The career border guard had passionately believed in and even helped to build the Berlin Wall back in 1961. Now, unwittingly, he was ordering its destruction, triggering German reunification.

35th anniversary: The fall of the Berlin Wall in photographs. ... The border guards, overwhelmed and unprepared, opened the gates – allowing people to pass freely for the first time in 28 years.

East German border guards look through a hole in the Berlin wall after demonstrators pulled down one segment of the wall at Brandenburg gate Saturday, November 11, 1989. Don't Edit Lutz Schmidt/AP ...

November 9, 2019 marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. ... jaundiced hue from decades of nervous dissidents and off-duty border guards chain-smoking and nursing pints of beer.

Feb. 14, 1988: East German border guards take a ladder back over the wall to East Berlin after correcting the border line between the West Berlin district of Wedding in the French sector and ...

West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 11, 1989, as they watch East German border guards demolishing a section of the wall in order to open a new crossing point between East and ...

One November night 35 years ago, the Berlin Wall cracked and thousands of Berliners poured through. The Iron Curtain had already started to tremor by this point: travel restrictions were easing in ...

East German border guards look through a hole in the Berlin wall after demonstrators pulled down one segment of the wall at Brandenburg gate Saturday, November 11, 1989. (AP Photo/Lionel Cironneau) ...

In November 1989, following weeks of protests against the Soviet occupation of Berlin, Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev formally declared the opening of the border and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“The real heroes on the night of the 9th and the morning of the 10th were the border guards of the GDR”, Maksimychev believes. They did not opt to open fire, and in so doing saved countless lives.

Ingo Heinrich, the border guard who shot Chris, was found guilty of manslaughter and given a two-year suspended sentence. “Chris paid a very high price for his courage and dream,” says Karin.