About 20,000 people crossed the Bösebrücke in the hour after the Bornholmer Straße barrier was raised.
Bornholmer Straße was an East German border crossing linking East Berlin with West Berlin. On the evening of 9 November 1989, news of new travel rules brought an increasingly large crowd to the checkpoint. The guards had no clear orders and faced mounting pressure from thousands of citizens.
At roughly 11:30 p.m., Lieutenant Colonel Harald Jäger ordered the barrier opened. The decision was made without formal authorization from senior authorities. Once the gates were fully opened, around 20,000 people crossed the bridge in the following hour, largely without passport checks.
The figure refers to the immediate rush at this particular crossing, not everyone who crossed the Berlin Wall that night. Other checkpoints opened soon afterward, and the border’s collapse rapidly became irreversible. The bridge is now remembered as one of the first places where the Wall effectively opened.