15 August 1961 – 16 August 1961 · False papers and disguises · Checkpoint Charlie
Lydia Steffen walks her brother out on another brother's identity card
On 15 August 1961 Lydia Steffen, a West Berlin civil servant, went into East Berlin with the identity card of one of her brothers and brought her youngest brother out on it through the Friedrichstraße/Zimmerstraße control point. The next day she brought out their mother with the same identity-card trick.
Lydia Steffen worked as a personnel clerk (Beamtin) at the Kreuzberg town hall. Her brother Norbert lived in West Berlin like her; her youngest brother, Ini, and their mother were in Weißensee in East Berlin when the border was closed on 13 August 1961.
On 15 August, she later recalled, she heard a rumour at work that West Berliners would soon need a pass to enter the eastern sector. She told her chief, Bürgermeister Willy Kressmann, that she had to get her brother out, and took Norbert's worn identity card, hoping that the two brothers looked alike enough. She entered East Berlin at the U-Bahnhof Friedrichstraße and waited some hours in Weißensee for Ini to come home from work.
Brother and sister then went to the control point at Friedrichstraße/Zimmerstraße. Late in the afternoon, near Mauerstraße, several Volkspolizisten surrounded them and an officer questioned them, noting that both were called Buchwald. After looking at the identity card for some time he gave the papers back and let them go. In West Berlin they went to Norbert's flat in Görlitzer Straße in Kreuzberg.
The next day, 16 August, she used the same identity-card trick to bring out their 59-year-old mother; her account does not say which crossing they used. When she asked Kressmann for a genuine identity card for another endangered person, he sent her back to work, and her career as an escape helper ended.
Sources
Whose account is this? Told from a witness account only.
Witness accounts
Facts checked against the sources: November 2026
Spotted an error, or know more about this story? Email us a correction or addition
Cite this page
Berlin Experiences, “Lydia Steffen walks her brother out on another brother's identity card”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lydia-steffen-brother-identity-card-friedrichstrasse-1961/ (accessed [date]).
Related escapes
21 October 1961
Hasso Herschel leaves on a Swiss passport
Weeks after the Wall went up, the later tunnel builder Hasso Herschel left East Berlin on someone else's Swiss passport and immediately began looking for a way to get his sister out.
September 1961
Ingrid crosses at Friedrichstraße on her fiancé's sister's US passport
In late September 1961 a graduate student in West Berlin walked his East Berlin fiancée, her hair dyed to match the photo, through the Friedrichstraße/Zimmerstraße crossing on his sister's US passport.
15 August 1961
Renate Reich crosses at Harzer Straße on a forged identity card
Her West Berlin father came for her with a forged identity card. Finding the checks at Heinrich-Heine-Straße too thorough, they found a lone guard in the Harzer Straße who looked at their papers under a street lamp and let them through.
May 1962
Reinhard Spiller drives his parents out on a forged diplomatic pass
In 1962 the engineering student Reinhard Spiller, who had got to West Berlin himself two days after the Wall went up, drove his parents out through Checkpoint Charlie using a fellow student's Austrian passport and a forged diplomatic pass, then helped about 50 more people out the same way.