Heinz Schäfer

Heinz Schäfer (born circa 1930-1931) is a former East German Stasi officer, a colonel at the time, who claims to have ordered the disarming of the automatically-triggered weapons trained on the crossing and then to have ordered the opening of the Waltersdorf Chaussee-Rudow Chaussee border crossing of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, hours before Harald Jäger opened his gate at the Bornholmer crossing.

Schäfer came forward during a discussion of the events of that historic night at a 2009 gathering of school girls and said that he then became inspired to tell his story publicly. He stated that he began to allow crossings by 8:30 p.m. or at the latest by 9:00 p.m. The Waltersdorf-Rudow crossing was a small facility that had no television coverage, as existed at the Bornholmer crossing, therefore there is no confirming documentation available.

If true, his action would explain reports of the presence of East Berliners in West Berlin hours before the opening by Jäger of the checkpoint he supervised at Bornholmer at 11:30 p.m. From the accounts by both men, the two made their decisions independently of each other and both did it without orders from their supervisors.