Died on Tuesday (14) Italian journalist Riccardo Ehrman, 92, who became known worldwide for asking the question that triggered the early fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9, 1989.
At the time, the then reporter for the Ansa news agency questioned East German regime spokesman Günter Schabowski during a news conference about new rules on border control announced by the official.
For the past few weeks, protesters from the German communist side had been demanding the right to freedom of expression and calling for an end to travel restrictions. Five days before the press conference, around 1 million people, including artists, novelists, actors and academics, gathered in a Berlin square to demonstrate their repudiation of the government.
Furthermore, by October, the communist leader Erich Honecker had already been deposed from the post of head of state.
“But when will these rules go into effect?” Ehrman asked. The spokesman then, who was not sufficiently informed by superiors about the opening plans, fiddled with his notes and unsurely said, “Well, as far as I know , right now”.
At the time, the press conference was attended by many East Germans, who rushed to the wall’s checkpoints in order to check whether Schabowski’s statement was true. With the sudden arrival of thousands of people at the scene, the border guards opened the gates and allowed the passage.
Within hours, the wall began to be destroyed with pickaxes by euphoric people, while others danced on top of it. Some celebrated with champagne.
According to a report published by the BBC, Ehrman said years later that he immediately understood what Schabowski’s words meant and sent an urgent message to ANSA headquarters in Rome: “The wall is gone,” he said.
Since that day, the journalist gave interviews about the event and was frequently remembered by the German media on the anniversaries of the fall of the wall. In 2008, the Italian received an award from the German government for his work for the unity of the country.
The journalist died in Madrid, according to his wife’s account, where he started working in 1991 as a correspondent. He was retired.
According to Ansa, Ehrman was sent to West Berlin in the mid-1970s, having worked in Canada and the US. In 1982, he was transferred to New Delhi, India, but ended up returning to Germany three years later.
Son of Polish Jews, the journalist was born in 1929 in Florence. At the age of 13, he was arrested in an internment camp in Cosenza, in southwestern Italy, due to persecution initiated by the government of Benito Mussolini. In 1943, however, he was released by British troops.
Ehrman’s death comes just days before the 30th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall is believed to have been one of the final blows against the communist power, which remained standing for only two more years.
In addition to Ehrman, German journalist Peter Brinkmann also claims to be the author of the question that prompted the Communist official’s muddled response. The Italian’s fame, according to Brinkmann, was due to his professional quality and a chance game.
In the melee, Schabowski was also confronted by Brinkmann, but the German journalist was out of frame for the TV cameras, so only his voice in the midst of the din was heard. The fixed image of the episode turned out to be that of the Italian.
“I asked the decisive question,” Brinkmann said in a 2019 interview with journalists from several countries, including from leaf. The journalist also says that he asked whether the opening of borders was also valid for Berlin, and Schabowski would have nodded with the same insecurity.
Riccardo Ehrman, for his part, never agreed with Brinkmann’s view. In an interview with the American The Wall Street Journal, he reaffirmed that it was his dialogue with Schabowski that brought down the wall, and that his German counterpart’s questions were complementary to his own.
“It was a conversation between me and Schabowski, which Schabowski admits,” he told the newspaper. The bureaucrat died in 2015, aged 86 years.
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