By: Anwar Zaheer Rahbar, Berlin German
Retired Lt. Col. Harald Jaeger, now nearly 76, was until 1990 the deputy chief of the border crossing point on Bornholmer Road in East Germany, on the border between the Berlin districts of Pankow and Wedding. On 9 November 1989, he was present as duty manager at the Bornholm Road border crossing and stopped the border control in defiance of government orders. Retired Lt. Col. Harald Jaeger, who hails from Saxony, Germany, is actually the man who actually opened the Berlin Wall and triggered the fall of the Berlin Wall. After the results of a press conference by then-East German leader Günter Schabowski spread across Berlin, thousands of East and West Berliners gathered at the border crossings, most of them on Bornholmer Road. Since East Berlin’s border guards had no instructions on how to deal with mobs and East Berliners who wanted to cross to West Berlin, Harald Jaeger repeatedly tried to get a high-ranking official from the Ministry of State Security to Can get any order in this regard but his contactCouldn’t be there. In the meantime, a huge procession of people had gathered on both sides of the border of East Berlin and West Berlin and dramatic scenes were being witnessed. East Germans were chanting slogans and shouting “way through the wall”. Open up, we’ll go to West Berlin and come back.”A photo still circulates today of an elderly woman crying and asking East Berlin border guards to be allowed to visit her relatives in West Berlin. After that, Harald Jaeger opened the border crossing. Thus, the Berlin Wall fell on Thursday, November 9, 1989 at 11:30 PM.
Today, November 9, 2024, 35 years have been completed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today there is a celebration in Berlin and the people here are celebrating this celebration. At Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate, impressive photos and film are shown from the construction of the wall on August 13, 1961 to the fall of the wall on November 9, 1989.
The fall of the Berlin Wall is one of the most important events in German history. This year, the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall is being marked with a program of events across the city under the slogan “Keep the Freedom”.
The highlight of today’s “Festival for Freedom” was the music program starting at 8 pm in which about 700 musicians participated and they had prepared for weeks for this big and unique concert in the world. Apart from the local residents of Berlin, they also include people from all over Germany and Europe. These seven hundred people are gathered today on the strip where the wall used to go – these people are performing an open-air soundtrack of freedom. A very beautiful scene from which the fall of the Berlin Wall and the meeting of the old love of a city is being seen as a memorable symbol.
