# Berlin Wall Escapes

> A sourced record of escapes and escape attempts across the Berlin Wall, 13 August 1961 – 9 November 1989: tunnels, window jumps, ziplines, vehicles, swimmers, boats, balloons, disguises and border guards who fled. Every story is written from published historical sources (chiefly the Chronik der Mauer and the Berlin Wall Foundation, plus Stasi records, US diplomatic telegrams and contemporary press), which are listed with each story. Where sources disagree, the story says so instead of choosing silently. A Berlin Experiences project (https://www.berlinexperiences.com).

The collection is not a complete list: around 5,000 people are thought to have escaped into West Berlin while the Wall stood, most without leaving a record. It documents the events that are well sourced. When citing a story, please link to its page and name the original sources listed there.

The collection currently holds 574 events.

## Key pages
- [Sources and method](https://berlinwallescapes.com/about/): scope, how each story is checked, what the confidence levels mean
- [All escapes](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/): every event on one map and list
- [Escape methods](https://berlinwallescapes.com/methods/): tunnels, window jumps, ziplines, vehicles, water, aircraft, disguise, guards who fled
- [Year by year](https://berlinwallescapes.com/years/): 1961 to 1989
- [Places](https://berlinwallescapes.com/places/): Bernauer Straße, Checkpoint Charlie, the Spree and other stretches with many escapes
- [People](https://berlinwallescapes.com/people/): everyone named in the stories, with a page for each person who appears in more than one
- [Themes](https://berlinwallescapes.com/themes/): escape helpers, informers, children, shots fired and other threads across the collection
- [Open data](https://berlinwallescapes.com/data/): every record as JSON and GeoJSON, CC BY 4.0
- [Full text](https://berlinwallescapes.com/llms-full.txt): every story with its facts, notes and source links, in one plain-text file

## Articles
- [How Many People Escaped the Berlin Wall?](https://berlinwallescapes.com/articles/how-many-people-escaped-the-berlin-wall/): At least 5,075 people escaped through the Berlin Wall, 574 of them GDR soldiers and police. Where the figure comes from, year by year, and what it leaves out.
- [The Tunnels Under the Berlin Wall: Who Dug Them, Who Got Out](https://berlinwallescapes.com/articles/berlin-wall-escape-tunnels/): About 70 tunnels were dug under the Berlin Wall and fewer than 20 worked. Tunnel 57, Tunnel 29, the pensioners' tunnel and the ones the Stasi waited for.
- [The Most Ingenious Berlin Wall Escapes, and How They Worked](https://berlinwallescapes.com/articles/most-ingenious-berlin-wall-escapes/): A zipline from a ministry roof, a steam train, a bubble car, microlights over the Reichstag: 11 Berlin Wall escapes, how each worked, with sources.
- [Walking the Berlin Wall Escape Routes: A Self-Guided Tour](https://berlinwallescapes.com/articles/berlin-wall-escape-sites-walking-tour/): Walk to where people got over, under and through the Berlin Wall: Bernauer Straße, Tunnels 57 and 29, the Spree, Heidelberger Straße. Maps and times.
- [The Guards Who Ran: Border Soldiers Who Fled Over the Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/articles/border-guards-who-escaped-berlin-wall/): Conrad Schumann was the most famous, not the only one: West Berlin police counted 574 GDR soldiers and police among Wall escapers. Who ran, and how.
- [Berlin Wall Escape Helpers: Students, Smugglers and Stasi Spies](https://berlinwallescapes.com/articles/berlin-wall-escape-helpers/): Who were the Fluchthelfer? The students, tunnel diggers and paid smugglers who got East Germans past the Berlin Wall, and the Stasi spies who betrayed them.

