13 August 1971 · Aircraft and balloons
A student tries to force an Interflug plane to Tempelhof with a knife
On 13 August 1971 a Merseburg student held a knife to a boy's throat on a domestic Interflug flight and tried to get into the cockpit to force a landing at Tempelhof; the boy and two passengers overpowered him.
On 13 August 1971 a student at the Merseburg College of Chemistry ("Hochschule für Chemie"), born in 1951, boarded the scheduled Interflug An-24 (DM-SBA) from Erfurt to Berlin-Schönefeld, with 21 passengers. According to the Stasi report he meant to force the plane to land at Tempelhof in West Berlin, and had obtained a folding knife with a blade of about 10 cm.
About 28 minutes after the 8.08 a.m. take-off he seized a schoolboy born in 1958, who was travelling with his mother, from behind and put the blade to his throat, telling the passengers not to resist. Pushing the boy ahead of him, he went to the door of the forward hold, which was locked, and knocked on it with his foot, demanding that it be opened.
The stewardess raised the alarm and came forward to talk to him. While he was distracted, the boy and two passengers overpowered him and took the knife. He was arrested by the Stasi after the landing at Schönefeld. The report says he had picked the boy as a hostage at the airport bus stop in Erfurt.
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
Facts checked against the sources: November 2026
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Cite this page
Berlin Experiences, “A student tries to force an Interflug plane to Tempelhof with a knife”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/interflug-an24-knife-tempelhof-1971/ (accessed [date]).
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