Open data
The 563 records behind this site are free to download and reuse, including commercially, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Credit “Berlin Experiences, Berlin Wall Escapes (berlinwallescapes.com), CC BY 4.0” and link back to this page.
Downloads
- escapes.json: every record with all its fields (JSON).
- escapes.geojson: one point per record with id, title, date, method, outcome, confidence, approximate, basis and url (GeoJSON, longitude first).
This copy was built on 3 October 2026. The files change as stories are added or corrected.
How to cite
Berlin Experiences, “Berlin Wall Escapes 1961–1989” (dataset), Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/data/ (accessed [date]).
Each story page also suggests a citation for that story.
What is not included
Photographs are not part of the dataset. They keep their own licences, which are listed on the image credits page. The route of the Wall comes from the Geoportal Berlin under its own licence (dl-de/zero-2.0), described on Sources and method. The cited sources belong to their publishers; the dataset links to them and does not reproduce them.
Fields
| Field | What it holds |
|---|---|
id | Stable identifier; the story page is /escapes/<id>/. |
url | Address of the story page. |
title, summary | Headline and one- or two-sentence summary. |
date, dateEnd | ISO date of the event: “YYYY-MM-DD”, or “YYYY-MM” / “YYYY” when the sources give no day or month. dateEnd only for events over several days. |
people, peopleIds | Names as the sources give them (anonymised names stay anonymised) and a stable id for each, in the same order. |
escapees | Number of people who reached the West; null when the sources give no number. |
deaths | Number of people killed in connection with the event. |
method | Main method: tunnel, hidden-vehicle, vehicle-breakthrough, train, swimming, boat, zipline-cable, aircraft-balloon, window-jump, climbing, border-guard-defection or forged-documents-disguise. |
outcome | successful, partially-successful, failed or fatal. |
tags, themes | Free tags from the research, and the reader-facing theme ids they map to. |
location | name, district, border (inner-city, outer-ring or checkpoint), lat and lng (WGS84), approximate (true when the pin marks only the area) and, where recorded, basis: what the position rests on (address, marker, landmark, street or area). |
story, facts | The account in our own words (paragraphs) and short key facts. |
sources | Every cited source with title, publisher and type (whose account it is, see below), and a url. A print or archive source has no url: it gives its citation, pages and, where known, archive (library and shelfmark), and scans, the number of page scans the project keeps as evidence; the scans themselves are not published. |
confidence | high (independent sources agree), medium (one reputable source) or low (reported, key details unconfirmed). |
notes | Where the sources disagree, and what is uncertain. |
checked | Month (“YYYY-MM”) the facts were last checked against the sources, where known. |
Source types
Each source carries a type that says whose account it is:
gdr-record(272 citations): documents of the GDR’s police, Stasi or border troops, including those reproduced by the Chronik der Mauer, DDR im Blick and the Stasi-Mediathek.western-official(55 citations): West Berlin police and Senat reports; US, British or French government records such as State Department telegrams.press(264 citations): newspapers, magazines, news agencies and broadcasters.witness(79 citations): interviews, memoirs and witness portals in which people tell their own story.historian(536 citations): the Chronik der Mauer’s narrative pages, the Berlin Wall Foundation, memorial plaques, books, studies and museums.
Questions about the data, or a correction? Get in touch.