Berlin Wall Escapes1961–1989

21 December 1961 · False papers and disguises

Joachim Neumann's Swiss passport

Engineering student Joachim Neumann dyed his hair, filled his pockets with Swiss odds and ends and played an aloof Swiss tourist to pass the Friedrichstraße checkpoint on a Swiss passport supplied through West Berlin student escape helpers.

Historical photograph of people at the border checkpoint inside Friedrichstraße station
The border crossing at Friedrichstraße S-Bahn station on 30 October 1964, when West Berliners crossed on visitor passes Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-C1030-0046-001 / Hans-Joachim Spremberg. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Joachim Neumann, born in Berlin in 1939, had studied civil engineering in Cottbus. After the Wall was built he decided to leave the GDR, and through West Berlin students linked to the escape-aid network around Detlef Girrmann, Dieter Thieme and Bodo Köhler (the 'Unternehmen Reisebüro') he obtained a Swiss passport belonging to a Swiss student.

The passport's owner was blond while Neumann had dark hair, so a friendly hairdresser dyed his hair to match the photo. He also filled his pockets with Swiss items such as coins, an old cinema ticket and public-transport tickets.

Because he could not imitate a Swiss accent, he decided at the Friedrichstraße station checkpoint to behave like an arrogant Swiss tourist, answering the guards curtly and refusing to be drawn into conversation. The guards gave up and let him through; he arrived in West Berlin on the evening of 21 December 1961.

According to the tunnel-escape site devoted to him, he was one of the last to get out on such passports before the GDR introduced entry lists. In West Berlin he joined student tunnel diggers. His girlfriend Christa Gruhle was caught and imprisoned after a failed tunnel attempt; after her early release she escaped in October 1964 through Tunnel 57, which Neumann had helped dig from a derelict bakery in the West. The two later married.

Sources

  1. Portrait Joachim Neumanntunnelfluchten.de
  2. The Story of the Most Successful Tunnel Escape in the History of the Berlin WallSmithsonian Magazine

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