Celebration after the Berlin Wall opening on Nov. 11, 1989.

People from East Germany greet citizens of West Germany at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Dec. 22, 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall the month before.

East German border guards stand in a newly opened section of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 10, 1989. Atop the wall are celebrating East and West Germans who would have been shot only a few days before. The east-facing wall remains white, while the west-facing side is covered in graffiti. One message reads: “Walls exist just to be pulled down.”

A man attacks the Berlin Wall with a pickax on the night of Nov. 9, 1989, as news spread that the East German government would start granting exit visas to anyone who wanted to go to the West.

A message on the Berlin Wall at Potsdamer Platz on Nov. 14, 1989.

Thousands of people rushed to the Berlin Wall on the first few days after the opening of the wall on Nov. 9, 1989.

A Berliner holds up a hammer and a chisel in front of the wall on Nov. 15, 1989.

The opening of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 11, 1989.

A boy waves to soldiers on the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate on Nov. 10, 1989.

A boy draws on the blank east side of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 21, 1989, a few yards from the newly opened crossing at Potsdamer Platz.

West Germans celebrate the unification of Berlin atop the wall on Nov. 12, 1989.

Soldiers work on further demolition of the Berlin Wall at Bernauer Street in Berlin on June 13, 1990. The German Democratic Republic officially joined the Federal Republic of Germany on Oct. 3, 1990.

West German schoolchildren on the way to school peer at East German border guards at a new opening in the Berlin Wall on Nov. 14, 1989.

A section of the Berlin Wall in November 1989.