Berlin Wall Escapes1961–1989

14 October 1972 · Hidden in vehicles

A head waiter hidden in a car trailer at Drewitz

Two West German helpers, one a Free University student, tried to bring a head waiter from Friedrichshagen, born in 1927, into West Berlin hidden in a single-axle car trailer. The Stasi says the pair had already smuggled out several people over the transit routes.

Black-and-white photo: rows of cars queue between white control booths under a large steel canopy; uniformed officers stand at the booths and one bends to speak to the driver of an Opel in the foreground.
GDR controllers checking transit traffic at the Drewitz crossing near Potsdam on 31 March 1972, the same year the trailer was stopped here Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-L0331-0005 / Hartmut Reiche. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de

At about 11.15 p.m. on 14 October 1972 controllers at the Drewitz crossing, on the autobahn into West Berlin, arrested two West Germans. One, born in 1943, was a driver for the firm Stahl-Musik GmbH in West Berlin; the other was Peter Bieber, born in 1945, a student at the Free University. In a single-axle trailer behind their car they had hidden a GDR citizen, a head waiter born in 1927 who worked at the Klubhaus 'Erich Weinert' in Berlin-Köpenick and lived in Friedrichshagen.

According to the Stasi, the two had already used the transit routes and various transit vehicles to smuggle several GDR citizens into West Germany since the Transit Agreement came into force. Arrest warrants were issued against both helpers and the man they had tried to bring out. According to an editorial note in the edition, Peter Bieber was sentenced in 1973 to ten years in prison and was bought free in 1977.

The attempt is one of a series the Stasi reported from the Berlin crossings in the same week. The others were an arrest at Bornholmer Straße on 13 October and one at Sonnenallee on the evening of 14 October.

Sources

GDR records

Press

Facts checked against the sources: October 2026

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Cite this page

Berlin Experiences, “A head waiter hidden in a car trailer at Drewitz”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bieber-car-trailer-drewitz-1972/ (accessed [date]).

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