On 1 January 1989 Lauter started a new job, joining the as deputy head of the department responsible for the registration of citizens and for the issuance of passports and identity cards. The transfer to the ministry had come as a surprise, and the transfer away from the detective work, at which he evidently excelled, was unwelcome, but it would have been unusual (and unwise) to turn down a government job offer. Rapid promotion within the department ensued. In November of that year he played a central role in the events that led to the ending of the East German one-party dictatorship: one headline writer identified him in 2015 as "the "ghost-writer" [for the] Fall of the Berlin Wall".