27 May 1983 · By train · Friedrichstraße station
The S-Bahn hijacking at Friedrichstraße
A 24-year-old forced his way into an S-Bahn driver's cab with an air rifle and tried to make the train run on into West Berlin; it stopped short of a buffer stop and he was overpowered by officers of the passport control unit.
Wolfgang K., 24, from Stollberg in Saxony, worked as a co-driver on East Berlin refuse lorries. From the café of the TV tower he watched the S-Bahn trains and concluded that a train could simply be driven into the West. He did not know that the eastern S-Bahn line at Friedrichstraße ended at a buffer stop.
On 27 May 1983 he boarded a train at Alexanderplatz with a match air rifle and about 400 pellets in a bag. As the train braked on entering Friedrichstraße, at 18:24, he forced his way into the cab, threatened the 21-year-old driver Simona A. and demanded that she keep going to West Berlin.
The train ran past a stop signal, and two and a half cars were in the border section when the automatic brake stopped it. K. tried in vain to restart it and aimed through the side window at two border soldiers.
Anti-terror specialists of the passport control unit (PKE) crossed the roofs of the cars. One lieutenant smashed the windscreen and fired; the shots distracted K., and two officers arrested him at about 18:50, some 150 m before the buffer stop. The driver needed treatment for glass splinters in her face.
Sources
Whose account is this? Told from a press report only.
Press
Facts checked against the sources: September 2026
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Berlin Experiences, “The S-Bahn hijacking at Friedrichstraße”, Berlin Wall Escapes, 2026, https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/s-bahn-hijack-friedrichstrasse-1983/ (accessed [date]).
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