Berlin Wall youngsters. Another border crossing to the south may have been opened earlier. An account by Heinz Schäfer indicates that he also acted independently and ordered the opening of the gate at Waltersdorf-Rudow a couple of hours earlier. This may explain reports of East Berliners appearing in West Berlin earlier than the opening of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing. The fall of the Berlin Wall () began the evening of 9 November 1989 and continued over the following days and weeks, with people nicknamed (wall woodpeckers) using various tools to chip off souvenirs, demolishing lengthy parts in the process, and creating
Berlin Wall motifs were put up for auction in 1990 in Berlin and Monte Carlo. On 1 July, the day East Germany adopted the West German currency, all "de jure" border controls ceased, although the inter-German border had become meaningless for some time before that. The fall of the Wall marked the first critical step towards German reunification, which formally concluded a mere 339 days later on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of East Germany and the official reunification of the German state along the democratic lines of the West German Basic Law. In some European capitals at the time, there