I've seen the clip of him saying "Tear down this wall" dozens of times, but I'm curious if the popular uprising in Berlin actually happened because he told them to. I realize that the fall of the Berlin Wall was largely caused by the implosion of the Soviet Union, which could definitely be traced in large part to the US arms build up during the Reagan years, but considering that the demolition didn't even start until two years after Reagan left office, did his speech have any real effect in Europe? Is that clip just a piece of hagiography for the conservative patron saint?
"I'm curious if the popular uprising in Berlin actually happened because he told them to."
Short answer: No.
Long answer: First consider that condemnation of the Berlin Wall was a common rhetorical point among western leaders and the general populace in the East didn't need a reminder that the Wall had nothing whatsoever to do with its official purpose as an "anti-Imperialist protective wall".
Secondly the core of East German dissidents that organized the first large scale protests in September 1989 was generally comprised of either pacifists and/or people who leaned left in politics. Many didn't oppose socialism per se but its realization in the GDR and other countries in the east. Reagan's aggressive foreign policy, especially in South America and his social policies in the US made him suspect to these people.
A far more influential figure for protesters was Gorbachev and his policies of "Glasnost" and "Perestroika". People in the GDR assumed, quite reasonably, that the East German ruling party wouldn't be able to continue to rule with an iron fist without backing from the Soviet Union which Gorbachev seemed unwilling to provide. If you look into recollections and or videos of protests in the fall of 1989 you will see people holding signs with Gorbachev's picture, them chanting "Gorbi, Gorbi" etc. He was the man they appealed to because he provided the blueprint for change and he was the one person that had real power to influence the situation on the ground.
Related Question: I've heard conservatives claim that Reagan influenced the USSR power bloc into electing Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary. Is there any truth to this?
I ask this because I think that without Gorbachev, it would have been highly unlikely that the Soviet Union (and the Warsaw Pact countries) would have dissolved so quickly. Heck- the top experts of the day didn't predict it at all. If you look at his two predecessors: Andropov and Chernenko, it would've seemed like another hardliner would've been elected General Secretary, not a young reformer like Gorbachev.
I have heard it said that NATO intelligence didn't even know (for certain) who was in the Politburo. If this is the case, how could Reagan have influenced them to elect a reformer? How could he make them play a full-house when he didn't know what cards they had? And by what means did he have to influence them?