Harald Jäger

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Harald Jäger at an event at Liverpool University (2014)

Harald Jäger (born April 27, 1943 ) was the deputy head of the GDR border crossing point Bornholmer Strasse (GÜSt Bornholmer Strasse) in East Berlin until 1990 in the rank of lieutenant colonel of the passport control unit (PKE), which was subordinate to the Ministry for State Security . On November 9, 1989, as the duty manager at the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing, he had the controls suspended, contrary to orders. He is therefore considered the man who actually opened the Berlin Wall .

education and profession

Harald Jäger grew up in Bautzen and was trained as a stove fitter . In 1961 Jäger volunteered for the German border police at the time (later border troops of the GDR of the NVA ). In 1964 he entered the service of the Ministry for State Security (MfS) and worked in the PKE until the turn and peaceful revolution . There were full-time employees of the MfS; For camouflage reasons, however, they performed their service in the regular service uniforms of the border troops.

From 1976 to 1979, Jäger studied at the Law School of the MfS in Potsdam. He submitted his thesis as a qualified lawyer in 1981 with the rank of major. It was entitled The formation of the specialist troops “Security and Counter Terrorism” in the border customs offices of the customs administration of the GDR as a prerequisite for the targeted and differentiated inclusion of the members of the customs administration of the GDR in the system of counter-terrorism at the border crossing points of the GDR.

Border opening

On the evening of November 9, 1989, Jäger was the duty manager at the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing. During his break around 8 p.m. he saw the press conference on television at which Günter Schabowski announced the new travel regulations. He immediately tried to find out more about this regulation by telephone. However, his superior, Colonel Rudi Ziegenhorn, made it clear that the old regulations continued to apply.

A short time later, the first people gathered in front of the transition. At 9:30 p.m., the RIAS radio station broadcast the first reports from open border crossings, which were, however, still closed at the time. Due to the increasing number of people, the situation at the border crossing became increasingly uncontrollable. Jäger then triggered the alarm (without being authorized to do so). His superior then ordered those GDR citizens to leave the country who spoke the loudest. According to Ziegenhorn's instructions, the identity cards of the emigrants were checked and stamped invalid, and the GDR citizens as holders of these ID cards were expatriated (valve solution). However, when citizens returned from their first short visit from West Berlin in the course of the evening , he did not implement the instructions he had received and let them re-enter.

More and more people came, the pressure continued to rise and Jäger feared that those wishing to leave the country might also get the weapons of his employees who were carrying them. Under the pressure of the masses and due to the lack of support from his superiors, Jäger saw only one way out. At around 11:30 p.m. (it is also called 11:07 p.m.), he ordered the border at the Bornholmer Strasse crossing to be opened. Jäger said in the ARD television documentary "Schabowskis Zettel" from November 2, 2009:

“Taken all of this together, it was then the motive for action, so I said, that's enough for me. Now you decide on your own ... I have instructed everyone to leave the country ... let everyone leave the country ... "

An estimated 20,000 people reached West Berlin via this border crossing between 11:30 p.m. and 12:15 a.m. Jäger himself retired to a quiet room after the border fortifications opened. Jäger about this in the ARD television documentary:

“I then went to the former, old BRD dispatch center, that's where I grew up ... and wanted to let my tears run free ... I had to be alone with myself first ... it was the most terrible, the most terrible and the most beautiful that I had experienced ... but I was unlucky, someone else was already standing in the barrack, a captain who had cried ... "

After the Peaceful Revolution

In 1990 Harald Jäger was dismissed in the course of the dissolution of the MfS. After almost two years of unemployment, he had several short-term jobs. He worked for a time in his own newspaper shop, then in a private security company in the penal system in the Bonhoeffer Clinic in Berlin-Reinickendorf . When his MfS work became known there through his book, he was transferred to a heating power station in Berlin-Rummelsburg , where he worked until retirement.

Jäger has lived in Werneuchen since 2006 . He is married with two daughters and one son.

In the 2014 TV film Bornholmer Straße , which is not entirely true to the facts , Jäger is played by Charly Hübner as Lieutenant Colonel Harald Schäfer . It was created based on motifs from the book "The man who opened the wall" by the publicist Gerhard Haase-Hindenberg.

In the film Once Ku'damm and Back , the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing gained fame through the arrest of the head chef of the Swiss embassy, Peter Gross . Harald Jäger, then a lieutenant colonel, received the order from the Stasi to check the car and make an arrest, as there was a suspicion that there might be a female person in the trunk.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ GÜSt reports to OLZ / How a Berlin Stasi officer provoked the opening of the Wall ; FAZ, August 13, 2007
  2. ↑ Hans-Hermann Hertle: Chronicle of the Fall of the Wall, pp. 163–166.
  3. ↑ Kerstin Decker : One man, one place - and now a book. The border official Harald Jäger was the first to open the wall. In: Der Tagesspiegel, March 24, 2007.
  4. ↑ ARD documentary / Spiegel-TV-DVD No. 21: November 9, 1989 - The protocol of a historical oversight.
  5. ↑ Gerhard Haase-Hindenberg: The man who opened the wall. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-453-62025-4 , pp. 202-20.
  6. ↑ Hans-Hermann Hertle: Chronicle of the Fall of the Wall, pp. 166–168.
  7. ↑ "Open the barrier!" Tagesspiegel, November 8, 2007
  8. ↑ “I only did what was human”, interview with Harald Jäger, taz, November 5, 2014.
  9. ↑ Ulrike Posche : The hero is a lonely hunter. stern 44/2014, October 23, 2014, pp. 72–75
  10. ↑ Bornholmer Straße - The incredible but true story of Lieutenant Colonel Harald Schäfer , ARD .de, accessed on November 5, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Hunter, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Stasi lieutenant colonel, deputy head of the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing point
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1943