explained, we'd been waiting for our exit permits for over three years, and that they still haven't been approved.

I said, "Of course we're not going to your polls!"

He made tracks after that.

(dark music) ♪ (narrator) In early June, more than 7,000 kilometers from Berlin, tensions escalated into the most brutal mass murder of dissidents to occur under a Communist regime in a long time.

Chinese troops opened fire on students demonstrating in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

It was a full four days after the bloody events, with thousands of fatalities, before the GDR government finally made a statement.

(speaking in German) ♪ (Frederick Taylor) The reaction of the Politbüro in East Germany to the Tiananmen Square massacre was, indeed, in retrospect a strange one.

I think there were people inside the regime, particularly in the military and secret police apparatus, who would have been capable of that kind of thing.

It could look like a threat.

(dramatic music) (narrator) The regime still tried to show strength in the form of restrictions and assertions of power.

But the opposition in East Germany was growing increasingly courageous.

And the GDR issued increasing numbers of exit permits to ease the pressure.

The result?

The number of new applications continued to soar ever higher from week to week.

♪ (Dietmar Riemann) After years of deliberation, the Os now also want to leave the GDR.

But it's not yet clear how they're going to go about it.

Application for exit permit or flight are the options.

The exit virus has spread in the GDR to epidemic proportions.

It's now almost bordering on hysteria, but very definitely on madness.

♪ (narrator) In Hungary, more and more East German vacationers were gathering at the border with Austria.

More than 20,000 were said to have already made it over the frontier.

Hungarian border guards were still sending back anyone they did manage to catch, as Hungary was still obliged to do.

But the successful attempts motivated the remaining vacationers to wait and see.

The GDR regime responded to this development with dogged silence.

(Ingrid Ebert) Hundreds are leaving the country daily.

The troubling thing is the silence in response.

In our newscasts the world is still idyllic; the pages of our newspapers are bursting with success stories.

How long can they keep sweeping filth under the carpet?

Where do those in government keep their eyes?

Where are their ears?

♪ (Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk) It's a text book example, to a certain degree, what happened that summer.

The so-called "democratic centralism" that the Communists devised on the drawing boards of their power, now blew up in their faces.

♪ Honecker was critically ill, was out of action, and his henchmen were unable, politically unable, lacked the will, and were also not courageous enough, to make decisions.

♪ (narrator) On August 19th, over 500 East Germans took flight en masse across the Hungarian border.

Reformist forces in Hungary, together with the Paneuropean Union, had announced a symbolic cross-border picnic, opening the Austro-Hungarian frontier for just three hours.

The powerful images went around the world.

♪ The news from Hungary encouraged people within the GDR.

On September 4th, 1989, the first of what would be ongoing Monday Demonstrations took place in Leipzig.

Leipzig photographer Martin Naumann took to the city center with his camera.

He was not on assignment, but he knew that he was witnessing history in the making.

♪ (Martin Naumann) Mass, then prayers for peace in St. Nicholas Church.

After leaving the church, the participants hold up banners demanding freedom of travel and calling for social change.

State security service officers tear down their signs.

♪ (narrator) A few days later in Hungary, the cage door was opened for good.

The Hungarian government had decided to allow the GDR citizens to leave for the West, without any consultation with Moscow or East Berlin.

(Ingrid Ebert) My stomachache signals this can't go on.

I want to drop out, want to close my eyes and ears.

Or scream, just scream it all out.

Or leave?

Start all over again?

Would it be better to flee?

Is flight the only way?

(people speaking in German) (solemn music) (Frederick Taylor) People suddenly realized that, okay, the wall might be formidable still, and people were still being shot trying to get over it, so you don't-- why try and go over the wall?

Why even bother to have fake papers?

Why bother to put in an official application to leave the country when you can just go to Hungary and walk across the border into Austria and from there go wherever you want in the world.

♪ (narrator) Dietmar Riemann's exit permit had been issued in September.

After the long wait, he sold his house and, together with his family, left everything behind.

♪ (Dietmar Riemann) In the afternoon we went to say goodbye to my mother.

Tomorrow we'll cross the Inner German Border.

We'll walk through the Berlin Wall.

Saying farewell to Rahnsdorf, to our house, is very, very hard.

♪ The border troops stood there saying, "Oh, there are the Üsis," from "Übersiedler," migrants.

I'd never heard the term before.

They, too, thought the whole thing would last forever.

That was all quite demeaning.

(dramatic music) ♪ (narrator) Besides leaving across the Hungarian border, there was now the option of seeking asylum at the West German embassy in Warsaw, Budapest, or Prague.

The embassies were soon full to the rafters.

In Prague, thousands started camping out in the garden of the embassy and in the corridors within.

Unlike the Hungarian government, the Czechs were reluctant to make decisions in defiance of the GDR.

So, West German Secretary of State Hans Dietrich Genscher negotiated a solution.

(Genscher speaking in German) ♪ (cheering, applause) ♪ (Walter Kempowski) 6:14 a.m.