## 1961
- [A border policeman steals patrol boat G-65 on the Havel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/smk-boat-g65-nieder-neuendorf-1961/): August 1961. When the boatman left the boat for a short time, a soldier of the Groß Glienicke border unit deserted in the patrol boat G-65, taking a carbine, a machine pistol and a flare pistol with him.
- [Rita Bergemann and Michael Reck swim the Havel from Sacrow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rita-bergemann-michael-reck-sacrow-havel-1961/): August 1961. A good two weeks after the Wall went up, a young Potsdam couple swam roughly 300 metres across the narrowest part of the Havel from Sacrow to Moorlake, just as a patrol boat turned away.
- [Peter Mindorf flees from his post in Klein Glienicke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/peter-mindorf-klein-glienicke-1961/): August 1961. An Oberwachtmeister of the Potsdam riot-police training unit, on guard in Klein Glienicke, used a toilet break to flee with his submachine gun and 80 rounds.
- [A hairdresser cuts the wire at the Kiefholzstraße allotments for his daughter](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schoenicke-kiefholzstrasse-wire-cut-1961/): August 1961. When the border closed, a hairdresser who had fled in 1958 cut the new wire at his allotment so that his married daughter could crawl across, and then kept cutting holes for others.
- [Through the graveyard and the church gate: Hildegard K. and her son](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hildegard-k-versoehnungskirche-1961/): 13 August 1961. On the night the border closed, a radio singer and her eldest son crept through back yards and the Elisabeth cemetery to the Reconciliation Church, whose gate to West Berlin was still open.
- [A VW Beetle races through the barbed wire at Ackerstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/vw-beetle-ackerstrasse-1961/): 13 August 1961. On the day the border was sealed, a Beetle from East Berlin drove at full speed through the single roll of barbed wire across Ackerstraße.
- [Wire cutters at the Ebertstraße fence on the first day](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ebertstrasse-fence-cut-13-aug-1961/): 13 August 1961. On the Sunday the border was sealed, a crowd of East Berliners at the new fence in Ebertstraße cut through the wire when the guards were not looking. Some ran across to West Berlin before the fence was closed again.
- [An inflatable dinghy across the Britzer Zweigkanal](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/britzer-zweigkanal-dinghy-1961/): 13 August 1961. On the afternoon of 13 August 1961 two young people crossed the Britzer Zweigkanal in Johannisthal in an inflatable dinghy. About twenty minutes later a third youth swam across at the same spot.
- [Manfred Wenzel swims the Teltow Canal on the first evening](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/manfred-wenzel-teltowkanal-rudow-1961/): 13 August 1961. On the evening the border was sealed, a father slid into the Teltow Canal at Johannisthal and swam to Rudow with a briefcase in one hand. His wife and children followed a year later in an escape helper's car.
- [Manfred Roseneit leaves his scooter at the Kiefholzstraße fence](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/manfred-roseneit-kiefholzstrasse-1961/): 13 August 1961. Turned back at the Dammweg after going home for his papers, and filmed by the Abendschau behind the wire, a 22-year-old radio mechanic found a gap in the mesh fence between the Kiefholzstraße allotments the same day.
- [Helga W. gets through during the identity check at Lohmühlenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/helga-w-lohmuehlenstrasse-id-check-1961/): 13 August 1961. In a report logged at 5.30 a.m. on 13 August 1961 the Treptow police recorded that Helga W., born in 1939, had got into West Berlin during the identity-card check at the Lohmühlenstraße crossing; her identity card stayed with the police.
- [A young girl undresses and swims the Flutgraben](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/flutgraben-young-woman-swim-13-aug-1961/): 13 August 1961. At about 10 a.m. on 13 August 1961 a young girl undressed to her underwear at the Flutgraben near Lohmühlenstraße, jumped in and swam to West Berlin, where the crowd there 'received' her.
- [Three youths swim the Landwehrkanal in their clothes](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lohmuehlenstrasse-landwehrkanal-three-youths-1961/): 13 August 1961. At 1.30 p.m. on 13 August 1961 three youths swam fully clothed across the Landwehrkanal from Lohmühlenstraße to West Berlin.
- [A family walks out at the Heidekampweg before the fence goes up](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heidekampweg-family-before-barrier-1961/): 13 August 1961. At 10.30 a.m. on 13 August 1961 a man, a woman and a child left East Berlin over the Heidekampweg, where no barrier had yet been built.
- [Over the sports ground in Dresdner Straße with a child and a suitcase](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dresdner-strasse-sports-ground-woman-child-1961/): 13 August 1961. On 13 August 1961 a woman with a child and a suitcase left for West Berlin across the sports ground in Dresdner Straße.
- [The same car carries two people through Heinrich-Heine-Straße in its boot](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heinrich-heine-strasse-car-boot-be-j-677-1961/): 13 August 1961 – 14 August 1961. On the evening of 13 August and the morning of 14 August 1961 the same car twice carried an East Berliner through the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing hidden in its boot.
- [About eighteen people cross the Teltow Canal on the first evening](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/teltowkanal-massante-wrede-eighteen-1961/): 13 August 1961. On 13 August 1961 about eighteen people left East Berlin across the Teltow Canal between the Massante and Wrede bridges. The police saw young people swimming across, some using air mattresses, while about 400 West Berliners gathered on the far bank.
- [The works locomotive that stopped on the line](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bergmann-borsig-works-locomotive-1961/): 14 August 1961. On 14 August 1961 the driver of a works locomotive at VEB Bergmann-Borsig drove out of the plant towards Wilhelmsruh, stopped on the line and got away to West Berlin.
- [Dr. G. rides an ambulance through the Brunnenstraße crossing and stays in the West](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dr-g-ambulance-brunnenstrasse-1961/): 14 August 1961. In the first night after the border was sealed, a doctor accompanying an ambulance from East to West Berlin through the Brunnenstraße crossing did not go back.
- [Peter Hohmann sprints past the guards at Brunnenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/peter-hohmann-brunnenstrasse-1961/): 14 August 1961. A waiter who had gone back East on the night the border closed tried the Sophien cemetery the next day, then slipped past the first soldiers in Brunnenstraße and ran when the guard holding his identity card chased another refugee.
- [Conrad Schumann's leap to freedom](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/conrad-schumann-leap-1961/): 15 August 1961. Two days after the border was sealed, 19-year-old border policeman Conrad Schumann jumped over the barbed-wire barrier at Bernauer Straße into West Berlin, dropping his submachine gun as he went.
- [Renate Reich crosses at Harzer Straße on a forged identity card](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/renate-reich-harzer-strasse-1961/): 15 August 1961. Her West Berlin father came for her with a forged identity card. Finding the checks at Heinrich-Heine-Straße too thorough, they found a lone guard in the Harzer Straße who looked at their papers under a street lamp and let them through.
- [Two youths flee over the fence of the Eternit works](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/eternit-works-fence-two-youths-1961/): 15 August 1961. At about 5.55 p.m. on 15 August 1961 a GDR customs commissioner on patrol found that two male youths had fled over the fence of the 'Eternitwerk'.
- [Married couple swims the Britz canal under police fire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/britz-canal-couple-fired-on-1961/): 15 August 1961. On 15 August 1961 East German police fired at a married couple swimming across the 'Britz Canal'; both escaped the bullets and reached the West Berlin bank exhausted.
- [Erika Schallert walks across Bernauer Straße with her wedding-dress fabric](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/erika-schallert-wedding-dress-bernauer-strasse-1961/): 15 August 1961. Two days after the border was closed, a student whose fiancé lived in West Berlin talked her way past men outside a house on Bernauer Straße by pointing to the fabric for her wedding dress, then walked across the street into West Berlin while helpers distracted them.
- [Two policemen vanish from the Kobold works](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rudolf-k-reinhardt-r-kobold-werk-1961/): 16 August 1961. The day after Conrad Schumann's jump, two Volkspolizei officers said to be his friends disappeared from their post on the Kobold works site at Bernauer Straße and went to the West.
- [The flower-box lorry at Köpenicker Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/koepenicker-strasse-flower-lorry-1961/): 16 August 1961. At 6.30 on 16 August 1961 a driver loaded flower boxes in front of a florist's in Köpenicker Straße and drove back and forth, faking delivery trips. Then he drove straight over the crossing into West Berlin.
- [Four riot-police cadets slip away from the barrier works at Schönefeld](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lehrbereitschaft-smg-cadets-schoenefeld-1961/): 16 August 1961. On 16 August 1961 four NCO cadets of a riot-police training unit, deployed on engineering work near the Schönefeld control point, crossed into West Berlin. Their unit only noticed when children said they had seen riot policemen on the western side.
- [Two men at the Späthbrücke: one swims, one walks over the bridge](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/spaethbruecke-two-men-bridge-and-canal-1961/): 16 August 1961. At 6.15 p.m. on 16 August 1961 two men went to West Berlin at the Späthbrücke – one swimming, the other on foot over the bridge – without the police on duty there stopping them.
- [Two men leave through the allotments at the Dammweg](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dammweg-kp64-two-men-allotments-1961/): 16 August 1961. At 6.10 p.m. on 16 August 1961 the guards at control point 64 on the Dammweg watched two men go to West Berlin, probably through the allotment gardens.
- [Three jump from the works yard into the Flutgraben](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/olw-treptow-flutgraben-three-jump-1961/): 16 August 1961. At 11.05 a.m. on 16 August 1961 three people jumped from the grounds of the OLW works in Treptow into the Flutgraben and reached West Berlin.
- [Ulrich H. goes into the bushes and does not come back](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ulrich-h-rudower-chaussee-kiesberg-toilet-1961/): 16 August 1961. On the evening of 16 August 1961 Ulrich H., born 1942, a riot policeman on patrol between the Rudower Chaussee control point and the Kiesberg, said at about 8.30 p.m. that he was going into the bushes to relieve himself. He did not come back: he had deserted with his carbine, leaving his helmet and raincoat.
- [Four men are caught on the timber yard in Wildenbruchstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wildenbruchstrasse-timber-yard-four-arrested-1961/): 16 August 1961. On 16 August 1961 riot police caught four men born in 1943 and 1944, from Oberschöneweide, Kaulsdorf and Mahlsdorf, as they tried to get into West Berlin over the timber yard in Wildenbruchstraße, Treptow.
- [The Mathern family leaves by the ground floor](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/mathern-family-bernauer-strasse-11-1961/): 17 August 1961. Alarmed when the first front doors on Bernauer Straße were locked, the Mathern family fled from their ground-floor flat on 17 August 1961.
- [Three young men crash a truck through the new barrier at Ruppiner Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ruppiner-strasse-truck-breakthrough-1961/): 17 August 1961. Late on 17 August 1961 three young men drove a truck through the border barrier at Ruppiner Straße; the guards fired, but no one was hurt.
- [Overboard from an excursion boat at the Schillingbrücke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schillingbruecke-passenger-boat-jump-1961/): 17 August 1961. On the morning of 17 August 1961 a man jumped from an East Berlin passenger boat near the Schillingbrücke and swam to the West Berlin bank.
- [Across the Spree behind the Charité](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/spree-behind-charite-swimmer-1961/): 17 August 1961. On 17 August 1961 a person swam the Spree from behind the Charité hospital towards West Berlin. The Stasi said the confusing terrain there made the border very hard to secure.
- [Günter D. crawls under the wire while his partner sleeps](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/guenter-d-grueneck-under-wire-1961/): 17 August 1961. On 17 August 1961 the police found that riot-police cadet Günter D. had crawled under the barbed wire at Grüneck in Altglienicke while the second guard on the post was asleep, taking a pistol without ammunition. It was discovered at 6.05 a.m.
- [Out of No. 79, over the fence and into the soap shop opposite](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heidelberger-strasse-79-soap-shop-1961/): 17 August 1961. In a report logged at 11.30 a.m. on 17 August 1961 the Treptow police recorded that a man had run out of Heidelberger Straße 79, jumped the barrier fence and gone into a soap shop on the opposite, West Berlin side of the street.
- [A tipper lorry from the building site drives through the Sonnenallee crossing](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heidekampweg-tipper-sonnenallee-1961/): 17 August 1961. At about 7.15 p.m. on 17 August 1961 a tipper lorry coming from the building site on the Heidekampweg drove through the Sonnenallee control point into West Berlin.
- [A swimmer from Stralauer Allee is caught by works guards](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/stralauer-allee-spree-swimmer-caught-1961/): 17 August 1961. In a report at 1.35 a.m. on 17 August 1961 the Friedrichshain police recorded that a man had jumped into the Spree at the level of Stralauer Allee to reach the western side, but had been caught by the works security on the grounds of 'VE BAW Treptow'.
- [Two 'postal workers' cycle to the West](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/postal-uniforms-brunnenstrasse-1961/): 18 August 1961. Five days after the border was sealed, two men in postal service uniforms told the guards at the Brunnenstraße crossing they had to check cable lines at the border, were let through, and simply cycled into West Berlin.
- [A police sergeant swims the Teltow Canal](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kurt-sch-teltowkanal-massantebruecke-1961/): 18 August 1961. At 10.00 on 18 August 1961 Kurt Sch., an Oberwachtmeister in the Volkspolizei's Rummelsburg pioneer platoon, swam across the Teltow Canal to West Berlin, about 200 metres west of the Massante Bridge.
- [Three wires cut at the Heidekampgraben](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heidekampgraben-wire-cut-1961/): 18 August 1961. On 18 August 1961 a youth cut three strands of barbed wire at the Heidekampgraben near the Sonnenallee crossing and escaped. A family of three who tried to follow him through the gap was arrested.
- [Two policemen climb out of the Liesenstraße cemetery](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/liesenstrasse-cemetery-two-policemen-1961/): 18 August 1961. At 17.45 on 18 August 1961 two Bereitschaftspolizei men on guard duty climbed from the Liesenstraße cemetery over the wall into Gartenstraße. A crowd and a film van from the West Berlin broadcaster SFB were on the other side.
- [Pulled out of the Spree at the Osthafen gate](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/osthafen-behala-spree-swimmer-caught-1961/): 18 August 1961. At about 1 a.m. on 18 August 1961 a man jumped into the Spree at the gate of the Osthafen to swim to West Berlin; the works guards pulled him out.
- [Gerhard B. is injured with a bayonet at Alte Jakobstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gerhard-b-alte-jakobstrasse-bayonet-1961/): 18 August 1961. On the evening of 18 August 1961 Gerhard B., born 1942, tried to break through at control point 43 in Alte Jakobstraße; he resisted when being taken in and was injured with a bayonet.
- [Rudolf Urban's rope descent from Bernauer Straße 1](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rudolf-urban-bernauer-strasse-1/): 19 August 1961. Rudolf Urban and his wife let themselves down on a rope from their first-floor flat; he was badly injured and died in hospital four weeks later.
- [A policeman crawls under the wire at mealtime](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/manfred-b-sonnenallee-desertion-1961/): 19 August 1961. On 19 August 1961 Volkspolizei Wachtmeister Manfred B. crawled, while food was being handed out, under the barbed wire near the Sonnenallee crossing, in full kit and carrying a submachine gun. His fellow guard's weapon jammed.
- [A Konsum delivery van rolls through the wire at Staaken](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/staaken-konsum-van-nennhauser-damm-1961/): 19 August 1961. The guards knew the van – it regularly delivered to the Volkshaus restaurant – so nobody checked it until it sped up and drove over the wire barrier into West Berlin.
- [Two policemen leave their carbines in Onckenstraße, then wave from a VW](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/onckenstrasse-reinhold-b-traugott-r-1961/): 19 August 1961. Late on 19 August 1961 two riot policemen deserted from Onckenstraße in Treptow to West Berlin, leaving their carbines behind. Three days later they turned up at the Wiener Brücke in a Volkswagen and waved to a guard of their old unit.
- [Two people caught at the cemetery wall in Scharnhorststraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/invalidenfriedhof-wall-two-caught-1961/): 19 August 1961. On 19 August 1961 two people were stopped trying to get over the wall of the cemetery in Scharnhorststraße into West Berlin.
- [A militia man deserts from the wire detail at Zimmerstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gedike-wire-detail-zimmer-wilhelmstrasse-1961/): 20 August 1961. On the morning of 20 August 1961 a member of a workers' militia unit, a DBD party official, left the wire detail he was working with at the corner of Zimmerstraße and Wilhelmstraße and went over to West Berlin without his weapon.
- [Out of the window at the Brunnenstraße corner](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-brunnenstrasse-window-20-aug-1961/): 20 August 1961. At about 10.50 a.m. on 20 August 1961 two people left their flat on Bernauer Street at the Brunnenstraße corner through the windows and reached West Berlin.
- [A married couple climbs out at the Wolliner Straße corner](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-wolliner-couple-window-1961/): 20 August 1961. At about 11 a.m. on 20 August 1961 a married couple escaped through the windows of their flat at the corner of Bernauer Straße and Wolliner Straße.
- [A shot is fired at a man with a rucksack crossing the tracks near Wilhelmsruh](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wilhelmsruh-rucksack-aimed-shot-1961/): 20 August 1961. At 7.50 p.m. on 20 August 1961 a man with a rucksack broke through over the railway line about 300 m from Wilhelmsruh station into West Berlin; an aimed carbine shot was fired at him.
- [A man of about 19 jumps the wall and the wire at control point 17](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kp17-gleimstrasse-wall-and-wire-1961/): 20 August 1961. At 7.30 p.m. on 20 August 1961 a man aged about 19 broke through at control point 17 in Prenzlauer Berg, jumping over the wall and the wire obstacle.
- [Three people at Adalbertstraße turn back when the guards come](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kp49-adalbertstrasse-three-turn-back-1961/): 20 August 1961. At 10.25 p.m. on 20 August 1961 three people tried to overcome the border fortifications in Adalbertstraße; when the guards approached they fled back into East Berlin and got away.
- [The person in the white coat from the Charité](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/charite-white-coat-invalidenstrasse-1961/): 21 August 1961. On 21 August 1961 a person in a white coat came out of the last gate of the Charité and jumped over the barrier into West Berlin while the guard had been called to the telephone.
- [A fitter climbs the Bergmann-Borsig factory wall with a ladder](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bergmann-borsig-siegfried-e-ladder-1961/): 21 August 1961. On 21 August 1961 a fitter born in 1942, who was helping to put up a wire fence along the wall of VEB Bergmann-Borsig in Wilhelmsruh, left his brigade on a pretext and climbed over the wall with a ladder into West Berlin.
- [From a lorry's radiator over the wire near control point 4](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kp4-luftschutz-manfred-e-radiator-1961/): 21 August 1961. On the afternoon of 21 August 1961 a Hauptwachtmeister of the civil air-defence service, who was helping to build the border fence between control points 3 and 4, jumped from the radiator of a vehicle over the barbed wire towards West Berlin.
- [Under the wire on the sewage fields between control points 3 and 4](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rosenthal-sewage-fields-klaus-d-1961/): 21 August 1961. At 9.10 p.m. on 21 August 1961 a riot-police post leader born in 1942, on duty on the sewage fields between control points 3 and 4, said he needed to relieve himself, pushed up the border wire and crawled through, taking his submachine gun and the post's logbook with him.
- [A 63-year-old climbs out of her window as Harzer Straße is cleared](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/harzer-strasse-109-eviction-window-1961/): 21 August 1961. During the resettlement of residents in Harzer Straße, Treptow, in August 1961, a 63-year-old woman from No. 109 used the opportunity to climb out of the window and go to West Berlin.
- [Ida Siekmann, first death at the Berlin Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ida-siekmann-bernauer-strasse-48/): 22 August 1961. Nine days after the border was sealed, 58-year-old Ida Siekmann jumped from her third-floor window onto the West Berlin pavement and died of her injuries.
- [A pretend visitor jumps from Bernauer Straße 7](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/young-woman-visit-bernauer-strasse-7-1961/): 22 August 1961. Claiming to be visiting someone, a young woman talked her way past the rear guard posts, then jumped from a first-floor window two hours later.
- [Over the wall at Boyenstraße, then a photo](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/boyenstrasse-43-wall-vault-1961/): 22 August 1961. On 22 August 1961 a man waited in the hallway of Boyenstraße 43 until a patrol had passed, then pulled himself up the new wall and jumped over. From the West Berlin side, he took photographs.
- [A patrolman excuses himself at Kiefholzstraße and does not come back](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kiefholzstrasse-dammweg-patrol-toilet-1961/): 22 August 1961. Shortly after midnight on 22 August 1961 an Unterwachtmeister on patrol at the corner of Kiefholzstraße and Dammweg left his unit, saying he needed to relieve himself, and deserted.
- [Two pioneers go through the fence they were building at Grüneck](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/grueneck-pioneers-karl-heinz-f-manfred-sch-1961/): 22 August 1961. On 22 August 1961 two riot-police pioneers who were putting up fences at the Grüneck allotments in Altglienicke went through the wire into West Berlin; the superior present could not stop them.
- [The lorry with an unloading permit that did not stop](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/zimmer-wilhelmstrasse-unloading-permit-lorry-1961/): 22 August 1961. At about 11.50 a.m. on 22 August 1961 an old private lorry with a permit to unload at the Zimmerstraße/Wilhelmstraße control point was let through, did not stop, and drove on into West Berlin.
- [A brewery tractor driver leaves the border works at Chausseestraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/chausseestrasse-schultheiss-tractor-driver-1961/): 22 August 1961. On 22 August 1961 the driver of a tractor from the Schultheiss brewery, used for building the border fortifications at Chausseestraße, fled to West Berlin.
- [A railway-works employee lowers himself on a rope in Onckenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/onckenstrasse-raw-worker-rope-1961/): 22 August 1961. According to a Stasi report of 22 August 1961, a man who had worked at the Treptow railway repair works left his flat in Onckenstraße by means of a rope and went to West Berlin.
- [Three surveyors near Wilhelmsruh station are collected by West Berlin customs](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wilhelmsruh-surveyors-customs-car-1961/): 22 August 1961. According to a Stasi report of 22 August 1961, three employees of the surveying office who were doing survey work near Wilhelmsruh S-Bahn station fled to the West, where a West Berlin customs vehicle picked them up.
- [Belongings out of the window first: an escape from Bernauer Straße 3 or 4](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-3-or-4-belongings-window-1961/): 22 August 1961. On the evening of 22 August 1961 an unknown person threw belongings out of a window of Bernauer Straße 3 or 4 and fled to West Berlin.
- [A painter runs from the doorway and jumps the Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/painter-brunnenstrasse-139-1961/): 23 August 1961. Renovation work in the border houses carried on after 13 August; a painter working at Brunnenstraße 139 ran from the doorway and jumped the Wall four metres away.
- [Two guards use a piece of fence as a ladder](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kremmener-strasse-5-guards-fence-ladder-1961/): 23 August 1961. Just after midnight on 23 August 1961 two Bereitschaftspolizei men posted in the courtyard of Kremmener Straße 5 leaned a piece of fence against the wall and climbed over to West Berlin with their weapons.
- [The chauffeur who was looking for his ring](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-p-lost-ring-dresdner-strasse-1961/): 23 August 1961. On 23 August 1961 a workers' militia driver in uniform pulled up at the Dresdner Straße checkpoint and told the police he had lost his ring there. While pretending to look for it, he jumped over the wall.
- [Sent to put flower bowls on the Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/brandenburg-gate-flower-bowls-worker-1961/): 23 August 1961. At 11.05 on 23 August 1961 a 30-year-old worker who was supposed to set up flower bowls on the barrier wall at the Brandenburg Gate escaped to the West, hidden from view by a lorry.
- [Both legs broken: a jump from Harzer Straße 110](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/harzer-strasse-110-jump-1961/): 23 August 1961. On the evening of 23 August 1961 a young man slipped into Harzer Straße 110 by a back entrance and jumped from the second-floor stairwell window into West Berlin, breaking both legs.
- [An engine driver uses the night shunting at Staaken station](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wustermark-engine-driver-staaken-station-1961/): 23 August 1961. At 2.30 a.m. on 23 August 1961 an engine driver from Wustermark took advantage of shunting work at Staaken station, then on the GDR side of the border, and crossed into West Berlin.
- [Two volunteer firemen from Groß Kreuz leave the border works at Kleinmachnow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gross-kreuz-firemen-kleinmachnow-1961/): 23 August 1961. Two members of the Groß Kreuz volunteer fire brigade, who had signed up to help build the border fortifications, went over to West Berlin near the Kleinmachnow/Ost control point on the morning of 23 August 1961.
- [A man with a bicycle climbs the barrier at Glienicke/Nordbahn](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/glienicke-nordbahn-cyclist-1961/): 23 August 1961. On 23 August 1961 an unknown man approached the border at Glienicke/Nordbahn with a bicycle and was over the barrier before the guard could react.
- [Over the wire with a ladder at Groß Ziethen](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gross-ziethen-ladder-1961/): 23 August 1961. On 23 August 1961 an unknown man used a ladder to climb the border barrier at Groß Ziethen, south of Berlin, and got into West Berlin.
- [A breakthrough from a garden on Am Waldrand, Klein Glienicke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/am-waldrand-klein-glienicke-1961/): 23 August 1961. On 23 August 1961 the border was broken through from the property Am Waldrand 2–3 in Klein Glienicke, a garden that directly adjoined West Berlin.
- [A train on the bridge: a guard slips away at control point 4](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kp4-railway-bridge-bernhard-h-1961/): 23 August 1961. Late on 23 August 1961 an Unterwachtmeister guarding the railway bridge at control point 4 used the moment his partner went under the bridge and a train passed over it to desert to West Berlin, where West Berlin police radio cars picked him up.
- [A lorry driver delivering building material jumps the barrier wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kp47-bautransport-driver-hans-juergen-a-1961/): 23 August 1961. At 7.30 a.m. on 23 August 1961 a lorry driver born in 1940, who was bringing building material to a control point, left his cab and jumped over the barrier wall into West Berlin.
- [A bricklayer painting the wall's coping stones jumps down on the other side](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kp51-mason-klaus-k-coping-stones-1961/): 23 August 1961. At 9 a.m. on 23 August 1961 a bricklayer born in 1942, who had been sent to paint the coping stones of the wall at control point 51, was standing on top of it – and jumped down into West Berlin.
- [Over the wall from Zimmerstraße 85](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/zimmerstrasse-85-over-the-wall-1961/): 23 August 1961. At about 9.55 p.m. on 23 August 1961 a person came out of the house at Zimmerstraße 85 and got over the wall into West Berlin before the guard could stop them.
- [Two men of about 18 climb the wall to the goods yard at Eberswalder Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/eberswalder-goods-yard-wall-two-youths-1961/): 23 August 1961. At 12.30 a.m. on 23 August 1961 two men of about 18 climbed over the wall to the goods yard at Eberswalder Straße, heading west.
- [Horst P. and Wolfgang R. are caught swimming at the Treptower Brücke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/treptower-bruecke-two-swimmers-caught-1961/): 23 August 1961. Before 4.20 a.m. on 23 August 1961 two men born in 1940 were found swimming in the water at the Treptower Brücke, trying to get to West Berlin, and were arrested.
- [Parents and 14-year-old daughter rope down from Bernauer Straße 10](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-10-family-rope-1961/): 24 August 1961. Probably on 24 August 1961 a married couple and their 14-year-old daughter let themselves down on a rope from a first-floor window.
- [Max W.'s rope breaks at Bernauer Straße 24](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/max-w-bernauer-strasse-24-1961/): 24 August 1961. Max W. let himself down from his first-floor flat; the rope snapped and he fell to the pavement, where West Berlin police picked him up.
- [Two masons sent to measure the wall climb it](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/liesenstrasse-cemetery-masons-1961/): 24 August 1961. On the morning of 24 August 1961 two masons who had been sent to take measurements at the wall of the Liesenstraße cemetery climbed over it into West Berlin. A third was stopped.
- [Detlef M. and Herbert Z. try the Wall at Ruppiner Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/detlef-m-herbert-z-ruppiner-strasse-1961/): 24 August 1961. Eleven days after the border was sealed, two men tried to climb the new Wall at the corner of Schönholzer and Ruppiner Straße and were arrested.
- [Three jump from the second floor of Bernauer Straße 20](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-20-three-jump-1961/): 24 August 1961. At about 2.10 a.m. on 24 August 1961 two men and a woman jumped from a second-floor window of Bernauer Straße 20 directly onto West Berlin ground; the woman was hurt.
- [Posing as bricklayers at the Fritz-Heckert-Straße wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/masons-clothes-kp48-fritz-heckert-strasse-1961/): 24 August 1961. Early on 24 August 1961 two people in bricklayers' clothes told the guards at the Fritz-Heckert-Straße control point that they belonged to the bricklayers' brigade or had been sent to repair the border fortifications – and then got over the wall.
- [Allowed to chat at the border, two people cross](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/chausseestrasse-lieutenant-schulz-conversation-1961/): 24 August 1961. On 24 August 1961 a riot-police lieutenant at the Chausseestraße control point let two GDR citizens talk to West Berliners right at the border line. They used the chance to cross.
- [Günter Litfin – shot swimming the Humboldthafen](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/guenter-litfin-humboldthafen/): 24 August 1961. On 24 August 1961 tailor Günter Litfin, born 1937, tried to swim across the Humboldthafen and became the first refugee killed by targeted shots at the Berlin Wall.
- [A volunteer fireman slips away through the Eiskeller](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/nauen-fireman-eiskeller-1961/): 25 August 1961. A member of the Nauen volunteer fire brigade, which was doing engineering ('pioneer') work in the area, fled to West Berlin through the Eiskeller exclave on the morning of 25 August 1961.
- [A young man mingles with the builders at the Oberbaumbrücke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/oberbaumbruecke-youth-among-builders-1961/): 25 August 1961. On 25 August 1961 a young man of 18 to 20 slipped in among the construction workers at the Oberbaumbrücke control point and got away to West Berlin while the guards were not paying attention.
- [Two unsworn policemen leave with their carbines between Dammweg and Karpfenteichstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dammweg-karpfenteichstrasse-two-carbines-1961/): 25 August 1961. Between 7.57 and 8 a.m. on 25 August 1961 two riot policemen who had not yet been sworn in deserted together from their post between Dammweg and Karpfenteichstraße, taking their carbines and ammunition.
- [Put back on the front line against advice, a policeman deserts at Harzer Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/harzer-onckenstrasse-patrol-deserter-1961/): 25 August 1961. At about 3 p.m. on 25 August 1961 a riot policeman deserted from a patrol at Harzer Straße and Onckenstraße. Three days earlier the Stasi had told his battalion commander to keep him out of the front line, but the commander had put him back there against his company commander's advice.
- [A group leader sends his partner away at the Britzer Brücke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/britzer-bruecke-group-leader-1961/): 25 August 1961. At about 0.30 a.m. on 25 August 1961 a riot-police group leader at the Britzer Brücke control point sent his second man off after an officer on a flimsy excuse and used the moment to desert.
- [A woman jumps from the first floor of Bernauer Straße 2](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/woman-jumps-bernauer-strasse-2-1961/): 26 August 1961. On 26 August 1961 a woman jumped from a first-floor window of Bernauer Straße 2; she was hurt and taken to safety by West Berlin police.
- [A family of five leaves through an allotment at Klemkestraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klemkestrasse-family-allotment-1961/): 26 August 1961. On 26 August 1961 a family of five got past the Klemkestraße control point in Pankow by pottering about on an allotment plot until the guards stopped paying attention to them.
- [A Bewag worker who had spent ten days at the border crosses at Chausseestraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/chausseestrasse-bewag-worker-1961/): 26 August 1961. At about 10.45 a.m. on 26 August 1961 a Bewag worker, who had been doing jobs right at the border for ten days, fled at Chausseestraße.
- [A man and a woman swim the Teltow Canal near the Späthbrücke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/spaethbruecke-couple-swim-26-aug-1961/): 26 August 1961. At about 4.30 p.m. on 26 August 1961 a woman and a man swam across the Teltow Canal near the Späthbrücke into West Berlin.
- [Round the guards at Heidelberger Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heidelberger-strasse-couple-26-aug-1961/): 26 August 1961. At about 6.15 p.m. on 26 August 1961 a man and a woman got into West Berlin in Heidelberger Straße by going round the posts; at the same time another woman broke through the barrier there.
- [An unknown man over the wall at Swinemünder Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/swinemuender-strasse-wall-27-aug-1961/): 27 August 1961. At about 4.10 p.m. on 27 August 1961 an unknown man climbed the barrier wall at the Swinemünder Straße control point and escaped into West Berlin.
- [A railway policeman at Bornholmer Straße asks to relieve himself and is gone](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bornholmer-strasse-trapo-toilet-1961/): 27 August 1961. At about 3.30 a.m. on 27 August 1961 an Oberwachtmeister of the railway police on duty at the Bornholmer Straße control point told his superior he needed to relieve himself and did not return, taking his carbine, pistol and truncheon.
- [Dieter R. jumps from Bruno P.'s flat](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dieter-r-bernauer-strasse-47b-1961/): 28 August 1961. Unseen by the guards, Dieter R. got into the flat of Bruno P. – who, investigators found, had already fled – and jumped from a second-floor window.
- [A policeman sends his partner to watch the West Berlin police car, then climbs the fence](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heidelberger-strasse-partner-sent-away-1961/): 28 August 1961. At 1.25 a.m. on 28 August 1961 a riot policeman on double patrol in Heidelberger Straße told his partner to go and see what a West Berlin police car was doing, climbed the fence while he was gone and was driven away by the West Berlin police. He was probably Burghardt A., born in 1943.
- [A night patrol at Kiefholzstraße does not come back](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kiefholzstrasse-night-patrol-28-aug-1961/): 28 August 1961. At about 3 a.m. on 28 August 1961 two riot policemen patrolling Kiefholzstraße in Treptow deserted together, half an hour after their last check.
- [Two men from Wollankstraße 14 escape over the railway embankment](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wollankstrasse-14-railway-embankment-1961/): 29 August 1961. On 29 August 1961 two men from the house at Wollankstraße 14 in Pankow got away to West Berlin over the railway embankment.
- [A building worker at Melchiorstraße jumps the wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/melchior-adalbertstrasse-builder-wall-1961/): 29 August 1961. On 29 August 1961 a man who was taking part in building work at the corner of Melchiorstraße and Adalbertstraße jumped over the wall.
- [A mother climbs the wall at Lohmühlenstraße with her child, helped from the West](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lohmuehlenstrasse-mother-child-wall-1961/): 29 August 1961. On 29 August 1961 a woman climbed over the wall at Lohmühlenstraße in Treptow with her child while people on the West Berlin side helped her.
- [Called over from the West, a guard at Sebastianstraße goes](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/sebastianstrasse-guard-called-over-1961/): 29 August 1961. On 29 August 1961 a riot policeman guarding Sebastianstraße, urged from the West Berlin side to come over 'before it is too late', deserted as soon as his partner turned away.
- [Roland Hoff – shot in the Teltow Canal](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/roland-hoff-teltowkanal/): 29 August 1961. Five days after Günter Litfin's death, 27-year-old Roland Hoff jumped into the Teltow Canal with a briefcase under his arm and was killed by border police gunfire.
- [Two escapes in one night from Bernauer Straße 2](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-2-night-escapes-1961/): 30 August 1961. At 1.30 a.m. a tenant and two friends roped down from Bernauer Straße 2; at about 4 a.m. five more people fled through a window of the same house.
- [Under fire across the Teltow Canal at the Späthbrücke, a day after Roland Hoff](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/teltowkanal-spaethbruecke-swimmer-1961/): 30 August 1961. At 7.35 a.m. on 30 August 1961, less than a day after Roland Hoff was shot dead in the Teltow Canal, a guard at the Späthbrücke saw a man swimming the canal; despite warning shots and aimed fire he reached the western bank, probably wounded.
- [A gardener breaks through from the unguarded water-authority site on the Teltow Canal](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/baumschulenweg-water-authority-gardener-1961/): 30 August 1961. At about 6.40 a.m. on 30 August 1961 a gardener working on a water-authority site right on the Teltow Canal in Baumschulenweg crossed into West Berlin; the site had neither guards nor barriers.
- [A pioneer crawler driver uses his job in the Tanneberg allotments](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/tanneberg-allotments-crawler-driver-1961/): 30 August 1961. At about 9.30 a.m. on 30 August 1961 the driver of a pioneer crawler tractor who was working in the 'Tanneberg' allotment colony in Johannisthal, on the Britzer Zweigkanal, used the job to cross into West Berlin.
- [Out of the corner pub and over the wall at Markgrafenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/zimmer-markgrafenstrasse-pub-wall-1961/): 30 August 1961. At about 1 p.m. on 30 August 1961 a man walked out of the pub on the corner of Zimmerstraße and Markgrafenstraße and climbed over the wall while the patrol was on the other side of the street.
- [Standing 150 metres from his partner, a policeman crosses at the Köllnische Heide](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/koellnische-heide-dammbruecke-deserter-1961/): 30 August 1961. At about 1 p.m. on 30 August 1961 a riot policeman who, against orders, was standing about 150 metres from his partner in broken ground at the Köllnische Heide deserted to West Berlin.
- [Two patrolmen at Kiefholzstraße had told their comrades the day before](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kiefholzstrasse-patrol-30-aug-1961/): 30 August 1961. At about 8.35 a.m. on 30 August 1961 two riot policemen deserted during a patrol on Kiefholzstraße. They had told two comrades of their plan the day before; the two had kept quiet and were arrested afterwards.
- [A patrol leader at Schönwalde deserts with his carbine](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schoenwalde-postenfuehrer-carbine-1961/): 31 August 1961. On the morning of 31 August 1961 a Border Police lance corporal born in 1940 deserted from his post near Schönwalde with his carbine and 60 rounds; the Stasi listed him among the desertions to West Berlin.
- [Two youths leave the Volkshaus Staaken through the cloakroom window](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/volkshaus-staaken-cloakroom-window-1961/): 31 August 1961. At 3.45 p.m. on 31 August 1961 two youths climbed out of the cloakroom window of the Volkshaus in Staaken, made for the border fence and were over it before the guard alerted by a signal device arrived.
- [A former FU student cuts the fence at the Nibelungenweg](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/altglienicke-nibelungenweg-student-1961/): 31 August 1961. At about 6.50 p.m. on 31 August 1961 a man born in 1939 who had been a student at the Free University in West Berlin cut through the wire fence at the Nibelungenweg in Altglienicke; the guards noticed only when he was already in the West.
- [Alone on his post at Schönholz, an unsworn recruit leaves his weapon and helmet](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schoenholz-provinzstrasse-lone-post-1961/): 31 August 1961. At about 8 p.m. on 31 August 1961 a riot-police recruit born in 1943, not yet sworn in and standing a post on his own at Provinzstraße in Schönholz, left his weapon, ammunition and helmet behind and deserted.
- [Eight people escape over the Flutgraben from the VEB OLW works](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/olw-flutgraben-eight-sep-1961/): September 1961. According to a Stasi report of 14 September 1961, eight people had fled 'in recent days' from the grounds of VEB OLW in Treptow across the Flutgraben to West Berlin, and two more were arrested trying. The works' building on the channel was itself part of the border.
- [Sent to help build the Wall, Albrecht Roos crawls under the fence from Falkensee to Spandau](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/albrecht-roos-falkensee-wall-builder-1961/): September 1961. Sent by the Kalinin engineering school for agricultural technology to help build the Wall, Albrecht Roos used a meal break, said he felt sick and crawled under the barbed wire through a ditch, crossing from Falkensee into Spandau in September 1961.
- [Ingrid crosses at Friedrichstraße on her fiancé's sister's US passport](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/colitt-fiancee-sisters-us-passport-1961/): September 1961. In late September 1961 a graduate student in West Berlin walked his East Berlin fiancée, her hair dyed to match the photo, through the Friedrichstraße/Zimmerstraße crossing on his sister's US passport.
- [Three teenagers from Legebruch run for the border – one gets through](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/legebruch-youths-hennigsdorf-1961/): 1 September 1961. Shortly after midnight on 1 September 1961 three young people from Legebruch tried to break through at Hennigsdorf; guards fired 27 shots, arrested a girl and a boy, and the third youth reached West Berlin.
- [A farmer's family leaves horse, cart and bicycles at the cut wire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/farmer-family-horse-cart-gross-glienicke-1961/): 1 September 1961. On the evening of 1 September 1961 a farmer, his wife and their two children cut through the wire in the Groß Glienicke border sector and reached West Berlin, leaving a horse and cart and three bicycles behind.
- [Over the barbed wire and the stone wall at Markgrafenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/zimmer-markgrafenstrasse-2-sep-1961/): 2 September 1961. At about 4 p.m. on 2 September 1961 a man of about 20 got over the barbed-wire obstacle and the stone wall at the corner of Markgrafenstraße and Zimmerstraße while the guard was not paying attention.
- [Two air-defence men building the second line at Klemkestraße cross over](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klemkestrasse-luftschutz-fortification-pair-1961/): 2 September 1961. At the beginning of September 1961 two members of the civil air-defence service who were building barriers behind the first line at the Klemkestraße control point deserted to West Berlin; the guards could not stop them.
- [Ulla D. and Hans K. break into an empty flat and jump](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ulla-d-hans-k-bernauer-strasse-37-1961/): 3 September 1961. Using a pretext to get through the checks, the pair broke into the flat of a family who were already in the West and jumped from its window.
- [A woman rides her bicycle up to the fence at the Rudower Chaussee and climbs over](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rudower-chaussee-bicycle-woman-1961/): 3 September 1961. At about 1.30 p.m. on 3 September 1961 a woman from Adlershof cycled up to the wire fence at the Rudower Chaussee control point and was over it before the guards could step in, leaving her bicycle, handbag and identity card behind.
- [A policeman crawls through the fence at Treptower Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/treptower-strasse-crawl-through-fence-1961/): 3 September 1961. At 11.20 p.m. on 3 September 1961 a riot-police Unterwachtmeister crawled through the barrier fence at Treptower Straße onto West Berlin ground.
- [Karl-Heinz S. climbs down a fire brigade ladder while police hold the guards at bay](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/karl-heinz-s-ackerstrasse-43-ladder-1961/): 5 September 1961. At 3 a.m. West Berlin police drew pistols and dazzled the guards with mirrors while the fire brigade set a ladder against the corner house for four escapees.
- [Two women and a child jump from a first-floor flat in Waldemarstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/waldemarstrasse-women-child-jump-1961/): 5 September 1961. On 5 September 1961 two women with a child jumped from a first-floor flat in Waldemarstraße onto West Berlin territory.
- [Günter Tr. climbs the Wall with a company ladder](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/guenter-tr-company-ladder-1961/): 6 September 1961. An employee of the Murante firm in the border zone went to work as usual and then, with a woman smuggled in by a colleague, climbed the Wall on a company ladder; the colleague was arrested.
- [Two guards let a woman with a baby through at the Puschkinallee](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/puschkinallee-mother-baby-guards-1961/): 6 September 1961. A woman whose husband was waiting on the other side asked a guard to let her through. He told her to come back after dark – and at 8.30 p.m. she crossed with a four-month-old child and a boy.
- [Down a rope from the third floor of Dresdener Straße 114](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dresdener-strasse-114-rope-1961/): 6 September 1961. On 6 September 1961 two people let themselves down on a rope from their third-floor flat at Dresdener Straße 114 onto West Berlin ground.
- [A young man dashes from a bakery while a photographer distracts the guards](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/swinemuender-strasse-bakery-dash-1961/): 8 September 1961. While sentries were checking the papers of an East Berlin magazine photographer, a young man stepped out of a bakery by the Wall and climbed over.
- [A Barkas van breaks through at the Brandenburg Gate](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/barkas-van-brandenburg-gate-1961/): 8 September 1961. At 2.50 in the morning a Barkas van drove at about 70 km/h through the right-hand side of the Brandenburg Gate, which was secured with metal poles, and stopped on the western side.
- [A couple from Potsdam swims the Havel with their infant son in a rubber tub](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/havel-couple-baby-rubber-tub-1961/): 10 September 1961. Early on 10 September 1961 a young couple from Potsdam swam across the Havel into West Berlin, pushing their 18-month-old son across the river in a rubber tub, the New York Times reported.
- [A lorry feints a turn, then ploughs through the Wall at Adalbertstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/h6-truck-adalbertstrasse-bethaniendamm-1961/): 10 September 1961. Two men in an H 6 lorry signalled a turn into Fritz-Heckert-Straße, then accelerated, forced a guard to jump aside and broke through the Wall into Kreuzberg.
- [Four riot-police pioneers walk off during the breakfast break at Stolpe-Süd](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lehrbereitschaft-pioneers-stolpe-sued-1961/): 10 September 1961. On 10 September 1961 four men of the pioneer platoon of the Potsdam riot-police training unit, deployed on engineering work at Stolpe-Süd, crossed into West Berlin during their breakfast break; a fifth turned back and reported them.
- [Policeman Gerd Sommerlatte flees at the Brandenburg Gate and is kidnapped back](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gerd-sommerlatte-brandenburg-gate-1961/): 10 September 1961. Posted to the Brandenburg Gate after the border closed, an 18-year-old policeman fled across the wire with his weapon rather than risk having to shoot at people. Less than three weeks later the Stasi had him abducted back to East Berlin.
- [69-year-old Ella K. escapes with the fire brigade's help](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ella-k-bernauer-strasse-23-1961/): 11 September 1961. Shortly after midnight the West Berlin fire brigade helped 69-year-old Ella K. out of her first-floor flat; the guards noticed only when she was already safe.
- [Down a telephone cable from Bernauer Straße 47](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-47-telephone-cable-1961/): 12 September 1961. An unknown man broke into the Sch. family's first-floor flat and let himself down from the window on a telephone cable.
- [A 56-year-old jumps from the third floor of Harzer Straße 113 into the fire brigade's sheet](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/harzer-strasse-113-jump-into-sheet-1961/): 12 September 1961. At about 9.20 a.m. on 12 September 1961 a 56-year-old woman jumped from the third floor of Harzer Straße 113 into a jumping sheet held ready by the West Berlin fire brigade.
- [Fire-net escapes at Harzer Straße, Treptow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/harzer-strasse-net-escapes-1961/): 13 September 1961. Two men escaped from Harzer Straße 109 into a fire brigade net, but two hours later East Berlin police used a water cannon and tear gas to stop two women jumping from No. 117.
- ['Glockengasse 4711': the sewer route under the Alte Jakobstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/glockengasse-4711-sewer-route-1961/): 13 September 1961 – 14 October 1961. In the weeks after the Wall went up, student escape helpers led East Berliners through a sewer from Mitte to Kreuzberg. A memorial plaque puts the number at about 500; other research counts about 150.
- [Three people rope down from the corner house Brunnenstraße 138](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/brunnenstrasse-138-three-rope-1961/): 17 September 1961. On the evening of 17 September 1961 three people let themselves down on a rope from the corner house at Brunnenstraße 138.
- [Heavily pregnant Helga Knittel jumps first](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/knittel-family-bernauer-strasse-8/): 19 September 1961. The Knittel family called the West Berlin fire brigade, then jumped one after another from their second-floor window into its net: first the heavily pregnant mother, then the daughter, then the father.
- [Five escapees rope down from the roof of Bernauer Straße 43](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-43-rooftop-rope/): 19 September 1961. Four men and a woman crossed the rooftops, tied a rope to a chimney and let themselves down to the western pavement; the woman fell from the third-floor level and was badly hurt, and another woman was caught in the attic.
- [Three generations jump into the net at Bernauer Straße 10](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/frau-k-grandson-detlef-bernauer-strasse-10-1961/): 19 September 1961. At about 11.30 p.m. Mrs K., her daughter-in-law and her grandson Detlef jumped from the second floor into a West Berlin fire brigade net.
- [A young man misses the window frame and falls three storeys](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ackerstrasse-roof-fall-1961/): 19 September 1961. Discovered on a roof by the border, a young man swung over the edge, missed his foothold and fell three floors; West Berlin paramedics picked him up with several broken bones.
- [Erich B.'s family jumps from Bernauer Straße 42](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/erich-b-family-bernauer-strasse-42-1961/): 19 September 1961. A family of five from Swinemünder Straße 23 jumped from the first floor of the neighbouring house into a fire brigade net; the father broke his thigh.
- [Five fire engines for two jumpers at Bernauer Straße 10](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-10-five-fire-engines-1961/): 20 September 1961. Just after midnight guards watched five fire engines take up position with jumping sheets; shortly afterwards two people jumped.
- [Family F. jumps under fire from the third floor](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/family-f-bernauer-strasse-7/): 22 September 1961. While a border policeman tried to stop her with a warning shot and West Berlin police fired tear-gas cartridges at him, a mother jumped into the fire brigade's net; her husband threw down their five-year-old son and then jumped himself.
- [Truck driver Heinz K. over the glass-topped wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heinz-k-murante-truck-driver-1961/): 22 September 1961. A driver for the Murante firm, which lay inside the border area, hid his truck between site huts and climbed a five-metre wall topped with broken glass.
- [Selma P. and her son Peter W. jump from the third floor](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/selma-p-peter-w-bernauer-strasse-35-1961/): 22 September 1961. After telling relatives in the West, mother and son barricaded their door and waited for the fire brigade; both jumped into the net before the guards could break in.
- [Horst K. jumps, and a week later his wife follows with their baby](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/horst-k-bernauer-strasse-13a-1961/): 23 September 1961 – 30 September 1961. After a row with a party secretary, Horst K. jumped into a fire brigade net from a friend's lower flat; a week later his wife and five-month-old child escaped from the same flat.
- [Irma B. barricades her door and climbs down a fire brigade ladder](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/irma-b-ackerstrasse-43-ladder-1961/): 23 September 1961. At 2 a.m. Irma B. barricaded her flat door, and the West Berlin fire brigade set a ladder against the house for her.
- [Two jumps from the second floor of Bernauer Straße 16](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-16-two-jumps-1961/): 23 September 1961 – 24 September 1961. On two consecutive days in September 1961 a man jumped from the second floor of Bernauer Straße 16 into the West: an unknown man on the 23rd, another man into a fire brigade net on the 24th.
- [Frieda Schulze's tug-of-war at the window](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/frieda-schulze-bernauer-strasse-29/): 24 September 1961. As forced evictions began, a 77-year-old widow climbed onto her window ledge while East Berlin police tried to pull her back and West Berliners tried to help her down; she fell into the fire brigade's net.
- [Evacuation-squad member jumps from Bernauer Straße 6](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heinz-v-militia-jump-bernauer-strasse-6/): 24 September 1961. A doctoral candidate who had been sent with a militia unit to clear the border houses used a moment when a guard stepped away to jump from a first-floor balcony door into the West.
- [Marianne S. flees as the eviction squads arrive](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/marianne-s-bernauer-strasse-8-1961/): 24 September 1961. On the morning the forced evictions began, Marianne S. roped down from a window on a washing line and fell five metres; her disabled partner was left behind.
- [West Berlin youths cut the fence at the Dammweg for a woman and her child](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dammweg-youths-cut-fence-mother-child-1961/): 24 September 1961. On 24 September 1961 young West Berliners cut through the border fence at the Dammweg control point from the western side, allowing a woman and her child to escape.
- [Olga Segler's jump into the fire brigade net](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/olga-segler-bernauer-strasse-34/): 25 September 1961. Encouraged by her daughter waiting below, 80-year-old Olga Segler jumped from her second-floor window into a fire brigade net. She died the next day.
- [Rudolf B., his wife and son rope down from Bernauer Straße 5](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rudolf-b-family-bernauer-strasse-5-1961/): 25 September 1961. A family let themselves down on a rope from their second-floor flat; the guards only noticed when a crowd gathered and the fire brigade arrived.
- [Out in American uniform jackets on a US sightseeing bus](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/treptow-memorial-us-bus-uniform-jackets-1961/): 25 September 1961. On 25 September 1961 several young people boarded American buses at the Soviet War Memorial in Treptow, put on American uniform jackets inside and were taken into West Berlin unhindered.
- [Anni M.'s rope tied round the sofa](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/anni-m-rope-round-the-sofa-1961/): 27 September 1961. Returning from holiday to find the border houses being cleared, Anni M. roped down the same evening with her valuables; guards found only a rope wound round the sofa.
- [US Army helicopters fly seven refugees out of Steinstücken](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/steinstuecken-us-helicopters-1961/): 27 September 1961. Seven people who had slipped into the tiny West Berlin exclave of Steinstücken were flown out to West Berlin in two US Army helicopters.
- [Joachim Rudolph through the Tegeler Fließ](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/joachim-rudolph-tegeler-fliess-luebars-1961/): 28 September 1961. On 28 September 1961 the student Joachim Rudolph and a friend crossed a green field from Schildow in the GDR and waded through the Tegeler Fließ, the border stream, into Lübars in West Berlin. A year later he helped dig Tunnel 29.
- [Gerhard D.'s family escapes through a bricked-up cellar window](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gerhard-d-family-cellar-window-1961/): 29 September 1961. A neighbour reported West Berlin police loading things into a car; East Berlin police found the family's walled-up cellar window broken open and the four of them gone.
- [The pair who came to rent a cellar](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-44-cellar-visitors-1961/): 29 September 1961. A woman and a man posing as would-be tenants of an 89-year-old's cellar ran straight to her window and jumped.
- [Peter Hertel's forged BEWAG order and a gas worker's ladder](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/peter-hertel-bernauer-swinemuender-rope-1961/): October 1961. An East Berlin electricity worker talked his way into a border house with a forged order to remove meters, let himself down on a rope from the third floor and, when the rope ran out, climbed onto a ladder a gas-company worker propped against the wall.
- [Michael Synowzik through the sewer under Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/michael-synowzik-sewer-checkpoint-charlie-1961/): October 1961. In October 1961 the schoolboy Michael Synowzik escaped from East Berlin with his father through the sewers under the Zimmerstraße at Checkpoint Charlie, a month after his older brother had fled through the sewers.
- [Helgard Bromberger and four others through a rainwater sewer from Spittelmarkt](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/helgard-bromberger-sewer-spittelmarkt-1961/): 2 October 1961 – 3 October 1961. In the night of 2 to 3 October 1961 Helgard Bromberger, her friend Helga and three young men climbed into a rainwater sewer near Spittelmarkt, went through a hole in a grating that blocked the pipe and came up near Moritzplatz in West Berlin.
- [A Tatra crane lorry breaks through at Heinrich-Heine-Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/tatra-crane-heinrich-heine-strasse-1961/): 3 October 1961. Just before the checkpoint a building firm's crane lorry swung into Dresdner Straße, crashed through the border wall between two new blocks and raced into Kreuzberg under machine-pistol fire.
- [Bernd Lünser's fatal rooftop jump](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernd-luenser-bernauer-strasse-44/): 4 October 1961. Chased across the rooftops by border guards, 22-year-old student Bernd Lünser jumped from the roof of Bernauer Straße 44 and missed the fire brigade net by a few metres.
- [Three men try to escape through the sewer under Ackerstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ackerstrasse-sewer-attempt-1961/): 4 October 1961. Border policemen arrested three men who had already opened a manhole cover on Ackerstraße; two of them were already inside the sewer.
- [Udo Düllick – drowned under fire in the Spree](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/udo-duellick-oberbaumbruecke/): 5 October 1961. Railway worker Udo Düllick tried to swim the Spree at the Oberbaumbrücke around midnight; chased by gunfire, he drowned just short of the western bank.
- [Sewer escape helper Carl-August von Halle walks into a Stasi trap](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/carl-august-von-halle-sewer-helper-1961/): 6 October 1961. A West Berlin architecture student who had helped East Germans escape through the sewers was lured into a trap by a Stasi informer and arrested at Friedrichstraße station.
- [Anita L. and Erna M. are caught in the attic with a washing line](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/anita-l-erna-m-swinemuender-strasse-24-1961/): 6 October 1961. Two women who planned to let themselves down to the West on a washing line were arrested in the attic of Swinemünder Straße 24.
- [Klaus Sch. comes through the cemetery and is caught in Bernauer Straße 10](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-sch-elisabethfriedhof-bernauer-strasse-10-1961/): 7 October 1961. A Swinemünder Straße resident got into the border house at Bernauer Straße 10 through the Elisabeth cemetery, meaning to flee, and was arrested there.
- [A policeman who fled in the night is searched for in a railway keeper’s house at Wilhelmsruh](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wilhelmsruh-bahnwaerterhaus-8-vopo-search-1961/): 12 October 1961. At about 3 a.m. on 12 October 1961 ten East German Vopo men crossed into West Berlin at Wilhelmsruh S-Bahn station to search an inhabited railway keeper's house for a Vopo who had fled during the night; West Berlin police sent them back.
- [Eleven try the sewer pipe at Wolfswerder 3 – three get through](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kleinmachnow-wolfswerder-3-sewer-pipe-1961/): 12 October 1961. On 12 October 1961 a group of eleven people tried to escape from the property at Wolfswerder 3 in Kleinmachnow through a sewer pipe that led into West Berlin. Three reached the West; eight were arrested.
- [Nine refugees run on when their lorry sticks in the wire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/zehlendorf-lorry-nine-refugees-1961/): 13 October 1961. On 13 October 1961 nine East Germans tried to drive a lorry through the border into Zehlendorf. It got stuck in the barriers, but all nine ran on under constant fire and reached West Berlin; none of them was hit.
- [Werner Probst – shot at the West Berlin ladder](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/werner-probst-schillingbruecke/): 14 October 1961. Truck driver Werner Probst swam the Spree at night near the Schillingbrücke and was hit by gunfire as he climbed the ladder on the West Berlin quay wall.
- [The rope snaps at Ackerstraße 43](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ackerstrasse-43-rope-snaps-1961/): 15 October 1961. A man lowering himself from a second-floor staircase window fell when his rope broke; passers-by carried him across the street.
- [Family D. jumps onto a truck's tarpaulin](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/family-d-truck-tarpaulin-bernauer-strasse-23-1961/): 16 October 1961. A long-planned escape: at 12.30 a truck pulled up and a couple, their 15-year-old son and a friendly couple jumped onto its canvas cover.
- [Removal worker jumps onto a waiting truck](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rudolf-k-truck-jump-bernauer-strasse-8/): 17 October 1961. A removal worker clearing flats under police guard slipped into a front room, called West Berlin police over, who directed a truck under the window, and jumped onto it.
- [Bricklayer Norbert Raasch jumps while walling up windows](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/norbert-raasch-bernauer-strasse-44/): 18 October 1961. Sent to brick up the windows of Bernauer Straße 44 under guard, construction worker Norbert Raasch, whose fiancée lived in the West, jumped from a first-floor window in an unguarded moment.
- [A doctor from Hohen Neuendorf cuts both fences and drives through](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hohen-neuendorf-doctor-car-fences-1961/): 18 October 1961. On 18 October 1961 a woman doctor who lived right at the border in Hohen Neuendorf cut through both barrier fences and the concertina wire and drove her car, with two other people, into West Berlin.
- [Hasso Herschel leaves on a Swiss passport](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hasso-herschel-swiss-passport-1961/): 21 October 1961. Weeks after the Wall went up, the later tunnel builder Hasso Herschel left East Berlin on someone else's Swiss passport and immediately began looking for a way to get his sister out.
- [Dog handler Werner K. slips away over the cemetery wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/werner-k-dog-handler-sophienfriedhof-1961/): 22 October 1961. While training his successor as a dog handler in the Sophien cemetery, Private Werner K. made an excuse to leave his comrade and disappeared over the wall.
- [Border policeman Lutz M. jumps from Bernauer Straße 2](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lutz-m-bernauer-strasse-2-1961/): 23 October 1961. A border policeman who found the prospect of shooting at refugees unbearable slipped away from his post, broke into an evacuated flat at Bernauer Straße 2 and jumped to the western pavement.
- [Through the sewer from the stadium yard to Chausseestraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/walter-ulbricht-stadium-sewer-chausseestrasse-1961/): 24 October 1961. On 24 October 1961 three people sawed through the grate of a sewer shaft in the service yard of East Berlin's Walter-Ulbricht-Stadion, went down, and climbed out of a manhole in Chausseestraße on the West Berlin side.
- [Over the roofs from Ackerstraße 41 with a washing line](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ackerstrasse-rooftops-washing-line-1961/): 27 October 1961. Two men climbed across the roofs, let themselves down on a washing line to the roof of the corner house and waited for morning; one jumped into a fire brigade net, the other was never noticed.
- [Günter A. climbs the Wall under machine-pistol fire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/guenter-a-brunnenstrasse-1961/): 4 November 1961. While three guards stood together 40 metres from the Wall, Günter A. ran from the Kobold works to the Wall at Brunnenstraße; possibly hit by a burst of fire, he fell back, got up, climbed again and dropped into the West.
- [Nine get through the wire between the Pankow cemetery and Schönholz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/pankow-cemetery-schoenholz-wire-nine-1961/): 5 November 1961. On 5 November 1961 thirty East Germans tried to get through the barbed wire between the Pankow cemetery and the Schönholz freight yard into West Berlin. A border guard's fire disrupted the attempt, and only nine, five men and four children, got across, the New York Times reported.
- [Armoured pre-war Opel at Chausseestraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/armoured-opel-chausseestrasse-1961/): 14 November 1961. Five East Berliners drove an armoured pre-war Opel P4 through the Chausseestraße crossing under heavy fire and reached West Berlin unhurt.
- [Swimmers under fire at the Schillingbrücke reach the West Berlin bank](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schillingbruecke-swimmer-under-fire-nov-1961/): 20 November 1961. Shortly before 1 a.m. on 20 November 1961 the Spree was swum under fire at the Schillingbrücke. A Stasi report speaks of one man, injured by shots from the water police boat 'Toni 132'; the West Berlin police recorded three men who reached West Berlin, one of them wounded, and the fire brigade took them to hospital.
- [Bernd Sp. leaves only his briefcase behind](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernd-sp-brunnenstrasse-139-1961/): 22 November 1961. Unseen by the guards, Bernd Sp. came from the Kobold works, used a door propped against a yard wall and climbed the Wall; the briefcase he left behind, found the next morning, allowed the guards to reconstruct his escape and identity.
- [Lothar Lehmann – a young policeman swims from Sacrow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lothar-lehmann-sacrow-1961/): 26 November 1961. A 19-year-old member of the Groß Glienicke readiness police slipped into the Havel at Sacrow wearing a life jacket; the cold water caused a shock and he died after being pulled out by guards.
- [Two adults and three children cut the wire near Dreilinden](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dreilinden-family-cut-wire-1961/): 3 December 1961. On 3 December 1961 two adults and three children escaped near the Dreilinden control point on the autobahn at Drewitz after cutting through the barbed wire unnoticed by the guards; the breakthrough was discovered at about 6.50 p.m.
- [Through a hole in a bricked-up window at Bernauer Straße 2](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bricked-window-bernauer-strasse-2-1961/): 5 December 1961. A 27-year-old man crept through back yards into the cleared border houses, knocked bricks out of a walled-up window and jumped down about seven metres.
- [The last train to freedom](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/deterling-steam-train-1961/): 5 December 1961. Locomotive driver Harry Deterling drove a passenger train at speed through the terminus at Albrechtshof and across the border into West Berlin.
- [Gefreiter K. climbs the Wall behind a sight screen at Strelitzer Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gefreiter-k-strelitzer-strasse-1961/): 6 December 1961. Posted directly at the Wall, out of his squad leader's sight behind a screen, a transferred riot policeman climbed over just after midday.
- [Dieter Wohlfahrt, escape helper shot at Staaken](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dieter-wohlfahrt-1961/): 9 December 1961. A 20-year-old West Berlin resident with Austrian citizenship was shot while cutting through the border fence at Staaken to help a woman escape; he had been lured into an ambush and lay for more than an hour in the border strip without help.
- [Ingo Krüger – a diver's attempt to reach his fiancée](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ingo-krueger-spree-diving-1961/): 10 December 1961 – 11 December 1961. Separated from his West Berlin fiancée by the Wall, a 21-year-old cook and sport diver entered the Spree in diving gear near Friedrichstraße station; he drowned, and she watched from the far bank as a body was pulled from the water.
- [Georg Feldhahn – a border policeman's escape at the Massante Bridge](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/georg-feldhahn-massantebruecke-1961/): 19 December 1961. A 20-year-old border policeman on patrol at the Teltow Canal slipped away towards the bridge to West Berlin and vanished; the GDR assumed he had escaped, until his body was found in the canal in March 1962.
- [The Pankow Cemetery Tunnel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/pankow-cemetery-tunnel-1961/): 19 December 1961. A young East Berlin bride, separated from her West Berlin husband by the Wall, crawled to freedom through a short tunnel whose entrance was hidden behind a gravestone.
- [Joachim Neumann's Swiss passport](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/joachim-neumann-swiss-passport-1961/): 21 December 1961. Engineering student Joachim Neumann dyed his hair, filled his pockets with Swiss odds and ends and played an aloof Swiss tourist to pass the Friedrichstraße checkpoint on a Swiss passport supplied through West Berlin student escape helpers.
- [Michael Mara and a fellow patrol leader climb the wire at Kohlhasenbrück on Christmas morning](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/michael-mara-kohlhasenbrueck-christmas-1961/): 25 December 1961. A young editor called up for border duty after 13 August 1961 fled on Christmas morning 1961 with a fellow soldier, climbing the wire away from the Kohlhasenbrück checkpoint and running into a West Berlin police hut still carrying his carbine.
- [The boot left in the barbed wire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/alfred-sch-boot-in-the-wire-1961/): 29 December 1961. A border guard climbed the Sophien cemetery wall into West Berlin; when he got stuck in the barbed wire, two West Berlin policemen pulled him over, leaving one of his boots behind.

