24 July 1971 · False papers and disguises · Friedrichstraße station
A Danish tour guide, a doctored passport and a 16-year-old from Rostock
A Copenhagen tour guide tried to take a 16-year-old from Rostock through the Friedrichstraße crossing on a doctored Danish passport and was caught in the act.
On 24 July 1971 the Stasi arrested a Danish citizen, born in 1943, at the Friedrichstraße border crossing. He was a tour guide for the Copenhagen travel company Viking-Nordtourist. He was trying to take a 16-year-old GDR citizen from Rostock across to West Berlin on a doctored Danish passport.
The Stasi wrote up the case on 13 August 1971, the tenth anniversary of the Wall. The report claims that the guide had links to a West German right-wing extremist organisation called 'Junges Europa'. It says he had been told to bring the young man out so that he could later be sent back into the GDR on an unknown mission around the anniversary.
The report then lists 'provocations' said to be planned for 13 August 1971 and for the 1972 Munich Olympics. None of these claims about motive can be checked from this source, and they fit the Stasi's habit of presenting escape help as part of a hostile plot. What the report does establish is the attempt itself and the arrest.
Sources
- Jahrgang 1971: Versuchte Ausschleusung durch einen dänischen Reiseleiter – Information Nr. 816/71, 13 August 1971Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv (DDR im Blick)
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