Policeman Gerd Sommerlatte flees at the Brandenburg Gate and is kidnapped back

Gerd Sommerlatte was born in 1943 in Dessau. After he refused to continue his farming apprenticeship in a collective farm (LPG), he was made to train with the People's Police in Halle. On 25 August 1961, shortly after the Wall was built, he was posted to border duty at the Brandenburg Gate.

He kept hearing of escape attempts that his comrades had stopped with their weapons, and realised he might have to shoot at friends or relatives himself. On 10 September 1961 he fled into West Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate, where the border was then secured only with barbed wire, taking his weapon with him. After questioning by Western Allied and West German intelligence services he was registered at the Marienfelde reception camp.

At Marienfelde he befriended two refugees from the GDR. On the evening of 29 September 1961, out with his new friends, he suddenly found himself in the GDR: the two men had abducted him on behalf of the Ministry for State Security, which held him in its remand prison in the Magdalenenstraße.

Under pressure in the Stasi prisons in Berlin and Frankfurt (Oder) he made a false confession and in February 1962 was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. He served his sentence in the Stasi's secret labour camp 'Lager X' in Hohenschönhausen, which he was able to leave at Easter 1965, and in Brandenburg an der Havel. On 21 October 1965 the Federal Republic bought his release.