Christel and Eckhard Wehage's attempted hijacking of an Interflug plane

Eckhard Wehage, born in 1948, had tried twice as a teenager to leave the GDR – by boat across the Baltic and by train via Czechoslovakia – and received a suspended sentence in 1963. From 1967 he served as a career NCO in the People's Navy. He married Christel Zinke from Wolmirstedt, born in 1946. For years the couple failed to obtain a shared place of work or a flat of their own, and in spring 1970 their hope of housing collapsed.

Eckhard Wehage took two pistols and ammunition from his unit's armoury and went on short leave. The couple booked a flight from East Berlin to Dresden on 9 March 1970; when it was cancelled, they bought tickets for the next day's flight to Leipzig. In the airport hotel at Schönefeld they wrote farewell letters to their parents: if the plan failed, they would end their lives.

Shortly before 8 a.m. on 10 March 1970 they boarded an Interflug An-24 with 15 other passengers. Soon after take-off Eckhard Wehage, pistol drawn, told the stewardess to have the pilots fly to Hanover. She passed on the message using a secret emergency code. He shot open the lock of the cockpit door only to find a second locked door. The stewardess persuaded the couple to accept a landing at Tempelhof because of an alleged fuel shortage, while the crew turned back.

Seconds before touchdown a passenger called out that they were back at Schönefeld. The couple returned to their seats, and as the plane landed two shots were fired: Christel and Eckhard Wehage had taken their own lives. The Stasi had relatives and colleagues told that they had died in a car crash; the crew were decorated by Stasi minister Erich Mielke.