August 1961 - West Berlin was cut off from East Germany with the construction of The Berlin Wall, complete with guards and watch towers placed along large concrete walls. For over 25 years, the tension on both sides were high that even U.S. President Ronald Reagan challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall on 12th of June 1987.  But even the world's most powerful man in the world was not able to put a stop to the divide.

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Who knew that it took a mere colonel's initiative to mark the peaceful beginning of the fall of the Berlin Wall? Harald Jaeger has kept his silence and denied that he was the man who opened the Wall on the 9th of November 1989. "It wasn't me, it was the East German people gathered there that evening," says Jaeger.

Though he has been modest about his history-changing decision, he said it wasn't an easy one. Counselling with his superiors was not helpful as he was told to figure it out himself. But he knew he had to make a snap decision so he ordered have the barriers opened, the barrier that he has guarded for 28 years.

What happened that day not only changed the lives of the people of East Germany, it also changed his. With no border left to guard, he lost his job and struggled to make ends meet as a security guard and then with a newspaper kiosk before retiring to a small apartment north of Berlin.

Yesterday, the border he guarded for decades which has vanished from Berlin's cityscape, was visible again that night to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Around 8,000 illuminated balloons marked a 14km stretch of the Cold War dividing line before they were released into the night air. 

TagsBerlin, Berlin Wall, fall of berlin wall, east germany, west germany, Germany, Mikhail Gorbachev