Eyes and mouth sticky, from crying?

Last night, East Germans were allowed to leave Prague for the West, an estimated 7,000 of them.

It was stirring!

The tears just flowed.

Everything is in flux.

What was unthinkable just a few months ago is now happening.

♪ (Walter Momper) It was clear that this could not go on for long, the GDR couldn't allow it to, because every evening on the TV the latest numbers were a bitter blow to the GDR, generating internal unrest.

So then he decided to let the people leave, but had the crazy idea of sending the trains via Dresden, in other words back through the GDR, which of course was absurd.

♪ (narrator) During the night of October 1st, trains, bolted shut, were still heading for Hof, just across the Czech border in West Germany.

But the GDR had stipulated that trains be rerouted back through East Germany so the regime could be seen to be granting the right of exit.

Passengers' IDs were confiscated en route.

Some people attempted to jump on along the way.

Just four days later, another train full of asylum-seekers from the Prague embassy came chugging through the GDR, and the situation escalated.

The police cordoned off Dresden main station to keep people from trying to board the train as it waited there.

But the populace stormed the station.

That night, SED District Manager Hans Modrow appealed to Berlin for help.

♪ (Hans Modrow) But that occurred at the very moment that, in Berlin, the army general had arrived for the rehearsal, for the parade, for the 7th of October.

(crowd cheering) ♪ They couldn't understand us, that we had concerns.

I argued with Otto Arndt and said, "Otto, have the trains go to Waldsassen via Cheb!"

"Hans," he said, "the decision's been made at the top.

We're both responsible for taking action to avoid a disaster.

There's nothing left for us to decide."

♪ (narrator) Meanwhile, stones were being thrown in Dresden.

The police used water cannon, but stopped short of putting a violent end to the riots.

(yelling, clamoring) (dark music) ♪ Back in Berlin, the top dogs were busy preparing for the big party.

♪ (Ingrid Ebert) Forty years of the GDR-- tens of thousands have left the country over the last weeks and months, but Honecker orchestrated a youth march as a show of "powerful commitment."

The torchlight procession last night in Berlin: utter self-deception.

♪ (narrator) For the celebrations, Gorbachev had now also arrived in East Berlin.

He was cheered like a pop star.

Over the summer, the Soviet reformer had rescinded the Brezhnev Doctrine of 1969.

All Warsaw Pact countries were now free to go their own way.

♪ (reporter speaking in German, Gorbachev speaking in Russian) ♪ (narrator) Since late September, SED head Honecker had once again been at the helm, making a demonstrative show of power.

But he felt betrayed by Gorbachev.

(crowd chanting) (Walter Momper) If you've ever been around that kind of delegation there's no mistaking it.

They had nothing left to say to each other-- the GDR with Honecker and Gorbachev.

But these things also gave you a clear window on the mood and the situation over there.

(dramatic music) ♪ (Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk) Then came the 40th anniversary of the GDR, the October 7th spectacle, and on October 7th of all days, with the whole world watching, the international press, unrest erupted in East Berlin, protests, demonstrations.

(crowd chanting) ♪ These images, unlike others, immediately went around the world.

But the unrest wasn't just in East Berlin.

In 50 other East German cities, there were also protests against the SED regime on October 7th.

♪ (Martin Naumann) At St. Nicholas Church, extremely young riot police stand eye-to-eye with the protestors who try to engage them in dialogue.

"Why are you here?"

The police officers are embarrassed, and you can tell they're afraid.

(speaking in German) ♪ (giving commands in German) ♪ (speaking in German) ♪ (dog barking) (narrator) On the 9th of October, after the Monday peace prayer, 70,000 took to the streets in Leipzig.

Erich Mielke had activated a "combat alert."

The army went into stand-by mode.

(crowd chanting) ♪ (Walter Momper) The situation in Leipzig was highly explosive, because the regime wanted to put a stop to all these demonstrations.

♪ In Markkleeberg, they'd called out riot police, workers combat groups, and the National People's Army all together.

Now the workers combat groups weren't even showing up any more, and when they tried to dispense ammunition to the riot police they said, "We won't take it; we're not going to shoot at our own people.

♪ (narrator) The 9th of October was a turning point.

The regime did not intervene.

The masses raised their rallying cry "We are the people!"

Even policemen joined the march.

♪ (Walter Kempowski) They're saying that 70,000 people demonstrated in Leipzig yesterday.

Uncanny.

A quiet lay over the masses, now and then sounds in the distance.

The chanting in unison and, in between, a breathing silence.

Like after air raids; the cracking of beams, far-off cries.

(crowd chanting) (Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk) And somehow it was clear to everyone who was paying attention that now, because the Chinese card had not and would not be played, something else would now transpire.

♪ (narrator) In the days that followed, people all over East Germany felt their fear dissolve.

Thousands took to the streets, loudly voicing demands for freedom, for the right to codetermination, and for the unseating of the SED chiefs.

The momentum for change was now unstoppable.

