The first crossing, Bornholmer Straße

Bornholmer Straße border crossing · Berlin, Germany · 1989-11-09

On the night of 9 November 1989, after a bungled press conference about new travel rules, thousands of East Berliners converged on the Bornholmer Straße checkpoint. Shortly before 11:30 p.m. the duty officer opened the gate rather than risk a crush — without orders — making this the first crossing of the Berlin Wall to fall. The Bösebrücke bridge the crowds streamed across carries the date on a memorial.

The record

Coordinates are given at landmark level. A landmark-level coordinate points at the structure; a city-level one points at the settlement, not at a parcel.

Finding photographs

Every one of these is a search, not a guess: the event is documented, so the pictures exist somewhere. Start here.

• Wikimedia Commons — freely licensed images, with the licence stated on every file. This is the only source we republish from.
• The reference article — its own illustrations, and its citations to archives.
• Image search filtered to reusable licences — useful for tracing which institution holds a picture.
• National and municipal archives of Germany, and the picture desks of newspapers published there at the time.

Check the licence before you reuse anything. A photograph being online, or being old, does not make it free; in most countries a 1960s press photograph is still in copyright.

Footage

Films are matched to this event editorially or by search; if one is wrong, tell us and we will replace it.