Günter Schabowski [SEP] country of citizenship
Günter Schabowski
Günter Schabowski (4 January 1929 – 1 November 2015) was an official of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" abbreviated "SED"), the ruling party during most of the existence of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Schabowski gained worldwide fame in November 1989 when he improvised a slightly mistaken answer to a press conference question, raising popular expectations much more rapidly than the government planned so that massive crowds gathered the same night at the Berlin Wall, forcing its opening after
9 November 1989 by Politburo member Günter Schabowski at a somewhat chaotic press conference in East Berlin. The new border control regime was proclaimed as a means of liberating the people from a situation of psychological pressure by legalising and simplifying migration. 
Schabowski had been handed out a note with hand-written annotations but without the crucial information, the date where these rules would come into effect, on it. These had been passed only verbally between the Politbüro members on their latest meetings, which Schabowski hadn't attended.
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