## 1962
- [A man works his way along the Flutgraben border building and jumps to the West](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/flutgraben-facade-man-jumps-1962/): 1962. In 1962 a man worked his way along the ornamental brickwork of the VEB OLW workshop building on the Flutgraben and jumped across the border into West Berlin. The protruding brick courses were then knocked off.
- [A 17-year-old is caught trying to cross through the grounds of the Villa Kampffmeyer](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/frau-w-brother-villa-kampffmeyer-1962/): 1962. In 1962 the 17-year-old brother of a Potsdam resident tried to reach West Berlin across the grounds of the Villa Kampffmeyer near the Berliner Straße; he was caught and held in the Stasi remand prison in the Lindenstraße.
- [A West Berliner scouting the sewer at the Gleimtunnel is fired on](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gleimtunnel-sewer-scout-1962/): 6 January 1962. At 00.15 on 6 January 1962 a 20-year-old West Berliner went into the sewer at the Gleimtunnel to explore escape routes for relatives. He set off an alarm in the sewer on the East Berlin side; East Berlin police (Vopo) then climbed in and fired two submachine-gun shots at him, which missed.
- [A man is caught ten metres short of the wire east of Timmendorfer Weg](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/timmendorfer-weg-rudow-arrest-1962/): 6 January 1962. At 01.45 on 6 January 1962 a man of about 30 to 35 tried to escape from the Soviet sector east of Timmendorfer Weg in Rudow. Five border guards who noticed him fired submachine-gun bursts at him, and border guards arrested him about 10 m before the barbed wire.
- [Private Klaus Sch. switches off the lights and climbs over on a stool](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-sch-ackerstrasse-stool-1962/): 16 January 1962. When his squad leader went to the next post, Gefreiter Klaus Sch. turned off the border lighting and climbed the Wall using a stool.
- [The Becker Tunnel ("Tunnel 28")](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/becker-tunnel-glienicke-1962/): 24 January 1962. Twin brothers dug a tunnel from the cellar of the family home on the border, and 28 people crawled through it to Frohnau in West Berlin in a single night.
- [A young woman is shot at and arrested by the fence on Nennhauser Damm](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/nennhauser-damm-staaken-young-woman-1962/): 26 January 1962. At about 08.30 on 26 January 1962 a woman of about 18 who was near the border fence on Nennhauser Damm in Staaken was arrested by a two-man border-police patrol. Before the arrest a border guard fired four or five submachine-gun shots at her; the West Berlin police thought she was probably hurt.
- [The Collapsed Tunnel under Wollankstraße Station](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wollankstrasse-tunnel-1962/): 27 January 1962. Students tried to dig from the bricked-up arches beneath Wollankstraße S-Bahn station into East Berlin, but the tunnel collapsed under the platform and was discovered before anyone could escape.
- [Fake chimney sweep abseils from Bernauer Straße 13](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/chimney-sweep-bernauer-strasse-13/): 29 January 1962. Dressed as a chimney sweep, a young man walked past the guards into a border house, broke through a bricked-up attic window and let himself down on his sweep's rope.
- [Two men get through north-east of the Sonnenallee crossing](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/sonnenallee-northeast-two-men-1962/): 6 February 1962. At 18.50 on 6 February 1962 two men escaped to West Berlin in Neukölln, about 250 m north-east of the Sonnenallee crossing. Nine submachine-gun bursts fired by the border guards missed them.
- [NCO Egon Z. knocks down his squad leader and flees with two women](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/egon-z-gartenstrasse-1962/): 16 February 1962. A border troops NCO knocked out his squad leader and escaped near Gartenstraße together with his sister and her friend.
- [A mother and her five-year-old jump from a balcony at Klein Glienicke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/boettcherberg-balcony-mother-son-1962/): 16 February 1962. On 16 February 1962 a 25-year-old woman and her 5-year-old son jumped from the balcony of a house near the Böttcherberg cemetery into West Berlin. West Berlin police forced the border guards who were firing at them to take cover.
- [Scraping out the joints by candlelight at Bernauer Straße 46](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-46-candlelight-1962/): 19 February 1962. Guards found a hole broken through a bricked-up first-floor window; a man had apparently scratched out the joints with nails by candlelight and jumped.
- [Dorit Schmiel – five friends crawl towards Reinickendorf](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dorit-schmiel-rosenthal-1962/): 19 February 1962. Five young East Berliners cut through the fence in Rosenthal after midnight and crawled across the snowy border strip; guards opened fire without warning, killing 20-year-old seamstress Dorit Schmiel and wounding a 16-year-old.
- [Rudi Thurow leads refugees to Steinstücken](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rudi-thurow-steinstuecken-1962/): 21 February 1962. Border policeman Rudi Thurow removed the firing pins from his two comrades' submachine guns and fled with three acquaintances to the West Berlin exclave of Steinstücken; there was an exchange of fire but nobody was hurt.
- [The Franzke brothers' first tunnel in the Heidelberger Straße is betrayed](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/franzke-tunnel-heidelberger-strasse-26-1962/): 22 February 1962. Boris and Eduard Franzke dug a tunnel of more than 20 metres under the Heidelberger Straße to bring out their relatives. The plan was betrayed, and the family members waiting in the East were arrested.
- [Annemarie Salzmann crawls through the wire at the Heidekrautbahn embankment](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/annemarie-salzmann-rosenthal-1962/): March 1962. Dressed in overalls and leather gloves, a young trainee kindergarten teacher and her boyfriend crawled across a foggy field in Rosenthal and pulled each other through the barbed wire on the old Heidekrautbahn embankment.
- [Heidelberger Straße Tunnel and the Death of Heinz Jercha](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heidelberger-strasse-tunnel-heinz-jercha-1962/): 21 March 1962 – 27 March 1962. Dozens of East Berliners escaped through a tunnel under Heidelberger Straße until a Stasi informer betrayed it; escape helper Heinz Jercha was shot in an ambush and died after crawling back to the West.
- [Johannes M. offers a guard a thousand marks at Ruppiner Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/johannes-m-bribe-ruppiner-strasse-1962/): 29 March 1962. Johannes M. tried to buy his and his girlfriend's way through the border; the guard agreed, then alerted his comrades.
- [Philipp Held – a West German who could not get back](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/philipp-held-spree-1962/): April 1962. A 19-year-old from Worms who had moved to the GDR in 1961 tried to return to the West by swimming the Spree; his body was recovered on 22 April 1962.
- [A border guard is shot down 15 metres from the line at Dreilinden](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dreilinden-border-guard-shot-1962/): 3 April 1962. On 3 April 1962 a GDR border guard tried to reach West Berlin at the Dreilinden control point. A comrade set his dog on him and shot him. Badly wounded, he lay 15 metres from the border until he was taken away.
- [A cement lorry through the wall in Boyenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/boyenstrasse-cement-lorry-1962/): 9 April 1962. On 9 April 1962 a lorry loaded with cement broke through the wall in Boyenstraße. It got stuck with most of it still on the eastern side, but the two men on board ran into West Berlin unhurt.
- [A nine-year-old jumps from the roof of Bernauer Straße 44](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-44-boy-roof-1962/): 10 April 1962. On 10 April 1962 a nine-year-old schoolboy jumped from the roof of Bernauer Straße 44 into the West Berlin fire brigade's jumping sheet. Border guards stopped a second child of the same age.
- [Deserting cadets' gunfight at Griebnitzsee](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/griebnitzsee-cadets-schmidtchen-1962/): 18 April 1962. Two armed NVA officer cadets tried to desert to West Berlin across disused S-Bahn land at Griebnitzsee; in the exchange of fire border guard Jörgen Schmidtchen and cadet Peter Böhme were killed, while Wolfgang G. reached the West.
- [Fatal truck breakthrough at Heinrich-Heine-Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/brueske-truck-heinrich-heine-strasse-1962/): 18 April 1962. Three young East Berliners crashed a truck through the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing; they reached the West, but the driver, 23-year-old Klaus Brueske, died of his injuries.
- [Horst Frank – caught in the last wire at Schönholz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/horst-frank-schoenholz-1962/): 29 April 1962. Two friends from Saxony crawled for four hours across the border strip at the Schönholz allotments; Detlev W. reached West Berlin, while 19-year-old Horst Frank was spotted in the last barbed-wire fence and shot.
- [Dieter T. and four friends fail at Ackerstraße 43](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dieter-t-ackerstrasse-43-1962/): May 1962. An 18-year-old who had fled once in 1961 and come back tried again with four friends from the house at Ackerstraße 43 in May 1962, and failed.
- [Reinhard Spiller drives his parents out on a forged diplomatic pass](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/reinhard-spiller-parents-diplomatic-pass-checkpoint-charlie-1962/): May 1962. In 1962 the engineering student Reinhard Spiller, who had got to West Berlin himself two days after the Wall went up, drove his parents out through Checkpoint Charlie using a fellow student's Austrian passport and a forged diplomatic pass, then helped about 50 more people out the same way.
- [The Pensioners' Tunnel (Thomas Tunnel)](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/senioren-tunnel-glienicke-1962/): 5 May 1962. A group of mostly elderly men led by 81-year-old Max Thomas dug an unusually tall tunnel from a chicken coop so that they and their wives could walk upright to West Berlin.
- [Wilfried Tews swims the canal – border guard Peter Göring killed](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wilfried-tews-peter-goering-1962/): 23 May 1962. A 14-year-old schoolboy from Erfurt swam the Berlin-Spandau Ship Canal under heavy fire and reached West Berlin badly wounded; in the exchange of fire with West Berlin police, 21-year-old border guard Peter Göring was killed by a ricochet.
- [Lutz Haberlandt – shot at the Charité](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lutz-haberlandt-charite-1962/): 27 May 1962. On a warm Sunday a 24-year-old bricklayer climbed from the Charité hospital grounds into the border strip; a guard on the tower of the Supreme Court shot him in the head and he lay in the bushes for about 40 minutes.
- [Two girls try to help a friend escape at Lichterfelde-Süd](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lichterfelde-sued-helpers-shot-1962/): 1 June 1962. On 1 June 1962 a 16-year-old West Berlin girl was shot in the pelvis at the border in Lichterfelde-Süd while she and a 17-year-old friend were trying to help an acquaintance escape. The border guards arrested the friend.
- [Axel Hannemann – from a cargo barge into the Spree](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/axel-hannemann-reichstag-1962/): 5 June 1962. A 17-year-old apprentice from Cottbus jumped from the Marschallbrücke onto a westbound cargo barge; when the skipper stopped, he jumped into the Spree and was shot a few metres from the West Berlin bank.
- [The excursion ship "Friedrich Wolf"](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/friedrich-wolf-ship-hijack/): 8 June 1962. Young East Berliners commandeered the passenger steamer "Friedrich Wolf", locked up its crew and swerved under heavy fire into West Berlin's Landwehrkanal.
- [The Whitsun Tunnel (Pfingsttunnel)](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/pfingsttunnel-heidelberger-strasse-1962/): 9 June 1962 – 11 June 1962. In June 1962 helpers around Harry Seidel dug from the cellar of a Neukölln corner pub under Heidelberger Straße and, over the Whitsun weekend, brought East Berliners out through a photographer's shop.
- [Helmut P. is shot at but gets over the cemetery wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/helmut-p-sophienfriedhof-1962/): 10 June 1962. Helmut P. chose the Sophien cemetery for its cover; two guards at Ackerstraße fired as he pulled himself up the wall, but he got over; West Berlin police said he had been wounded.
- [Erna Kelm – swimming belt under her clothes](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/erna-kelm-havel-1962/): 11 June 1962. On Whit Monday 1962 an angler found the body of 53-year-old Erna Kelm from Sacrow in the Havel; she wore a swimming belt under her clothes and had apparently tried to swim to West Berlin.
- [Rudolf Müller's Tunnel and the Death of Reinhold Huhn](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/zimmerstrasse-tunnel-rudolf-mueller-1962/): 18 June 1962. Rudolf Müller brought his wife, two children and sister-in-law through a self-dug tunnel to West Berlin, shooting dead the young border guard Reinhold Huhn when he tried to check their papers.
- [A fugitive collapses under fire at the Forsthausallee bridge](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/forsthausallee-bridge-fugitive-1962/): 22 June 1962. At about 04.40 on 22 June 1962 a border guard fired a submachine-gun burst at a fleeing man at the Forsthausallee bridge. The man collapsed and about 15 minutes later was carried away in a tent sheet by the East Berlin fire brigade, apparently lifeless.
- [The Betrayed Sebastianstraße Tunnel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/sebastianstrasse-tunnel-siegfried-noffke-1962/): 28 June 1962. Three West Berliners dug a tunnel to bring their wives and children out of East Berlin, but a Stasi informer had infiltrated the plan; Siegfried Noffke was shot dead when they broke through.
- [Truck driver Günter P. climbs the Wall on his first day at the site](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/guenter-p-demolition-site-1962/): 2 July 1962. On his first day on a guarded demolition site, a driver climbed the Wall while another truck blocked the guards' view.
- [A West Berliner cutting the wire for his wife is fired on near Rosenthal cemetery](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rosenthal-cemetery-husband-cuts-wire-1962/): 19 July 1962. At about 21.35 on 19 July 1962 a West Berliner tried to cut through the barbed wire near the Städtischer Friedhof Rosenthal so that his wife, who lived in East Berlin, could escape. Border guards fired about 30 submachine-gun rounds; he got away unhurt.
- [One of three gets through at Karpfenteichstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/karpfenteichstrasse-three-fugitives-1962/): 25 July 1962. According to a man who reached West Berlin in the early hours of 25 July 1962, he and two others had been spotted and fired on by border guards near Karpfenteichstraße in Treptow; the other two, one of them wounded, were arrested.
- [Conscript Jörg S. stages a check and escapes with two friends](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/joerg-s-swinemuender-strasse-1962/): 1 August 1962. A conscript on rear-guard duty waved two friends through, lured his squad leader into a back yard where one of them knocked him down with a spade, and the three ran for the Wall; a fourth friend gave up when shots were fired.
- [The Betrayed Kiefholzstraße Tunnel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kiefholzstrasse-tunnel-1962/): 7 August 1962. Several escape-helper groups joined forces on a tunnel to a small house on Kiefholzstraße for a planned mass escape, but a Stasi informer among the couriers betrayed it and dozens of would-be refugees were arrested.
- [Peter Fechter bleeds to death at Zimmerstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/peter-fechter-1962/): 17 August 1962. 18-year-old bricklayer Peter Fechter was shot while climbing the Wall on Zimmerstraße and left to die at its foot for about 50 minutes in full view of West Berliners; his companion escaped.
- [Hans-Dieter Wesa shot at Bornholmer Straße station](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hans-dieter-wesa-bornholmer-strasse-1962/): 23 August 1962. Transport policeman Hans-Dieter Wesa, 19, climbed the border fence at the closed Bornholmer Straße S-Bahn station and was shot dead by his post partner after he had already reached West Berlin territory.
- [Ernst Mundt shot on the Sophien cemetery wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ernst-mundt-1962/): 4 September 1962. Ernst Mundt, 40, climbed onto the glass-topped wall of the Sophien cemetery on Bernauer Straße and was shot in the head by a transport police officer.
- [Tunnel 29](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/tunnel-29/): 14 September 1962 – 15 September 1962. Around 30 helpers, mostly students, dug a tunnel from a factory on Bernauer Straße to a cellar in East Berlin; 29 people escaped through it over two days while an American TV crew filmed.
- [West Berlin police open a cellar window for three young men](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-42-cellar-window-1962/): 17 September 1962. While a West Berlin officer held the guards' observation post at gunpoint, police broke open a walled-up cellar window and three young men climbed out.
- [The Second Heidelberger Krug Tunnel to Elsenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/elsenstrasse-tunnel-1962/): 6 October 1962. A second tunnel from the Heidelberger Krug pub brought a tailor couple to the West in their pyjamas, but an informer tipped off the Stasi within hours and an escape helper was shot and captured.
- [Anton Walzer – shot swimming from a barge](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/anton-walzer-oberbaumbruecke/): 8 October 1962. Sixty-year-old Anton Walzer climbed onto a moored barge and jumped into the Spree; a border guard shot him in the back of the head.
- [Two young men swing over the Sophien cemetery wall under fire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/sophienfriedhof-two-young-men-1962/): 26 October 1962. Shortly before midnight two men in their early twenties used the cover of the cemetery to reach the Wall; guards at Ackerstraße 42 fired, but both got to West Berlin.
- [The Kleinmachnow Tunnel and the Arrest of Harry Seidel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kleinmachnow-tunnel-harry-seidel-1962/): 14 November 1962. The betrayal of a 70-metre tunnel into Kleinmachnow ended with the capture of the famous escape helper Harry Seidel, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in a show trial.
- [Horst Plischke – missing in the Havel for four months](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/horst-plischke-jungfernsee-1962/): 19 November 1962. A 23-year-old from Potsdam went into the Havel north of the Glienicke Bridge before dawn; guards spotted him and fired, and he drowned. His body surfaced four months later.
- [He gets through, she is shot in the arm](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wegastrasse-baumschulenweg-couple-1962/): 19 November 1962. At 3.40 on 19 November 1962 border guards at Baumschulenweg fired about 30 shots at two people trying to escape. The man reached West Berlin unhurt. The woman, probably hit in the arm, was arrested.
- [Otfried Reck – the S-Bahn tunnel plan](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/otfried-reck-invalidenstrasse-1962/): 27 November 1962. Two friends tried to open a ventilation shaft to the North–South S-Bahn tunnel near the Nordbahnhof and stop a westbound train; discovered, they ran away and 17-year-old Otfried Reck was shot in the back.
- [Günter Wiedenhöft – through the ice of the Griebnitzsee](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/guenter-wiedenhoeft-griebnitzsee-1962/): 5 December 1962 – 6 December 1962. Days after being sentenced for a first escape attempt, a 20-year-old electrician tried again across the partly frozen Griebnitzsee; he broke through the ice and drowned.
- [Pulled out of the Spree 15 metres from the line](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/behala-spree-swimmer-1962/): 15 December 1962. Before dawn on 15 December 1962 border guards on a patrol boat fired about 25 shots at a man of about 45 who was swimming the Spree. They pulled him into the boat 15 metres short of the sector border, and he shouted to West Berlin police that he was wounded.
- [The armoured bus of Boxing Day](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/armoured-bus-drewitz-1962/): 26 December 1962. On 26 December 1962 two families in a bus armoured with steel plates and fitted with a snowplough broke through the three barriers of the GDR control point at Drewitz and reached Dreilinden in West Berlin.
- [Circus artiste Horst Klein on the high-voltage line](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/horst-klein-teltowkanal-power-line-1962/): 27 December 1962. A circus artiste tried to cross the Teltow Canal by climbing along a high-voltage line, lost his strength and fell onto the eastern bank, from where West Berlin firemen fetched him in a rubber dinghy.

