Two Swiss typesetters and the hidden railwayman from Dresden

On 4 May 1963 GDR controllers at the Friedrichstraße/Zimmerstraße crossing (Checkpoint Charlie) searched a Chevrolet with Zurich number plates. In a hiding place between the back seat and the boot they found a shunting foreman, born in 1943, from the Dresden-Neustadt goods station, who had already served a sentence for a passport offence. The two Swiss drivers, a typographer born in 1938 and a typesetter born in 1934, were arrested with him.

According to the Stasi, the Swiss men had got to know him through a female colleague of his at the Leipzig spring fair of 1963. One of them was her friend, and they had actually planned to smuggle her out; she refused because she did not want to leave her mother. When she again declined to come to Berlin on 4 May, they offered the hiding place to him instead, and he was put into the car in a street in Berlin-Mitte.

A third Swiss man, a relative of one of the drivers who was living in Berlin-Britz, was present when he was hidden but crossed the checkpoint on foot at 12.10 p.m., afraid that the car would be discovered. The two drivers told investigators they had built the hiding place themselves and wanted to prove that people could still be got out despite the controls; they denied acting for any organisation. After the Swiss tabloid Blick asked for a statement, the Stasi proposed a short ADN news item describing the attempt as an attempt to 'abduct' a third person.