November 9, 1989 — The Berlin Wall was still standing when East Berliners walked through it. For 28 years, the Communist government had used concrete, barbed wire and armed guards to keep its people from leaving. Then, on a Thursday night, thousands showed up at the checkpoints and demanded to cross. Before midnight, the first gate was open.

It began shortly before 7 p.m. at a televised press conference. Günter Schabowski, a senior East German official, read out new rules that would make it easier for citizens to travel to the West. A reporter asked when the rules took effect. Schabowski looked through his notes. As far as he knew, he said, they took effect “immediately, without delay.”

That was news to the guards. But it was also news to the people watching at home, and they saw no reason to wait until morning. They headed for the crossings. At Bornholmer Strasse, passport control officer Harald Jäger tried to get instructions as the crowd grew. With no clear order from above, he finally stopped the checks. At about 11:30 p.m., people streamed across the bridge into West Berlin. Other crossings followed.

The astonishing thing was how ordinary the act itself was. People walked across a bridge. They could visit relatives, have a beer on the other side of town and come home again. For a generation, a trip like that had been something people risked their lives to make.

East Germany had sealed the border on August 13, 1961, closing streets and rail lines and stringing barbed wire while much of the city slept. The barrier grew into a fortified system that stretched roughly 96 miles around West Berlin. At least 140 people died at the Wall in connection with the border regime, including more than 100 who tried to escape.

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate and issued his famous challenge: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” By the fall of 1989, East Germans were applying pressure of their own. Thousands were leaving through other Eastern European countries. Tens of thousands were marching peacefully in Leipzig and elsewhere, demanding freedoms their government had long denied them. Schabowski’s answer sent people to the gates that night; those months of protest and departures explain why the government was changing its rules in the first place.

Berliners climbed onto the Wall and chipped away at it with hammers and chisels. Taking down the concrete took months. Germany formally reunited on October 3, 1990, less than a year after the gates opened. The fall of the Wall became the defining image of the Cold War’s end. But for the people who walked across that first bridge, the change was already real: they could go to the other side of their own city without asking permission.