8 October 1972 – 9 October 1972 · Hidden in vehicles
Two cars stopped in one night at Heinrich-Heine-Straße
Within three hours GDR controllers at the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing stopped two cars. In one was a schoolgirl from Lichtenberg, born in 1956, with four West German helpers; the other carried a lathe operator born in 1949 and a couple from Hamburg.
Two attempts to take East Germans out by car happened in a single night at the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing between Mitte and Kreuzberg.
At about 10 p.m. on 8 October 1972 controllers arrested four West Germans from Waltrop, Dortmund and Castrop-Rauxel, born between 1932 and 1954. They had tried to take a schoolgirl out to West Berlin in an Opel Kadett. She was born in 1956 in Neuhaus, Kreis Hagenow, and was in the tenth grade at the 22nd Polytechnic Secondary School in Berlin-Lichtenberg. The four were held for investigation. The girl was handed back to her parents in East Berlin through the prosecutor's office.
At 0.35 a.m. on 9 October a married couple from Hamburg who had been living in West Berlin-Charlottenburg were arrested at the same crossing. They had hidden a GDR citizen, a lathe operator born in 1949 who had worked at the VEB Gaswerk in Berlin-Lichtenberg, in a hiding place in their car. The couple and the man were all taken into custody.
The Stasi said it was checking whether either group had links to organised escape-help networks.
Sources
Whose account is this? Told from a GDR record only: documents of the GDR’s police, Stasi or border troops. No other account of the event is cited.
GDR records
- Jahrgang 1972: Versuchte Ausschleusung durch BRD-Bürger (1) – Information Nr. 926/72, 11 October 1972Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv (DDR im Blick)
Facts checked against the sources: September 2026
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Cite this page
Berlin Experiences, “Two cars stopped in one night at Heinrich-Heine-Straße”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heinrich-heine-strasse-two-cars-1972/ (accessed [date]).
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