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 1978, he rose to the position of editor-in-chief when Joachim Herrmann became a full member of the Politburo and Central Committee Secretary for Agitation, replacing the deceased Werner Lamberz.

"[4] In October 1989, Schabowski, along with several other members of the Politbüro, turned on the longtime SED leader Erich Honecker and forced him to step down in favor of Egon Krenz.

[7] On 9 November 1989, shortly before that day's press conference, Krenz handed Schabowski a text[8] containing new, temporary travel regulations.

Schabowski assumed that it would be the same day based on the wording of the note, and he replied after a few seconds' pause: "As far as I know... effective immediately, without delay."

Both Riccardo Ehrman, the Berlin correspondent of the ANSA news agency, and the German Bild Zeitung (a tabloid) reporter Peter Brinkmann were sitting in the front row at the press conference and claimed to have asked when the regulations would come into force.

When Brokaw asked if this meant "freedom of travel," Schabowski replied, "Yes of course," and added that it was not "a question of tourism" but "a permission of leaving GDR.

"[16] The West German public national television channels showed parts of Schabowski's press conference in their main evening news reports at 19:17 on ZDF's heute and at 20:00 on ARD's Tagesschau, which meant that the news was broadcast to nearly all of East Germany as well, where West German television was widely watched.

Finally, at 23:30, Stasi Officer Harald Jäger decided to open the gates at the Bornholmer Straße border crossing and to allow people into West Berlin.

[1] After German Reunification, Schabowski became highly critical of his own actions in East Germany and those of his fellow Politbüro members as well as of Soviet-style socialism in general.

[18] His support for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) prompted some of his former comrades to call him a wryneck (German: Wendehals).

[21] According to his wife, Schabowski lived in a Berlin nursing home during the last years of his life, after a number of heart attacks and strokes.