'Go to West Berlin - the Wall is open'

PARIS - It was a night when the clocks stopped, a break in time that began in the evening and lasted until dawn.

People darted from their apartments not locking doors behind them, not checking if they had any money, not telling a soul where they were going or when they might return.

That night came almost 20 years ago in East Berlin, when an entire population skipped away from home, driven by the single desire to taste freedom.

The simple freedom to walk down a street and cross the road into the neighbouring suburb. To stroll along a cobbled lane without dreading the click of a cocked machine gun and the cry of a helmeted border guard.

We had returned to East Berlin in the evening of November 9 after a day trip to Rostock to cover a demonstration. All the German Democratic Republic seemed to be demonstrating; from one end of the artificial state to another people had imitated the marchers in Leipzig who'd spearheaded rallies for change.

As we drove past the grey, Stalinist-era buildings of Schoenhauser Allee, people began to pour out onto the streets. They had just watched the 8pm West German television news. There had been a miracle: East Berliners were allowed to cross into West Berlin.

As under a spell, people were running maniacally, all heading in one direction: towards the same wall, erected by the GDR's Communist regime, which had split their city for 28 years.

"Go to West Berlin," they screamed. "The Wall is open." Windows facing onto the street burst open as neighbours strained to hear the unbelievable.

Then, suddenly, an event that would stay with me forever. A girl in her early 20s, a complete stranger, jumped into the car and asked if we could drive her to Friedrichstrasse crossing point. She'd grown up in East Germany but she, like everyone else, knew that was the checkpoint for speedy train connections to West Berlin.

As we weaved through the crowds she sat in the back, shaking with anticipation and disbelief. I walked her through the checkpoint, which, astonishingly, was empty. As she slipped onto the train, tears of joy flooded her face and I never saw her again.

I went to Checkpoint Charlie, one of the Cold War's flashpoints, and rushed to other crossover points to confirm that the human floodgates had opened, before heading to the Brandenburg Gate, the very symbol of Berlin's division.

I have a stackful of memories of that night, although none can explain how I got up the 3.5-metre-high wall. But at midnight, I was up there - and almost speechless at the sight. The GDR's "anti-fascist barrier" had become an irrelevance. On both sides, frenzied crowds pounded its once-feared concrete flanks with hammers, stones - anything that could make a dent.

Soldiers who, the day before, would have shot anyone venturing across the floodlit no-man's land had laid down their guns. Bottles of cheap fizzy wine poured over Trabant cars as they sputtered across the checkpoints and into the West.

For nearly three decades the Brandenburg Gate and Potsdamer Platz had stood, eerie and deserted, as if the Arc de Triomphe and Piccadilly Circus had been sectioned off by a death strip. Subway trains on circle lines from West Berlin would pass "ghost stations" in East Berlin, their dimly-lit platforms empty save for whey-faced troops with guns.

The men from the Staatssicherheitspolizei (Stasi) secret police, with their cheap, soft shoes, huddled inside Soviet-built cars, noting down the names of those who went inside churches and cafes. Their surveillance was all pervasive. You trusted nobody.

School teachers wrote two reports on their pupils: one for the parents and the other for the Stasi citadel in Normannenstrasse.

There was always somebody eager to trade a snippet of information for hard currency, the right to university education for a child, a permit to travel or favours. The 40-year history of the GDR says there were no death camps or bloodbaths. Yet lives were truncated in a non-violent way. Millions were condemned to a soulless existence of suspicion, fear and greyness.

Only a few weeks before November 9, I watched the official celebrations for the 40th anniversary of the GDR's founding go horribly wrong.

Mikhail Gorbachev had arrived to the usual fraternal kiss from East German leader Erich Honecker, but by the end of the two-day feast of comradely worship, the people were acting another script. In their thousands, they came out onto Schoenhauser Allee and cried "Gorby, help us!" I watched as hundreds were beaten, herded onto the backs of Army trucks and hauled off to Army detention centres.

Today, a comfortable view seems to prevail that the Berlin Wall's peaceful end was some inevitable act of history. Yet I have often thought that the bloodless event was more an act of sheer luck.

Their hardline doctrine disavowed by Gorbachev, facing amplifying protests, the GDR's Communist leaders were in shock. None of them, I believe, could explain what had turned their world upside down, what their future held or even say with confidence who was running the country.

In the absence of orders from above, it was often individual East German border commanders who made the decision to raise the barrier and let the crowds through. By sheer good fortune, there was no act of violence, no bottle or stone thrown, no shot fired by a nervous border guard.

All this may seem fanciful to world leaders joining hundreds of thousands of Berliners in a "Freedom Party" on Monday. They will see a city that has changed almost unimaginably since that historic night.

Now, anyone can cycle or walk around the Brandenburg Gate, catch a train at Friedrichstrasse station, buy whatever books they fancy and talk about whatever they like. Without the help of souvenir sellers, it's hard to even say where the Wall once ran.

Time has wiped away Berlin's physical scar, but for many in the East, "die Mauer im Kopf" - "the Wall in the head" - remains. Alienation and separation, regret and resentment at the lost years and the wasted lives can be far harder to erase than walls, barbed wire and watchtowers.

Like the folk memories of World War I, the GDR's psychic legacy will endure for generations to come.