4 November 1989 (Saturday)
On the Alexanderplatz square in East Berlin, 250,000 to 500,000 people demonstrate from the morning to the afternoon, calling for freedom of expression, a free press and freedom of assembly. The Volkspolizei has agreed to a security partnership; it stays in the background. Unnoticed by most of the demonstrators, a large number of troops from the National People’s Army have been stationed at the Brandenburg Gate, to prevent– by force if necessary - any attempt to break through the border. Politburo members and Central Committee staff are forced to watch the demonstrators as they march by only a few hundred metres away as if from a hideout, instead of waving to the masses from a VIP stand as usual.
The SED has also taken other measures, including the mobilisation of so-called "social forces" in the demonstration from the Ministry of Security and the Berlin SED Party Organisation, as well as having an ideological reserve of party members in the Palace of the Republic ready to intervene. Finally, the SED leaders have managed to get Politburo member Günter Schabowski onto the list of speakers at the final rally. But Schabowski, who is one of the few SED leaders to have taken up a dialogue with the population in the past days, is booed off the stage.
Media reports on this day focus heavily on the demonstration in East Berlin, but there are also protest rallies in more than 40 other cities and towns across East Germany. Protesters call for free elections and for the Neues Forum and other opposition groups and parties like the SDP to be allowed; there are also protests against the role of the State Security ("Stasi in die Produktion"), and candles are often placed in front of its buildings.
The next morning, in conformity with the SED Politburo resolution of the evening before, the East German embassy in Prague gives GDR citizens a visa for travelling to West Germany, and assures them that their citizenship is not affected; every GDR citizen who leaves the country can return to the GDR. By 5 pm, all 6,000 GDR citizens have left the West German embassy in Prague and are on the way to West Germany, some by special train, some in their own cars.
In the evening, the deputy interior minister, Major General Dieter Winderlich, announces in the state television newscast "Aktuelle Kamera" that applications to leave the GDR on a permanent basis would also be processed "unbureaucratically and quickly" and only refused "in exceptional cases where legitimate state interests were at stake" – but almost no one believes him. Instead of applying in the GDR, as was recommended as the "normal" procedure, those wanting to leave still prefer to make a detour via the CSSR, especially after even the "Neues Deutschland" reports that the West German embassy in Prague is making it possible to leave for West Germany without any problems.
In November, 133,429 citizens manage to flee to the West
