About Günter Schabowski
Günter Schabowski ([ˈɡʏntɐ ʃaˈbɔfski]; 4 January 1929 – 1 November 2015) was a German politician who served as an official of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands abbreviated SED), the ruling party during most of the existence of East Germany. After climbing up the party ladder, he became the regime's unofficial spokesman. He gained worldwide fame in November 1989 when he improvised a slightly mistaken answer to a press conference question about the future of the Berlin Wall, that seemed to announce the Wall's immediate end and raised popular expectations much more rapidly than the government planned. Massive crowds gathered at the Wall the same night, which forced its opening after 28 years. Soon afterward, the entire inner German border was opened; not much later, East Germany ceased to exist. == Early career == Schabowski was born on 4 January 1929 in Anklam, Pomerania (then in the Free State of Prussia, now part of the federal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). After completing his Abitur, Schabowski joined the Free German Trade Union Federation Zentralorgan newspaper, Tribüne as an editor in 1947. He studied journalism at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig's "Red Monastery", the only institution in the GDR offering training to become a journalist, after which he became deputy editor-in-chief of Tribüne. In 1952, he became a member of the SED, having been a candidate member and member of the Free German Youth since 1950. == SED career == From 1967 to 1968, he attended the party academy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
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