A week later Honecker was pushed from the position of power he had held for seventeen years. Having shown himself unable to contend effectively with any of the GDR’s manifold problems—its sagging economy, emigration crisis, rebellious citizenry—he faced a hostile Politbüro at the group’s meeting on October 17. His opponents had already laid the groundwork for his dismissal. When the SED veteran Willi Stoph proposed his removal from office, no one came to his defense. Egon Krenz, one of the key plotters against him, was appointed general secretary of the party in his place. For years Krenz had been known as Honecker’s most loyal satrap. Now, by turning against the old man, he was acting just as Honecker had done in helping to bring down his patron, Walter Ulbricht, in 1971. But Honecker actually got the last laugh by sanctioning Krenz as his successor. This “Curse of the Pharaoh” undermined the new leader’s effort to cast himself as a reformer, thereby guaranteeing that his tenure at the top would be very short indeed.
At the time of Honecker’s fall no one could have known that the old Stalinist’s proudest achievement, the Berlin Wall, would in effect go down with him. The three-week interregnum between the end of Honecker’s reign and the fall of the Wall was marked by escalating protest demonstrations against the new regime of Egon Krenz. The change in leadership obviously did not convince a large percentage of GDR citizens that the SED regime would introduce meaningful reforms without being compelled to do so. The largest demonstration to date occurred on November 4 at the Alexanderplatz in East Berlin. About 700,000 people crowded the vast square, brandishing hand-lettered signs with slogans like “Stay in the street and don’t ease up!”; “Passports for everyone—a red card [soccer term for expulsion from the game] for the SED!” They heard speeches from representatives of a newly formed opposition group, Neues Forum, demanding a role in the political process. Jens Reich, a professor of molecular biology, appealed for “dialogue” with the government, though he cautioned that “Dialogue is not the main meal, only the appetizer.” The writer Stefan Heym spoke excitedly of the fact that Germans were finally learning to “walk upright” after years of “clicking their heels” under the kaiser, the Nazis, and the SED. But walking upright, he added, was not enough; the German people had to learn to rule themselves. Members of the new government also spoke, trying their best to convince the people that significant changes were in the works. Markus Wolf, no longer wearing his mask of Stasi anonymity, delivered a short speech promising a cleanup of the domestic security forces. However, if the chorus of boos and catcalls was any indication, most people in the crowd considered a reformed Stasi a contradiction in terms.
For East Berlin the November 4 demonstration was a turning point. It suggested that the East German capital was finally coming into its own as a center of political protest and civic courage. Egon Krenz, the new East German leader, reaped the harvest of this popular awakening. With his set of big teeth and a mane of silver hair, he was widely caricatured in the suddenly iconoclastic East Berlin press as a Communist wolf disguised as Little Red Riding Hood’s benevolent granny. He sought to gain support with promises of dialogue and a “market-oriented socialist planned economy,” but no one, not even his SED colleagues, trusted him. The exiled singer Wolf Biermann described him aptly as “a walking invitation to flee the republic.”
In fact, thousands of East Germans responded to the Krenz appointment by decamping to the West. On November 1, the day his government reopened the East German border with Czechoslovakia as a goodwill gesture, 23,000 people flooded out. Under pressure from the Czech government, the GDR embassy in Prague granted the refugees visas to travel on to the Federal Republic, which they promptly did. Word of this naturally got out, and within hours there was bumper-to-bumper Trabi traffic across Czechoslovakia to the Bavarian border. Irritated over this situation, Prague demanded that the GDR open its own borders with the FRG to free and unfettered travel. Unwilling to go this far, the Krenz government drafted new travel and visa regulations on November 6 that would allow citizens to leave the country for a month after getting approval by the state.
Smacking of desperation and bureaucratic foot-dragging, this measure was soundly rejected by the East German parliament, which, like the press, was suddenly determined to show its independence. In the wake of this unprecedented act of defiance, all the members of the Council of Ministers submitted their resignations, as did those of the Politbüro. During a chaotic meeting of the Central Committee on November 7, Krenz managed to retain his post as party boss, but Hans Modrow, one of Krenz’s rivals, was named to the reconstituted Politbüro to keep an eye on him. Part of Modrow’s attraction was that he was not part of the Berlin establishment. As head of the SED in Dresden, he had often stood up for that city against demands from East Berlin. For example, he had refused to send money and materials to the capital for its lavish 750th anniversary celebration. His stance won him the admiration of all the provincial politicians who secretly bristled at having to take their marching orders from the capital.
Reshuffling the government did nothing to stop the mass exodus, and on the morning of November 9 the regime came up with yet another set of travel regulations, which, by allowing folks to leave the country temporarily, was supposed to keep them from leaving for good. The new draft regulations stated that GDR citizens with valid passports could exit the country across any border, including that in Berlin. This concession was not quite as daring as it looked, however, because only about 4 million GDR citizens held passports, and it would probably take months for those who did not have passports to secure them. Nonetheless, the inclusion of Berlin among the borders to be opened was a momentous step. It would reduce the Berlin Wall from the world’s most famous political barrier to little more than a speed bump on the route from East to West.
That evening Günter Schabowski held a press conference to discuss the government’s program. The conference was televised live by GDR television, which in itself was unprecedented. Schabowski was a little unsure on the details of the new travel law because he had not been present at the meeting during which the plan was drafted. In the event, he said nothing about the impending changes until the session was almost over. Then, in response to a question from an Italian journalist about previous “failures” in government travel regulations, he announced, as if he were discussing some minor bureaucratic adjustment, that henceforth it would be possible for every citizen of the GDR to exit and reenter the country over any of its border crossings. When asked when this would take effect, he said “ab sofort” (immediately).” Did this new arrangement include East Berlin’s border with West Berlin? he was asked. Looking at his notes, Schabowski replied: “Exits can occur at all GDR/BRD border crossings, including Berlin-West.”