On a grey Wednesday in November 1989 I was on a train from Amsterdam to Leipzig, on assignment (for Newsweek) to cover the growing anti-government demonstrations in East Germany. At the border East German guards decided that my visa was not stamped correctly and removed me from the train. Held overnight, I was put on the first train heading west the next day and disembarked in West Berlin. It was the afternoon of November 9. I phoned my editor in New York to say that I would stay for a few days to work on a new visa, then headed for bed, exhausted after my sleepless night at the border. A few hours later I was woken by New York calling back to say that they were watching “breaking news” on CNN that the Berlin Wall was about to open. In my bleary state I found this hard to believe but from outside I could hear car horns honking.

Rushing out with my cameras, I would stay awake for most of the next three to four days as one of the turning points of the 20th century unfolded before me.

A few hours earlier the East German Politburo, in an attempt to defuse unrest, had issued an ambiguous statement that, for the first time since the 1960s, citizens “with proper permission” would be allowed to travel to the West. The Government envisaged an orderly process. However as soon as the news was reported on state TV, East Berliners rushed to crossing points in the Berlin Wall, demanding to be let through. The unprepared, mostly young border guards frantically phoned their superiors for instructions. Perhaps sensing that the tide of history was about to turn, no one was willing to give the order to fire on the crowds — an order the guards might have refused to carry out. Instead they stood aside, signalling the beginning of the end of the Cold War era.

By late evening on November 9, all the Wall’s crossing points were jammed with “Ossis” trying to go West, and the thud of sledgehammers and clinking of pickaxes of “Wall-peckers” could already be heard. The next morning, the crowds were even greater but I managed to cross against the flow into East Berlin. There I met three guys cramming into a little blue Trabant for their first Westward journey, who let me jump in the back. We eventually squeezed through at Checkpoint Charlie, where hundreds of people pounded a welcome on the Trabant’s bonnet.

The night the Wall came down

The photographer Robert Wallis was in Berlin by chance on November 9, 1989. Here he shares his pictures and memories

• Timeline: 50 years in Berlin

Multimedia

• Berlin Wall: from the archives

• Pictures: Berlin Wall

BACKGROUND

• Last leader of GDR reflects on his legacy

• Hungarian guard who helped to end communism

• How Thatcher tried to stop Berlin Wall falling

Related Links

• Timeline: 50 years in Berlin

As we rattled down the Ku’damm, Mercedes and BMWs pulled alongside us, lowering their electric windows and, to our amazement, passing over deutschmarks to all of us in the Trabant. We eventually pulled up to be backslapped and welcomed by more West Berliners. Later, after helping the guys to buy kerosene at a West Berlin petrol station and siphon it into the Trabant’s tiny tank (normal West German petrol would have made the engine explode), I left them to continue their adventure on their own. The party lasted for weeks.

This summer I was back in Berlin for the first time since 1989 to photograph how the city has changed over the past two decades. Only fragments of the Wall still exist, as tourist attractions and as a memorial. The former deathstrip and no man’s land along it has been transformed, with high-profile architectural projects and other memorials. Farther east, the most striking changes are in neighbourhoods that were abandoned by those heading west in the 1990s and in factory districts that shut down, unable to compete with Western industry.

Into that void came artists (German and international), attracted by cheap rents or free squats. In the artists’ wake came galleries, bars, restaurants and nightclubs, the German techno-scene being especially suited to the abandoned factories. Now, in the latest chapter after the fall of the Wall, has come gentrification and resistance to it.

Looking back 20 years, the East was dark compared with the bright lights of West Berlin, capitalism’s showcase on the Cold War’s frontline. But the tide has turned again. In Berlin at least, it now all seems to be happening in the East.

(c) Robert Wallis 2009

Times recommends

• The Boxing Day tsunami: five years on
• What took place in 2010...
• Can you really cure a hangover?