Norbert Wolscht and Rainer Gneiser – homemade diving gear in the Havel

Norbert Wolscht and Rainer Gneiser had known each other since their school days in Freiberg, Saxony. Gneiser had already been sentenced to ten months in prison in 1962 after a failed attempt to escape across the Baltic Sea. From the summer of 1963 the two friends trained in long-distance swimming and found out how to construct diving equipment.

On 25 July 1964 they left Freiberg by motorcycle, telling people they were going camping. On 27 July Wolscht sent their camping equipment from Potsdam back to his parents. Equipped with breathing apparatus, fins and diving suits, they went into the Havel in the night of 27 to 28 July. Where exactly they entered the water is not known; the places where their bodies were found suggest they started at the Tiefer See between Potsdam and Babelsberg and meant to pass the narrows known as the 'Babelsberger Enge' underwater towards the West Berlin bank.

Both men drowned. Soldiers of Border Regiment 48 recovered Norbert Wolscht's body the following morning; according to the post-mortem he died at around 2 a.m. on 28 July. A hospital doctor later told his father that death had probably been caused by carbon dioxide poisoning because the homemade breathing device had not absorbed the gas properly. Rainer Gneiser's body was found on the Babelsberg bank of the Havel on 5 August 1964, still carrying his self-made diving apparatus and a waterproof bag with his papers.

Because the deaths were treated as an accident, the People's Police in Potsdam rather than the Stasi handled the case. Both young men were buried in the Donatsfriedhof in Freiberg; their death notices spoke of a 'tragic accident'. In the West their fate remained unknown until friends and relatives raised it after 1990; investigations in the early 1990s confirmed that they had died in an accident during their escape attempt.