Martin Notev is dragged back out of the Spree at the West Berlin bank

On 14 February 1989 Martin Notev and two young men from his neighbourhood broke through the border installations with a truck and jumped into the Spree near the Reichstag. Notev wore a wetsuit.

The two others got away to West Berlin. Notev had already reached the western bank and was trying to pull himself up the quay wall when a GDR patrol boat reached him. Border guards dragged him back by his hair, and one of them set foot on the West Berlin bank while doing so. The whole width of the Spree belonged to the GDR, but Allied circles called it a unique case in which a man had in effect been kidnapped from West Berlin ground.

At the end of April an East Berlin court sentenced Notev to four years in prison and a fine of 40,000 marks for damaging state property. Britain, France, the United States and finally the European Community pressed for his release with unusual diplomatic effort; the GDR replied that its border regime was a matter of national sovereignty, and in June the Allies threatened to cancel their trips into the GDR. Governing Mayor Momper reportedly also raised the case on a visit to East Berlin; a list of would-be emigrants that he gave Honecker included Notev.

On the evening of 21 June 1989 the GDR gave in and deported Notev to West Berlin, where he arrived at the Marienfelde reception camp. There was no confirmation that he had been exchanged for an East German spy.

In August 1989 British army engineers fixed five swimming-pool ladders, linked by a 500-metre grab rope, to the Spree bank north of the Reichstag, where East Germans kept trying to escape; the taz explained that half a year earlier an East Berliner's escape through the Spree had failed because he could hold on to the western bank but could not pull himself up.