Bureaucrat who brought down Berlin Wall dies

BERLIN: Former East German bureaucrat Guenter Schabowski, who died Sunday aged 86, went down in history for his improvised answer in 1989 that inadvertently brought down the Berlin Wall.
The former spokesman of the Politburo central committee of East Germany’s ruling communist party died in the reunified capital, his widow Irina told news agency DPA.
His death came just days before the 26th anniversary of the joyous border open After months of mass protests against regime and East Germans fleeing in their droves via Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the Politburo asked the government in 1989 to prepare a law loosening restrictions on travel outside the country.
It was nearly 7:00 pm on November 9 when Schabowski pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket and read out a decree stating that visas would be freely granted to those wanting to travel outside or leave the Stalinist state.