Ingo Krüger – a diver's attempt to reach his fiancée

Ingo Krüger, born in 1940, grew up in Niederschöneweide and worked as a cook for the company that catered for the GDR government's guest houses. His fiancée Ingrid R. lived in West Berlin. On the night of 12 to 13 August 1961 he stayed at her flat and went back east in the morning for his shift, unaware of the sealing of the border; from then on they were separated.

They met at remote places on the city's edge and exchanged letters over the barbed wire, and later Ingrid registered with relatives in West Germany so that she could visit him in East Berlin. When they realised the border would stay closed, Krüger, a sport diver, began preparing to escape through the Spree to the Reichstag. From early November Stasi officers observed his every move.

At about 11 p.m. on 10 December 1961 he took a taxi with two friends to the Spree bank at Schiffbauerdamm, already wearing his diving suit under his coat. On the advice of a friend who had watched the customs boats, he entered the river below Friedrichstraße station and put on his breathing apparatus. His friends soon realised something had gone wrong.

On the West Berlin bank, Ingrid R. waited in vain and saw GDR customs officers search the water with hooks and searchlights and pull out a body. According to East Berlin border police reports he was already dead when recovered at the Marschallbrücke; the forensic register records his death at 0.10 a.m. on 11 December. The cause was probably drowning; investigations in the 1990s concluded that he died of cold shock. One friend was arrested for aiding 'flight from the Republic'. Ingrid learned of his death only in January.