It came as a real surprise, apparently to a lot of people including large chunks of the East German government - their police and intelligence departments were abruptly faced with criminal charges and wholesale job losses. Someone once told me that the amount of spy fiction published plummeted for several months immediately afterwards. My brother-in-law's brother was in Berlin just a few weeks later, and happened to mention recently that there were already forged pieces of the wall on sale, "with the paint still dripping," all of the good bits had already gone.
