27 July 1973 · Over the wall · Glienicke/Nordbahn, Frohnau and Bergfelde
A crawler driver stopped 20 metres from the wall at Hohen Neuendorf
A man from Birkenwerder crawled under the signal fence at the Berliner Straße in Hohen Neuendorf and ran towards the wall; guards caught him 20 metres short of it without firing.
At about 11.50 p.m. on 27 July 1973 border troops arrested a man born in 1940 from Birkenwerder, a crawler driver for the state forestry enterprise in Oranienburg, in the border section at the Berliner Straße in Hohen Neuendorf as he tried to break through to West Berlin.
According to the Stasi report he had been drinking, crawled under the signal fence and moved quickly towards the wall. The guards seized him 20 metres before the wall without using their weapons. He was remanded in custody.
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
- Information Nr. 727/73 über die Verhinderung eines ungesetzlichen Grenzübertrittes DDR/Westberlin am 27. Juli 1973DDR im Blick (Stasi-Unterlagen-Archiv)
Facts checked against the sources: November 2026
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Berlin Experiences, “A crawler driver stopped 20 metres from the wall at Hohen Neuendorf”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hohen-neuendorf-berliner-strasse-crawler-driver-1973/ (accessed [date]).
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