## 1963
- [Hans Räwel – New Year's morning in the icy Spree](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hans-raewel-oberbaumbruecke/): 1 January 1963. After a New Year's Eve party, baker Hans Räwel, born 1941, swam into the freezing Spree and was shot at close range from a border boat about 35 metres from the western bank.
- [Jürgen B. is caught past the wire at Ruppiner Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/juergen-b-ruppiner-strasse-1963/): 5 January 1963. Jürgen B. had already climbed the first wire fence when guards arrested him at Ruppiner Straße in the night before 5 January 1963.
- [Horst Kutscher – shot 25 metres from West Berlin](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/horst-kutscher-rudower-strasse-1963/): 15 January 1963. On the night before the SED party congress, coal worker Horst Kutscher and a colleague crawled towards the border in Johannisthal; about 25 metres from West Berlin shots were fired and he was killed.
- [Peter Kreitlow – shot by Soviet soldiers near Nieder Neuendorf](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/peter-kreitlow-nieder-neuendorf-1963/): 24 January 1963. Five young men decided on the spur of the moment to flee from Hennigsdorf to West Berlin; still about two kilometres from the border, a Soviet patrol opened fire and 20-year-old Peter Kreitlow was killed.
- [Two trainees swim through the ice floes of the Nieder Neuendorfer See](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ziegler-kohl-nieder-neuendorfer-see-ice-1963/): 31 January 1963. On the night of 31 January 1963 an LEW apprentice and a 20-year-old student on a work placement got through the border fences at Nieder Neuendorf and swam through the ice floes of the lake to Heiligensee in West Berlin.
- [The betrayed second tunnel from Bernauer Straße 78](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-78-betrayed-tunnel-1963/): February 1963. Tunnel 29's builders dug again from the same cellars; on breakthrough day Stasi officers lay in wait at Brunnenstraße 45. The diggers noticed in time, but 14 would-be escapees and three couriers were arrested.
- [Wolf-Olaf Muszynski drowns in the Spree, presumably while trying to escape](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wolf-olaf-muszynski-spree-1963/): February 1963 – 1 April 1963. A 16-year-old from Friedrichshain went missing in February 1963; on 1 April his body was found in the Spree on the West Berlin bank near the Oberbaumbrücke. Historians conclude he most likely drowned trying to escape, unseen by the border guards.
- [The Aagaard Tunnel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/aagaard-tunnel-glienicke-1963/): 10 March 1963. A family in Glienicke spent five months digging a 50-metre tunnel by hand from their living room, hiding the sand inside their house, before 13 people crawled to West Berlin.
- [A second tunnel from Heidelberger Straße 35 – Boris Franzke's last](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/franzke-tunnel-heidelberger-strasse-35-1963/): 8 April 1963. A year after Heinz Jercha was shot at the same spot, escape helpers dug a new tunnel from Heidelberger Straße 35 to no. 75. Up to 20 people escaped through it before a resident noticed the broken cellar door.
- [Wolfgang Engels' armoured personnel carrier](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/engels-armoured-car-1963/): 17 April 1963. A 19-year-old civilian army employee drove a stolen Soviet-built armoured personnel carrier into the Wall and was shot while climbing over, but reached the West.
- [Peter Mädler – 'Don't shoot!' in the Teltow Canal](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/peter-maedler-teltowkanal-1963/): 26 April 1963. A 19-year-old electrician swam into the Teltow Canal at Kleinmachnow before dawn; about ten metres from the border he called out 'Don't shoot!' but was shot dead by border guards.
- [A stolen army workshop lorry through the Wall at Leuschnerdamm](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/leuschnerdamm-nva-truck-1963/): 29 April 1963. Shortly after midnight on 29 April 1963 a stolen army lorry drove through the sight screen, two wire barriers and the Wall at Leuschnerdamm. The Stasi recorded it as a serious border breakthrough by presumably four men.
- [Two Swiss typesetters and the hidden railwayman from Dresden](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/swiss-chevrolet-checkpoint-charlie-1963/): 4 May 1963. Two Swiss men had built a hiding place into their Chevrolet to smuggle out a woman from Dresden; when she would not come, they took her colleague instead – and all three were caught at Checkpoint Charlie.
- [Under the barrier in an Austin-Healey Sprite](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/meixner-austin-healey-checkpoint-charlie-1963/): 5 May 1963. 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.
- [Fake UN diplomats: the taxi driver's 'CD' car caught on Karl-Marx-Allee](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/un-diplomatic-passports-karl-marx-allee-1963/): 7 May 1963. A West Berlin taxi owner carrying a UN diplomatic passport in a Swiss man's name said he had already driven 16 people through Checkpoint Charlie in cars with 'CD' plates on six trips since April 1963. On 7 May 1963 he was arrested on Karl-Marx-Allee.
- [Failed bus escape at Invalidenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bus-invalidenstrasse-1963/): 12 May 1963. Eight young East Berliners tried to ram a stolen, steel-plated bus through the Invalidenstraße crossing; it was riddled with bullets and stopped one metre short of the West.
- [The betrayed Kremmener Straße tunnel, dug from East to West](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kremmener-strasse-15-tunnel-1963/): 24 May 1963. East Berliners dug a 45-metre tunnel from a disused bakery cellar at Kremmener Straße 15 almost to Bernauer Straße before it was discovered in May 1963; 19 people were jailed.
- [Betrayed a few metres short: the tunnel to Eberswalder / Oderberger Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/oderberger-strasse-tunnel-1963/): July 1963. A tunnel from the former freight yard towards the corner house at Eberswalder and Oderberger Straße had to be abandoned a few metres short in July 1963 after the plan was betrayed and two diggers were arrested in East Berlin.
- [A gunner steals a loaded T-34 tank to break through to West Berlin](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/stahnsdorf-t34-tank-1963/): 4 July 1963. Left unsupervised in his barracks, an NVA tank gunner took the keys to the tank hall, loaded the machine guns of a T-34/85, picked up a friend and drove off towards Güterfelde – until an officer jumped onto the moving tank.
- [Border guard Siegfried Widera fatally injured at the Massante Bridge](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/siegfried-widera-1963/): 23 August 1963 – 8 September 1963. Three construction workers overpowered two East German border guards at the Massante Bridge and ran across to West Berlin; guard Siegfried Widera died of a fractured skull two weeks later.
- [Jürgen Cr. jumps from the new wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/juergen-cr-bernauer-strasse-1963/): 4 September 1963. While guarding engineers who were building a second concrete wall at Bernauer Straße, conscript Jürgen Cr. jumped over the front wall into West Berlin when his partner went off to get cigarettes.
- [Two border policemen escape from their bulldozer in Falkensee](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/falkensee-bulldozer-border-police-1963/): 9 September 1963. Two GDR border policemen, aged 20 and 23, who had been levelling the death strip at Falkensee drove their bulldozer up to the barriers, climbed the fences and reached West Berlin unnoticed.
- [Border policeman crashes a crawler tractor through the wire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wilhelmsruh-crawler-tractor-1963/): 18 October 1963. A 22-year-old border policeman assigned to levelling work broke through the wire barriers between Wilhelmsruh and Reinickendorf with a crawler tractor; when it stuck halfway, he continued to the West on foot.
- [Klaus Schröter – homemade diving suit at the Reichstag](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-schroeter-reichstag/): 4 November 1963. Engineer Klaus Schröter sold his television to buy breathing gear, sewed himself a weighted diving suit and tried to cross the Spree underwater near the Reichstag; guards shot him and he drowned.
- [Hubert Hohlbein – through the Jungfernsee in a diving suit](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hubert-hohlbein-jungfernsee/): 20 November 1963 – 21 November 1963. Wearing a diving suit and weight belt, 21-year-old Hubert Hohlbein swam low in the water from near Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam to the West Berlin shore by the Glienicker Brücke.
- [Dietmar Schulz – killed on the S-Bahn tracks north of Bornholmer Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dietmar-schulz-bornholmer-strasse-1963/): 25 November 1963. A 24-year-old man from Pankow tried to reach Wedding across the railway tracks in the border zone north of Bornholmer Straße and was fatally struck by a train.
- [Paul Schultz – shot on the Wall on Christmas Day](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/paul-schultz-bethaniendamm-1963/): 25 December 1963. Two 18-year-old friends from Neubrandenburg climbed the Wall at dusk on Christmas Day 1963; Hartmut D. got across unhurt, while Paul Schultz was shot on the Wall and died that evening in a West Berlin hospital.
- [A hijacked taxi from Zerbst and a Boxing Day dash at Schönefeld](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schoenefeld-lichtenrade-taxi-hijack-1963/): 26 December 1963. Three men from a GDR reception home forced a taxi driver to take them from Zerbst to the edge of West Berlin; with a fourth man they tried to cross the border at about 4.50 a.m. and were stopped by gunfire.