On October 18th, the SED leadership in Berlin responded, removing Erich Honecker from power.

His replacement, Egon Krenz, announced his intention to reform the GDR.

♪ But the people weren't buying it.

On November 4th, 1989, Berlin was the scene of the biggest demonstration in the history of the GDR.

State Security Services were nervous.

♪ A hastily drafted travel law had raised the ire of the populace.

The People were no longer willing to be patronized.

♪ (dark music) (Ingrid Ebert) I've never seen images like the ones we saw today in the newscasts from the GDR.

Half a million people were on their feet in Berlin.

I longed to be there, to be a part of it.

It's not about reforms at all anymore.

The watchword is revolution!

(speaking in German) ♪ (narrator) The People now demanded the removal of Egon Krenz.

The SED's "warm & cuddly" strategy was dead in the water.

On November 4th, SED Central Committee Secretary Günter Schabowski, was booed out in Berlin.

(speaking in German) (jeering, booing) ♪ (Walter Momper) We then had that meeting with Schabowski and he said, "And incidentally, we're going to instate freedom of travel."

And I asked, "Do you know what that means for your country?"

Well, he figured some 150,000 people would leave, that was his estimate, and that would be the end of it.

And then we discussed what practical preparations they had made for that.

None at all.

(dark music) ♪ (narrator) The morning of the 9th of November, 1989, began like any other day in Berlin for the past 28 years.

Little provocations at the Wall from the Western side.

Tourists climbed the observation towers for a glimpse of the East.

Over in the GDR, preparations for an international press conference were underway.

Günter Schabowski tried to field journalists' questions on the new travel law, but he hadn't yet read the reworked draft.

(speaking in German) ♪ When the second question comes, "Yes, at once, without delay!"

He sets something in motion that he doesn't comprehend.

Otherwise, he couldn't have just gone home that night.

It's there, in Wandlitz, that he first discovers that, due to his actions, the border has been opened.

(dramatic music) (narrator) Shortly after the evening newscast, people began to storm the border crossings.

At Bornholmer Strasse, several thousand people demanded to be allowed to walk over to West Berlin, but police explained they needed a visa.

(speaking in German) ♪ (Walter Momper) According to the account of Lieutenant Colonel Jäger, the boss at that checkpoint, there were at least 10,000 gathered there.

He was afraid for his fences, for one thing, because such a massive crowd crushes everything, and he was also annoyed because he'd called the Ministry of State Security and received no useful answer.

They were all busy partying and whatever else.

Finally, the pressure got so intense that he thought he'd better open up and he said, "We're going to flood now."

♪ (narrator) At 11:30 p.m. at Bornholmer Strasse, the Wall was opened.

All controls were suspended; people just walked over to West Berlin.

♪ (Walter Kempowski) 1:10 a.m. Broadcast interrupted due to the special events!

Like with Orson Welles.

astonishing, incredible.

We're watching Reunification.

Flowers handed to officers of the People's Police for a group photo.

No passport, no ID card, just walk through.

♪ (cheering, applause) (solemn music) ♪ (Martin Naumann) A turbulent day.

Dramatic scenes at the People's Police stations, At the State Bank, a long line of people waiting to exchange their 15 Ostmark for 15 Deutschmark for the journey to the West.

I used up all my film.

♪ (Ingrid Ebert) About noon, Tobias arrived home from school.

He came running.

A very excited nine year old.

Once he was inside, he put his comic book down on the table with pride, "From the West," he said.

"The Wall is broken."

Beyond mind-blowing.

♪ No one foresaw that morning that the Wall would be gone that evening, though many say so now.

But that's the way it goes with history.

Afterwards, there are always many prophets.

I woke up in the morning, went down to buy a newspaper, and there was this thing-- people were streaming through the Berlin Wall.

(narrator) It had now been two weeks since Dietmar Riemann and his family had settled in a village in Bavaria.

He photographed the West and again felt dispossessed.

Stunned by events in his former homeland, he looked on in disbelief.

♪ (Dietmar Riemann) In Berlin, the people are still dancing on the Wall as if drunk with joy.

The Brandenburg Gate will also be reopened.

and on the 10th of November, the so-called "wallpeckers" were already chipping off pieces of cement from what is surely Germany's best-known architectural structure and selling them as souvenirs to tourists.

And here we sit, on the back burner.

I feel miserable.

(narrator) In the spring of 1990, the most brightly-colored sections of the Berlin Wall were sold at auction in Monte Carlo for an average of $12,000 each.

(dramatic music) ♪ (Frederick Taylor) It is astonishing how something which is actually a serious and deadly work of engineering and consuming an enormous amount of material, human effort, and causing enormous suffering over 28 years, can suddenly devolve into kitsch, a kind of commercial product.

It is a lesson in how quickly people can forget something that once was so dominant, so terrifying.

(narrator) The world had changed literally overnight.

When the Brandenburg Gate was opened in December 1989, it was merely symbolic.

Just one year later, Germany was reunited.

(dramatic music) ♪ (bright music)