I am a 30 year old man in an East Berlin prison in 1989 incarcerated for attempting to escape to West Berlin. What happens to me when the wall comes down?

You would probably be free by then.

The GDR’s domestic and foreign situation had clearly deteriorated by July 1987, when the most expansive reprieve action in East German history was initiated. Finalized in October 1987, in time for the thirty-eighth anniversary of the country’s founding, this “general amnesty” was meant to benefit all persons convicted before that date. Exceptions remained for “Nazi and war crimes,” “crimes against humanity,” and espionage and murder. These measures and the parallel abolition of the death penalty, however, met with litele enthusiasm among the East German people.

With a visit by Honecker in Bonn imminent, the GDR leadership was being forced into making certain concessions on human rights issues. The phase of political upheaval that followed in 1989 saw a quick succession of two additional amnesties. Ten days after Honecker’s resignation, on 17 October 1989, the Politburo under Egon Krenz issued a clemency for all persons who had been arrested and convicted for border violations or in connection with the mass “Monday demonstrations” that had driven the regime's retreat.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November and the resignations of Krenz and Stasi chief Mielke in December, the Council of State issued an amnesty for all political prisoners that came to be known as the “Gerlach Amnesty.” It was named after the last chairman of the council, and thus the country’s final head of state, Manfred Gerlach of the SED’ subsidiary or “bloc” party, the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany.

Source: Law, History, and Justice: Debating German State Crimes in the Long Twentieth Century, Annette Weinke, 2018.