## 1964
- [The Cadillac with a dashboard hideout](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/veigel-cadillac-1964-1967/): 1964 – November 1967. Escape helper Burkhart Veigel used a Cadillac DeVille with a hiding place behind the dashboard to smuggle refugees out of the GDR for about three years.
- [Jumping onto the Moscow–Paris Express behind Friedrichstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/moscow-paris-express-friedrichstrasse-1964/): January 1964. In January 1964 a group of young East Berliners jumped, alone or in pairs, from a hiding place just behind Friedrichstraße station onto the westbound Moscow–Paris Express. The route was discovered when Karl-Heinz Richter stumbled, was badly hurt and was arrested.
- [The first Bernauer Straße 97 tunnel ends in a coal yard](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-97-coal-yard-tunnel-1964/): 7 January 1964. The first tunnel from a bakery cellar at Bernauer Straße 97 surfaced in a coal yard in view of the guards; three young women got through before it was discovered.
- [Wounded teenager pulled over the Wall at the Brandenburg Gate](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/brandenburg-gate-youth-shot-1964/): 19 January 1964. A youth ran for the Wall south of the Brandenburg Gate, was shot in the leg, limped along the Wall and was pulled over by West Berlin police officers.
- [A guard knocks his comrade off the watchtower and gets stuck between wall and fence](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/spaethbruecke-guard-desertion-attempt-1964/): 19 January 1964. A border soldier struck his post leader with his machine pistol, climbed the Wall with the watchtower ladder and fired at a motorcycle patrol – but he landed in the strip between the Wall and the actual border fence and gave up after warning shots.
- [Walter Hayn shot beside the 'Sorgenfrei' allotments](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/walter-hayn-kiefholzstrasse-1964/): 27 February 1964. Former People's Police officer Walter Hayn was shot just short of the fence to West Berlin's allotments; his family was told he had drowned.
- [The wheelchair on the S-Bahn to Zoo](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wheelchair-s-bahn-friedrichstrasse-1964/): 14 March 1964. Two young men, one of them posing as a frail wheelchair user, cut the padlock off the lift to the westbound platform at Friedrichstraße and let the S-Bahn staff help them onto a train to Bahnhof Zoo.
- [An unknown escapee slips past the guards at Gartenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gartenstrasse-unknown-escapee-1964/): 17 March 1964. In the early morning of 17 March 1964 an unidentified person got over the border installations at Gartenstraße, about a metre from where the sentries were standing.
- [Concrete lorry to the canal bank, then a swim](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/teltow-concrete-truck-canal-swim-1964/): 20 April 1964. Two lorry drivers drove a loaded Škoda truck from a Teltow concrete works through the border fences down to the canal bank and swam across to West Berlin.
- [The borrowed identity card: a wife crosses on a stranger's papers](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/look-alike-west-german-card-friedrichstrasse-1964/): 16 May 1964. A man who had fled the GDR in 1963 took a West German apprentice from Holstein on a trip to East Berlin and kept her papers 'for safety'. Someone left through Friedrichstraße on them – according to the Stasi, his wife, who resembled her.
- [A 'lost' Danish passport at Friedrichstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/look-alike-danish-passport-friedrichstrasse-1964/): 19 May 1964. Fifteen minutes after someone had left East Berlin on her passport, a Danish woman turned up at the Friedrichstraße crossing to report that her papers had gone missing.
- [Smuggled out in a BMW Isetta](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/isetta-jacobi-1964/): 23 May 1964. Klaus-Günter Jacobi hid his friend Manfred Koster in a modified BMW Isetta, the smallest car ever used for an escape; a student friend drove it across the border into West Berlin.
- [Smoke screen at the Wilhelmsruher Damm](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wilhelmsruher-damm-smoke-screen-1964/): 12 June 1964. Under cover of smoke canisters thrown from West Berlin, a woman doctor and a man with the same surname as her maiden name abandoned their Trabant in the barrier and ran through a pre-cut gap in the fence in broad daylight.
- [Walter Heike shot at the Invalidenfriedhof](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/walter-heike-invalidenfriedhof-1964/): 22 June 1964. Former customs officer Walter Heike climbed the cemetery wall and was pulling himself up the last wall before the canal when a border NCO shot him.
- [The Lloyd 600 with a secretary hidden in the back](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lloyd-600-egyptian-student-checkpoint-charlie-1964/): 12 July 1964. An Egyptian geology student drove a Lloyd 600 back to West Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie; in a hiding place at the back was a secretary from the GDR Building Academy.
- [Norbert Wolscht and Rainer Gneiser – homemade diving gear in the Havel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wolscht-gneiser-havel-1964/): 28 July 1964. Two 20-year-old friends from Freiberg in Saxony tried to reach West Berlin underwater through the Havel near Potsdam using self-built breathing equipment; both drowned in the night of 27–28 July 1964.
- [Wernhard Mispelhorn shot at the Schönholz allotments](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wernhard-mispelhorn-schoenholz-1964/): 18 August 1964 – 20 August 1964. Eighteen-year-old Wernhard Mispelhorn, whose girlfriend had just moved to West Berlin, suddenly ran for the fence at the Schönholz allotments and was shot in the head.
- [Hildegard Trabant shot in the back on the disused S-Bahn line](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hildegard-trabant-schoenhauser-allee-1964/): 18 August 1964. Discovered hiding behind an elder bush on the disused railway, 37-year-old Hildegard Trabant ran away from the border and was shot in the back.
- [Two Spanish workers and a hidden Pankow man at Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/spanish-renault-checkpoint-charlie-1964/): 19 August 1964. At a quarter to one in the morning two Spanish workers employed in West Berlin drove up to Checkpoint Charlie in a Renault. The controllers found a man from Pankow, born in 1939, in a hiding place built into the car.
- [Fifteen people behind the pig carcasses](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/refrigerated-meat-lorry-heinrich-heine-strasse-1964/): 9 September 1964. A trusted meat-transport driver took his wife, their eight children and his brother-in-law's family of five through the Heinrich-Heine-Straße checkpoint hidden among pig carcasses.
- [Michael Meyer pulled over the Wall under fire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/michael-meyer-hans-puhl-stallschreiberstrasse-1964/): 13 September 1964. Badly wounded by border guards' bullets, 21-year-old Michael Meyer was hauled over the Wall on a rope by a US military police sergeant while West Berlin police and US soldiers returned fire.
- [Tunnel 57](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/tunnel-57/): 3 October 1964 – 5 October 1964. 57 East Berliners crawled through a 145-metre tunnel dug by West Berlin students under Bernauer Straße. The escape ended in a shoot-out in which border guard Egon Schultz was killed; records opened after 1990 showed the fatal shots came from a fellow GDR soldier.
- [A sleeping pill for the four-year-old: the American's Ford at Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/american-ford-sleeping-child-checkpoint-charlie-1964/): 10 October 1964. An American Lufthansa loader built a hiding place behind the back seat of a Ford to bring out a colleague's cousin and her four-year-old child, who was given a sleeping pill. They were caught at Checkpoint Charlie.
- [Hans-Joachim Wolf shot in the Britzer Zweigkanal](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hans-joachim-wolf-britzer-zweigkanal-1964/): 26 November 1964. Seventeen-year-old apprentice Hans-Joachim Wolf jumped into the ice-cold Britzer Zweigkanal; guards fired 61 shots without warning and ignored his calls to stop.
- [Joachim Mehr shot in the wire near Bergfelde](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/joachim-mehr-bergfelde-1964/): 3 December 1964. After a spontaneous decision in a pub, 19-year-old carpenter Joachim Mehr and Hans-Jürgen K. ran for the wire near Frohnau; both were wounded, and Mehr was killed by further shots after they had given up.
- [Hidden in the airport bus's spare-wheel box](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/interflug-bus-spare-wheel-invalidenstrasse-1964/): 11 December 1964. The driver of the Interflug shuttle bus to West Berlin simply did not come back one morning; his girlfriend rode with him through the Invalidenstraße checkpoint inside the spare-wheel box.

