ABSTRACT
On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. To the amazement of even those involved in making the decision to allow East Germans to travel to the West, the physical fabric of the famous barrier was quickly erased, followed with almost as much haste by the collapse of the regime that had built it. The two Germanies were reunited the following year; in 1991 the Bundestag in Bonn voted by a slim margin to move the capital back to Berlin. By April 1999, when the legislature met for the first time in the refurbished Reichstag, the transfer was largely complete.
