Günter Schabowski learned what he had done, fully and completely, by watching the news.
He had left the press conference, gone home, and turned on the television. He watched the same broadcasts everyone else was watching. He saw the crowds at the checkpoints. He heard the anchors describing what was happening. He understood, gradually and then all at once, the connection between what he had said in that room and what was now happening in the streets.
He later said in interviews that he felt a ki