## 1965
- [Through a cut grille between the S-Bahn platforms](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/friedrichstrasse-cut-grille-1965/): January 1965. A young West Berliner who had fled himself the year before cut a grille beneath the glass wall between the S-Bahn platforms at Friedrichstraße so that his girlfriend could slip through.
- [Rope-ladder escape at Ruppiner Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ruppiner-strasse-rope-ladder-1965/): 4 January 1965. Equipped with wire cutters, a rope ladder and a throwing line, a man of about 25 got over the Wall near Ruppiner Straße despite gunfire; stray bullets hit a West Berlin bedroom.
- [Kuo Ying-Hu's Mercedes: three people in the boot](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kuo-ying-hu-mercedes-checkpoint-charlie-1965/): 31 January 1965. A Chinese journalist living in East Berlin, who had permission to drive his Mercedes into West Berlin, tried to take three people from Pankow, born in 1904, 1934 and 1960, out in his boot.
- [A bookshop assistant leaves in the boot of two French officers' car](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/paissoni-french-officers-car-boot-1965/): March 1965. In March 1965 a 19-year-old East Berlin bookshop assistant asked two French military officers for help; the next evening they drove her to the West in the boot of their car.
- [Clothesline rope escape from a Treptow border house](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dieter-w-rope-treptow-1965/): 3 March 1965. A 26-year-old engineer tied a knotted 50-metre clothesline to a fourth-floor window, lowered himself down, swung over the Wall and dropped into Neukölln.
- [Christian Buttkus – a snowstorm escape at Kleinmachnow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/christian-buttkus-kleinmachnow-1965/): 4 March 1965. After abandoning plans to dive through the Teltow Canal, Christian Buttkus and his fiancée Ilse P. tried to cross at Kleinmachnow in a snowstorm; he was killed at the last fence and she was wounded and jailed.
- [An apprentice cuts through three fences at Schönefeld and is shot at the last one](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schoenefeld-rehpfuhl-apprentice-shot-1965/): 18 March 1965. Late at night a car-panel-beater apprentice from Berlin cut through three wire fences on the Schönefeld border. The guards heard him and fired 39 rounds just as he reached the last fence.
- [A West Berliner jailed after an East German fled on his papers, April 1965](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/east-german-papers-used-by-west-berliner-1965/): April 1965. In April 1965 an East German used a West Berliner's identity papers to flee to the West; the West Berliner, who had visited relatives in East Berlin that weekend, was jailed there, the AP reported.
- [Roofers escape from the Klein Glienicke chapel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/roofers-klein-glienicke-chapel-1965/): 7 May 1965. Two roofers repairing the chapel roof in the GDR exclave of Klein Glienicke disarmed one of their guards and crossed the Wall with a ladder into Zehlendorf.
- [Dieter Brandes – shot at the Nordbahnhof, died months later](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dieter-brandes-nordbahnhof-1965/): 9 June 1965 – 11 January 1966. Eighteen-year-old Dieter Brandes was shot a few metres from the last barrier at the Nordbahnhof; paralysed, he died in hospital on 11 January 1966.
- [The Holzapfel family's cable slide from the Haus der Ministerien](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/holzapfel-family-cable-haus-der-ministerien/): 28 July 1965 – 29 July 1965. A Leipzig family hid in the East German government's Haus der Ministerien, climbed onto its roof after dark and slid on a steel cable over the Wall into West Berlin.
- [Klaus Kratzel killed in the S-Bahn tunnel at Bornholmer Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-kratzel-bornholmer-tunnel-1965/): 8 August 1965. Having returned to East Berlin after a family quarrel, bricklayer Klaus Kratzel tried to get back to his wife and children in the West along the railway at Bornholmer Straße and was apparently struck by a train.
- [In the shadow of a tourist bus at Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/checkpoint-charlie-bus-shadow-1965/): 16 August 1965. A young man walked out of the Checkpoint Charlie control area unchecked, keeping to the blind side of a West German coach full of American tourists.
- [Klaus Garten – left to bleed in the vehicle ditch](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-garten-teltow-seehof-1965/): 17 August 1965 – 18 August 1965. SED member Klaus Garten was shot in the thigh climbing a garden fence at the border in Teltow-Seehof; guards hid him from Western view and took him to a distant Stasi prison hospital, where he died.
- [A miner escapes through the Spree at Mühlenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/miner-swims-spree-muehlenstrasse-1965/): 27 August 1965 – 28 August 1965. In the night of 27 to 28 August 1965 a 31-year-old miner made his way through ruined buildings in the border strip at Mühlenstraße, entered the Spree and escaped to West Berlin.
- [A Teltow schoolgirl behind the dashboard of a Peugeot](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/us-students-peugeot-dashboard-checkpoint-charlie-1965/): 19 September 1965. A teenage girl from Teltow, whose parents had already fled, was hidden behind the dashboard of a Peugeot by two Americans living in West Berlin. She was found at Checkpoint Charlie.
- [Walter Kittel – killed after surrendering at Kleinmachnow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/walter-kittel-kleinmachnow-1965/): 18 October 1965. Walter Kittel and a chance acquaintance had already given themselves up when a border troop commander fired 30 shots at him from 15 metres; the shooter later received the longest sentence of any Wall guard.
- [Two young conscripts vanish in the fog at Bergmann-Borsig](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wilhelmsruh-bergmann-borsig-guards-1965/): 5 November 1965. A two-man patrol of new conscripts from the same home town climbed the fence and the new concrete wall at Wilhelmsruh in thick fog and took their submachine guns with them.
- [Heinz Cyrus – hunted into Gartenstraße 85](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heinz-cyrus-gartenstrasse-85-1965/): 10 November 1965 – 11 November 1965. Chased from the border strip by gunfire, Heinz Cyrus fled into a building on Gartenstraße, climbed out of a fourth-floor window and fell into the courtyard; he died the next morning.
- [Heinz Sokolowski – shot at the Wall near the Brandenburg Gate](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heinz-sokolowski-brandenburg-gate-1965/): 25 November 1965. Former journalist and political prisoner Heinz Sokolowski, 47, had reached the Wall between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate when a guard shot him in the abdomen.
- [Erich Kühn shot 'blindly into the bushes' at Kiefholzstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/erich-kuehn-kiefholzstrasse-1965/): 26 November 1965 – 3 December 1965. Sixty-two-year-old Erich Kühn was wounded when a guard, ordered to act, fired blindly at a noise on the railway embankment at Kiefholzstraße; he died eight days later.
- [Heinz Schöneberger – escape helper shot at Heinrich-Heine-Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heinz-schoeneberger-heinrich-heine-strasse-1965/): 26 December 1965. Two West German brothers tried to smuggle two East Berlin women out in a Ford Taunus; when one hiding place was discovered, Heinz Schöneberger tried to force the barrier and was shot just before reaching the West.
- [Two conscripts flee on New Year's Eve at Gartenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gartenstrasse-new-years-eve-guards-1965/): 31 December 1965. On New Year's Eve 1965 two conscript border soldiers posted at Gartenstraße ran round the S-Bahn entrance, forced their way through barbed-wire and mesh fences and jumped down into West Berlin.

