5 May 1963 · Driving through · Checkpoint Charlie
Under the barrier in an Austin-Healey Sprite
An Austrian, Heinz Meixner, drove a low-slung Austin-Healey Sprite with its windscreen removed under the barrier at Checkpoint Charlie, carrying his fiancée and her mother hidden in the car.
Heinz Meixner, a 20-year-old electrical technician from Linz in Austria who worked in West Berlin, had met Margarete (Margit) Thurau in an East Berlin dance café and got engaged to her. When the GDR authorities rejected her application to leave, he looked for a way through the border himself. As an Austrian citizen he could cross Checkpoint Charlie, and on one crossing on a motor scooter he measured the height of the barrier.
The barrier stood a little under a metre above the road. Meixner rented a red Austin-Healey Sprite, took off the windscreen and let air out of the tyres, bringing the car low enough to pass underneath.
Margit hid behind the seats. Her mother squeezed into the boot, shielded by bricks that Meixner packed in as a makeshift bullet stop.
In the early hours of 5 May 1963 (the Chronik der Mauer gives 3.15 a.m.) Meixner drove slowly into the checkpoint like an ordinary visitor. Then he accelerated, ducked and shot under the last barrier into the American sector before the surprised guards could fire. The three reached West Berlin.
The escape made Meixner briefly famous; RIAS broadcast a report on a sports-car escape at Checkpoint Charlie on 8 May 1963. The GDR reinforced its barriers afterwards. "Now we can finally get married," Meixner said; he later settled in Linz.
Sources
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Facts checked against the sources: September 2026
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Berlin Experiences, “Under the barrier in an Austin-Healey Sprite”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/meixner-austin-healey-checkpoint-charlie-1963/ (accessed [date]).
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