Alexanderplatz Demonstration

On 4 November 1989, between two hundred thousand and half a million people filled Alexanderplatz in the largest demonstration in Berlin’s history – and the largest assembly not organised by the state in the forty-year existence of the GDR. Five days later the Berlin Wall fell.

It was also the first legally permitted demonstration organised by private citizens in East German history. The permit had been applied for on 17 October by Wolfgang Holz, an actor at the Berliner Ensemble. The organisers marshalled the crowd themselves, wearing yellow sashes reading “Keine Gewalt” – No Violence. Armed security forces were stationed inside the Palace of the Republic and the SED blocked the routes toward the Wall, but the march went ahead: assembling at Mollstrasse, passing the Palace and the State Council building, and filling the great open square.

Twenty-six people spoke, and East German television broadcast it live – another first. Stefan Heym opened: “It is as if someone has thrown open the windows.” Christa Wolf riffed on the anti-war slogan: “Stell dir vor, es ist Sozialismus, und keiner geht weg!” – “Imagine it is socialism and nobody leaves!” The 81-year-old actress Steffie Spira proposed turning the Politburo compound at Wandlitz into a retirement home. When the Stasi’s former foreign intelligence chief Markus Wolf took the microphone, the crowd booed.

The demands were reform, not reunification: free elections, a free press, an end to surveillance, a new constitution. This was “Wir sind das Volk” – We are the people – not yet “Wir sind ein Volk”. No monument marks the demonstration today; Alexanderplatz has been rebuilt too often for its 1989 incarnation to survive. The full story is in our Peaceful Revolution in Berlin guide.

 Show me on the map

Gallery