## 1966
- [Gerd L. turns back under warning shots and hides at Brunnenstraße 141](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gerd-l-brunnenstrasse-1966/): 15 January 1966. A local resident reached the border strip, then under construction; warning shots turned him back and he was arrested on the top floor of Brunnenstraße 141.
- [80 shots at Manfred B.](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/manfred-b-80-shots-1966/): 28 January 1966. After a marital row, Manfred B. climbed two fences; the Kremmener Straße sentries fired 80 rounds and arrested him. West Berlin answered with a poster addressed to the soldiers.
- [Willi Block – trapped in the wire and shot at Staaken](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/willi-block-staaken-1966/): 7 February 1966. Caught in a roll of barbed wire in full view of West Berlin police, former border policeman Willi Block was shot dead after a stand-off; the regimental commander himself fired.
- [Children Jörg Hartmann and Lothar Schleusener shot in Treptow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hartmann-schleusener-1966/): 14 March 1966. Ten-year-old Jörg Hartmann and 13-year-old Lothar Schleusener slipped into the border strip in Treptow after dark and were shot by border guards; the regime told their families false stories about how they had died.
- [Two NCOs run for the border at Kohlhasenbrück – one gets through](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/willi-marzahn-kohlhasenbrueck-1966/): 19 March 1966. NVA NCOs Willi Marzahn and Eberhard M. took weapons from their barracks and ran through the death strip near Steinstücken; in a firefight Eberhard M. reached West Berlin, while Marzahn died of a head wound.
- ["Now there are two fewer of you!"](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/eberswalder-strasse-conscripts-1966/): 23 March 1966. Two conscripts on duty at Eberswalder Straße broke open a door in the sight screen, climbed onto the freight-yard wall and jumped into the West; their comrades only noticed when a West Berlin policeman shouted across.
- [Eberhard Schulz shot after standing up to surrender](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/eberhard-schulz-grossziethen-1966/): 30 March 1966. Farm worker Eberhard Schulz, 20, and his friend Dieter K. had already given up when three guards found them; Schulz rose from the grass and was shot in the face and neck.
- [Michael Kollender – a soldier's flight from guard duty](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/michael-kollender-teltowkanal-1966/): 25 April 1966. Conscript Michael Kollender left his sentry post in uniform and ran for the Teltow Canal; four guards fired 109 rounds and he was hit a few metres from the border; he died in the People's Police hospital.
- [Peter St. escapes on his birthday, losing his wallet](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/peter-st-birthday-escape-1966/): 19 May 1966. On his birthday Peter St. crawled from the Sophien cemetery across the border strip; a signal device failed and he got through, leaving behind a wallet containing his call-up papers.
- [Eduard Wroblewski – 274 shots at Mahlow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/eduard-wroblewski-mahlow-1966/): 26 July 1966. Family man Eduard Wroblewski was hit twelve times from behind in the barbed wire beside the old Mahlow–Lichtenrade railway, in one of the heaviest shootings at the Wall.
- [Hartmut Richter swims the Teltow Canal](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hartmut-richter-teltowkanal/): 26 August 1966 – 27 August 1966. Eighteen-year-old Hartmut Richter spent about four hours in the Teltow Canal, swimming roughly a kilometre past the border defences to Dreilinden in West Berlin.
- [Klaus N. escapes his pursuers but is arrested in Brunnenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-n-schoenholzer-strasse-1966/): 7 September 1966. Fired on after climbing the rear fence at Schönholzer Straße, Klaus N. hid behind the tank traps, slipped back to East Berlin, and was arrested by a policeman who had watched from his flat.
- [Bulldozer through the Staaken border](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bulldozer-staaken-1966/): 11 September 1966. Two married couples and a three-year-old child flattened the Staaken border fences with an armoured 18-tonne bulldozer until a tree stopped them in Spandau.
- [Siegfried J. sets off an alarm and gives up at Bergstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/siegfried-j-bergstrasse-1966/): 29 October 1966. A man who had moved from West to East Berlin only in 1965 climbed the cemetery wall at Bergstraße, triggered a signal device, turned back and was caught hiding in a school yard.
- [Michael Schwerk pulls the S-Bahn emergency brake](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/michael-schwerk-s-bahn-emergency-brake-1966/): November 1966. In November 1966 Michael Schwerk, a conscript in the Bereitschaftspolizei, stopped an S-Bahn train near the border by pulling the emergency brake and fled across the tracks, a disused railway shaft 4.80 m deep and two barbed-wire fences into West Berlin.
- [Karl-Heinz Kube shot near the Teltow harbour](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/karl-heinz-kube-kleinmachnow-1966/): 16 December 1966. Seventeen-year-old Karl-Heinz Kube and his friend Detlev S. were one fence from West Berlin when they were fired on; Kube was killed in the ditch where they sought cover.

