15 August 1961 · False papers and disguises · Bernauer Straße
Erika Schallert walks across Bernauer Straße with her wedding-dress fabric
Two days after the border was closed, a student whose fiancé lived in West Berlin talked her way past men outside a house on Bernauer Straße by pointing to the fabric for her wedding dress, then walked across the street into West Berlin while helpers distracted them.
Erika Schallert, 22 according to Reuters, lived with her parents in Prenzlauer Berg but studied at the Free University in West Berlin, as did her fiancé. After two days of searching in vain for a gap in the barbed wire, on 15 August 1961 she put on the clothes meant for the civil wedding, wrapped the fabric for her wedding dress around the matching high-heeled shoes, and went to the flat of an organist on Bernauer Straße who was said to be preparing his own escape. According to the Zeitzeugenbörse report of her 2011 talk, the flat was close to the Brunnenstraße junction, where a passage in the fence had been left open for West Berliners.
Men in leather coats stopped her outside the house. She pointed to the fabric under her arm and said her dressmaker lived in the building, and they let her go; Reuters describes this as telling a border guard she was visiting a tailor. Young West Berliners who had come to help the organist's family then took charge of her. Four of them went out with her; three drew the men in leather coats into a discussion while a woman walked slowly with her, telling her to stay calm, past one house and across Bernauer Straße into West Berlin.
She arrived without money or proper clothes and was helped by donations from acquaintances she met at the Catholic student community. The wedding took place without any of her relatives from East Berlin; Reuters gives the date as 4 September 1961. She saw her parents again only two years later, on a single permit to visit East Berlin.
Sources
- Escape from East Berlin, wedding dress in handNBC News / Reuters
- Von Ost- nach Westberlin: Auf High Heels und mit dem Brautkleid unter dem Arm (ZeitZeugenBrief, Juni 2011)Zeitzeugenbörse e.V.
- MauerschauMauerschau Medienproduktion
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