On November 9 1989, a 35-year-old physicist in East Berlin saw the startling news on TV that the border with West Germany was opening. But she didn’t rush to the Berlin Wall. Instead — in the definitive display of her trademark patience — Angela Merkel went to the sauna, as she did every Thursday evening. Only afterwards did she walk to her local border crossing and into West Berlin. She drank beer in a stranger’s home in the west but made sure to get back to bed on time, because she had work the next morning.
One month after the Wall fell, exultant East German protesters surrounded the KGB’s mansion in Dresden. A 37-year-old KGB lieutenant-colonel named Vladimir Putin phoned the local Soviet military to ask for reinforcements but was told that nothing could be done because, “Moscow is silent”. Putin would never forget that moment. Meanwhile in Budapest, the 26-year-old lawyer Viktor Orban shot to fame after a speech demanding that Soviet troops leave Hungary. Over in Poland, the velvet transition from communism left the Solidarity official Jaroslaw Kaczynski so disappointed that he began his long battle to complete the revolution.
Today, these four people lead their countries. Merkel, Putin and Orbán have done so for a combined 37 years, while Kaczynski is Poland’s unelected power behind the throne. All four were shaped by the 1989 revolutions.