## 1967
- [Two transport workers plan to stop a West Berlin U-Bahn train under Alexanderplatz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/alexanderplatz-u-bahn-tunnel-plan-1967/): 1967. In summer 1967 two 20-year-old East Berlin transport workers planned to climb from a workshop at Alexanderplatz station into the tunnel of the West Berlin line (today's U8) and stop a westbound train. A colleague informed the Stasi.
- [Max Sahmland – shot while swimming the Teltow Canal](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/max-sahmland-teltowkanal-1967/): 27 January 1967. Wounded after setting off the alarm at the signal fence, Max Sahmland reached the Teltow Canal and swam for the western bank, but guards kept firing and he sank only metres from safety.
- [Franciszek Piesik – from the Oder to the Nieder Neuendorfer See](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/franciszek-piesik-nieder-neuendorfer-see-1967/): 17 October 1967. Polish inland-waterways worker Franciszek Piesik crossed the Oder into the GDR, stole a motorboat at Hennigsdorf and, when spotted, tried to swim the cold Nieder Neuendorfer See to West Berlin; he drowned.
- [A rope over the Wall at Korsörer Straße – held by West Berlin policemen](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/korsoerer-strasse-rope-police-1967/): 26 December 1967. An East Berlin woman's West German boyfriend threw a rope over the Wall in the night of 25/26 December while two West Berlin policemen held it; she was trying to pull herself up when the guards opened fire.

## 1968
- [Elke and Dieter Weckeiser shot opposite the Reichstag](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/weckeiser-couple-reichstag-1968/): 18 February 1968 – 19 February 1968. A young married couple from Fürstenwalde were fired on from a watchtower as they crawled through the first barbed wire opposite the Reichstag; both died of their wounds.
- [Bernd Lehmann – caught in underwater barbed wire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernd-lehmann-spree-1968/): 28 May 1968. Eighteen-year-old Bernd Lehmann entered the Spree near Treptower Park, apparently heading for the Flutgraben, but became entangled in barbed wire strung under the water and drowned.
- [Bernd B. is shot five metres from the Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernd-b-versoehnungskirche-shot-1968/): 7 July 1968. Crawling in the shelter of the Reconciliation Church, Bernd B. got within five metres of the Wall before a guard fired a warning shot and then shot him as he tried to jump up.
- [110 bottles of hydrogen and a plastic balloon – then two families climb the fence at Groß Glienicke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/premnitz-families-hydrogen-balloon-gross-glienicke-1968/): 20 October 1968. Two families from Premnitz ordered 110 bottles of hydrogen to fill home-made plastic balloons. When the balloons would not inflate, they crossed the fences in thick fog: five made it, and the father of one family was shot and caught at the last fence.
- [The guards couldn't open their window: folding-ladder escape at Schönholzer Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schoenholzer-strasse-folding-ladder-1968/): 27 October 1968. At 1 a.m. a man with a folding ladder crossed every barrier; by the time the Ruppiner Straße tower crew had smashed the window they could not open and fired, he was in the West.
- [After a night of drinking, a deputy company commander climbs out with a painter's ladder](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/stolpe-sued-deputy-company-commander-1968/): 29 October 1968. Facing a dressing-down for a drunken farewell party, the deputy commander and party secretary of a border company crawled through the compound fence, took a painter's ladder from a house and climbed into West Berlin in uniform with his pistol.
- [The boat commander who went ashore at the fairy-tale garden](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/boat-53-sacrow-maat-desertion-1968/): 29 October 1968. On a patrol along the Havel at Sacrow, a boat commander asked to land to relieve himself – right where the land border met the water – went ashore and did not come back.
- [Deserting policeman and border soldier die near Klein Glienicke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/horst-koerner-rolf-henniger-klein-glienicke-1968/): 15 November 1968. A 21-year-old Volkspolizist deserting towards West Berlin opened fire on a border patrol vehicle in Babelsberg Park, killing driver Rolf Henniger, and was himself shot dead by the patrol leader.

## 1969
- [A kick through the glass wall at Friedrichstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/friedrichstrasse-glass-partition-1969/): 10 January 1969. Shortly after midnight a man kicked in a glass panel of the partition at Friedrichstraße station and got into the hall where the trains to West Berlin left, but he was arrested on the next westbound train.
- [Johannes Lange shot at the last wall on Adalbertstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/johannes-lange-adalbertstrasse-1969/): 9 April 1969. Decorative painter Johannes Lange was killed just short of the final concrete wall on Adalbertstraße after eight border guards fired 148 rounds.
- [May Day: a train driver and conductor take an empty train to the West](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/s-bahn-crew-may-day-1969/): 1 May 1969. On 1 May 1969 an East German train driver and a woman conductor drove an empty train of Berlin's elevated railway to a West Berlin stop, got out and asked for political asylum.
- [The 'Trojan cow' at Drewitz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/trojan-cow-drewitz-1969/): 7 July 1969. A 28-year-old woman from Karl-Marx-Stadt was hidden inside a hollow model bull in a wooden crate, but the hiding place was found at the Drewitz crossing.
- [Klaus-Jürgen Kluge shot on the crest of the Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-juergen-kluge-bornholmer-1969/): 13 September 1969. Facing military service he loathed, Klaus-Jürgen Kluge tried to climb the Wall near the Bornholmer Straße crossing and was shot as he lay on its crest.
- [Leo Lis shot near the Nordbahnhof](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/leo-lis-nordbahnhof-1969/): 20 September 1969. Leo Lis, a 45-year-old dairy worker from Saxony, had already crossed several barriers near the Nordbahnhof when border guards opened fire; he died of a chest wound.
- [Two East Germans force a Polish airliner to land at Tegel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lot-ilyushin-hijack-tegel-1969/): 19 October 1969. Two young East Germans forced the pilots of a Polish Ilyushin 18, flying from Warsaw to East Berlin, to land at Tegel in the French sector of West Berlin, where they asked for political asylum.
- [35 shots at Karl-Heinz Br. and Gerd W. in the cemetery strip](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/karl-heinz-br-gerd-w-sophienfriedhof-1969/): 24 October 1969. Two men crawling across the control strip were spotted from the Ackerstraße watchtower; the guards fired 35 rounds, and both were arrested unhurt behind the vehicle barrier.
- [Detlef Hubert Peuker over the Wall from a Bernauer Straße yard](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/detlef-hubert-peuker-bernauer-strasse-1969/): November 1969. In November 1969 the 16-year-old Detlef Hubert Peuker, who had scouted a building on Bernauer Straße during a visit to Berlin, got over the border installations from its yard into West Berlin.
- [Two men shot trying to reach the American sector on one day](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/us-sector-two-shot-1969/): 24 November 1969. On 24 November 1969 East German guards shot two men in separate attempts to cross into West Berlin's American sector: a border guard trying to scale the Wall, and a youth fired on with a machine gun in the fortified strip.

## 1970
- [Christel and Eckhard Wehage's attempted hijacking of an Interflug plane](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wehage-interflug-hijack-1970/): 10 March 1970. A young couple tried to force an Interflug An-24 on a domestic flight to fly to Hanover. The crew secretly turned back to Schönefeld; as the plane landed, Christel and Eckhard Wehage took their own lives.
- [A 22-year-old is shot in the leg at Strelitzer Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/strelitzer-strasse-shot-in-leg-1970/): 21 March 1970. A young man got almost to the foot of the Wall before the Strelitzer Straße watchtower spotted him; two aimed shots stopped him, one hitting his right leg.
- [A man stopped at the last obstacle before the Wall, 5 April 1970](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/man-foiled-at-wall-1970/): 5 April 1970. On 5 April 1970 an East German motorised patrol stopped a man trying to escape over the Wall into West Berlin as he reached the last steel obstacle; the guards beat him with their rifles, West Berlin police reported.
- [The 85-metre tunnel from Bernauer Straße 80, dug out by the Stasi](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bernauer-strasse-80-tunnel-1970/): May 1970. Eight years after a 1962 tunnel attempt from Bernauer Straße 82, a new tunnel was begun at Bernauer Straße 80; after a tip-off and listening probes the Stasi exposed it by cross-trenching in May 1970, when it was already 85 metres long.
- [Willi Born – a young soldier's flight ends in the Bergfelde woods](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/willi-born-bergfelde-1970/): 7 July 1970. Nineteen-year-old conscript Willi Born left his unit and tried to reach West Berlin near Bergfelde; when border soldiers cornered him in a strip of woodland he took his own life.
- [Hans-Joachim Zock – a planned swim across the Spree](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hans-joachim-zock-spree-1970/): 14 November 1970 – 17 November 1970. After years of Stasi suspicion, Hans-Joachim Zock travelled from Halle to East Berlin in November 1970 intending to swim the Spree to the West; he drowned, and his body was found weeks later.
- [Christian Peter Friese shot on Christmas night at Köllnische Heide](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/friese-koellnische-heide-1970/): 25 December 1970. On Christmas Eve 1970 a 22-year-old mechanic from Naumburg travelled to East Berlin and, around midnight, entered the border strip at Johannisthal. Five guards fired 98 shots; he died a few metres short of the last fence.

## 1971
- [Rolf-Dieter Kabelitz – shot in the snow at Bergfelde](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rolf-dieter-kabelitz-bergfelde-1971/): 7 January 1971. A 19-year-old from Potsdam set off a border alarm at Bergfelde on a snowy January night in 1971, turned back when tracking dogs were set on him, and was shot while hiding behind a tree. He died of his wounds 23 days later under Stasi guard in hospital.
- [Tunnel 71 – The Last Tunnel under Bernauer Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/tunnel-71-brunnenstrasse/): February 1971. Hasso Herschel's team lived underground for nine weeks digging a tunnel beneath Bernauer Straße, but came within ten metres of their goal before GDR border troops dug it up.
- [75 shots miss – and the escaper is caught in a hallway on Provinzstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schoenholz-klemkestrasse-75-shots-1971/): 22 February 1971. A bricklayer got through every barrier to within three metres of the Wall at Schönholz. Guards fired 75 rounds without hitting him; he turned back and was caught by police in a hallway.
- [Two youths climb the Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/two-youths-climb-wall-1971/): 4 April 1971. On 4 April 1971 two East German youths climbed the Berlin Wall and fled to the West, West Berlin police reported.
- [A councillor, his wife and two small sons climb the Wall at Klein Glienicke with a fruit ladder](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schimpfermann-family-ladder-klein-glienicke-1971/): 15 June 1971. On the night the SED's VIII Party Congress opened, an NDPD town councillor and trainee editor, his wife and their sons aged two and a half years and six months climbed the Klein Glienicke wall with a neighbour's fruit ladder in pouring rain.
- [An off-duty lieutenant climbs out at Stolpe-Süd](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/stolpe-sued-lieutenant-ladder-1971/): 4 July 1971. A platoon leader of the border troops, born in 1946, went home after a dance, then climbed the Wall in the Stolpe-Süd section, where he lived, with a wooden ladder while guards fired 20 shots.
- [Shots stop an escape at Brunnenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/brunnenstrasse-shots-1971/): 23 July 1971. At about 3.20 a.m. on 23 July 1971 border guards fired on a man trying to escape at Brunnenstraße and arrested him.
- [A Danish tour guide, a doctored passport and a 16-year-old from Rostock](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/danish-tour-guide-passport-friedrichstrasse-1971/): 24 July 1971. A Copenhagen tour guide tried to take a 16-year-old from Rostock through the Friedrichstraße crossing on a doctored Danish passport and was caught in the act.
- [Three Leipzig youths over the fence at Kleinmachnow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kleinmachnow-leipzig-youths-1971/): 22 August 1971. Four friends from Leipzig cut their way through the signal fence at Kleinmachnow; three climbed the expanded-metal fence in their socks and reached West Berlin, the fourth was caught.
- [A circus hand runs for the Wall near the Sonnenallee crossing](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/baumschulenweg-heidekampweg-circus-worker-1971/): 9 September 1971. After an evening in the pubs of Baumschulenweg, a circus worker climbed the hinterland fence off the Heidekampweg; guards fired 43 rounds and wounded him in the hip and knees.
- [Three East Germans slip across unnoticed](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/three-slip-across-unnoticed-1971/): 21 September 1971 – 22 September 1971. In the night of 21 to 22 September 1971 three East Germans crossed the fortified border into West Berlin without being noticed.
- [Man shot halfway across the Wall; bullets hit a West Berlin house](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/man-shot-halfway-over-wall-us-sector-1971/): 26 September 1971. Early on 26 September 1971 guards shot and apparently wounded a man of about 30 whom they caught halfway across the Wall in the American sector; some bullets hit a house on the West Berlin side.
- [Two border guards take a patrol boat across the Spree](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/border-guards-patrol-boat-muehlenstrasse-1971/): 1 December 1971. In December 1971 two 20-year-old GDR border guards disarmed a comrade, took the patrol boat moored at Mühlenstraße and crossed the Spree to Kreuzberg in broad daylight.
- [Horst Kullack shot on New Year's Eve at Großziethen](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kullack-grossziethen-1971/): 31 December 1971. On New Year's Eve 1971 Horst Kullack climbed the rear fence at Großziethen and reached the border wall before guards shot him without warning. He died of his wounds three weeks later.

## 1972
- [Hidden in a freighter's ballast room from Magdeburg to West Berlin](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ballast-room-freighter-nedlitz-1972/): 1972. In 1972 a person got aboard a cargo ship in Magdeburg and was hidden by the crew in the ballast room until the ship reached West Berlin; the ZZF counts it among the escapes known despite the checks at the Nedlitz water crossing.
- [The heaters' tunnel under the Zimmerstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/zimmerstrasse-bewag-tunnel-1972/): 9 January 1972. Two brothers and a friend dug a short tunnel from the sealed border cellars of an East Berlin electricity-company building near Checkpoint Charlie and came up just beyond the Wall.
- [Manfred Weylandt – shot in the Spree](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/manfred-weylandt-schillingbruecke/): 14 February 1972. Stoker Manfred Weylandt crossed the border installations and entered the Spree near the Schillingbrücke late at night; two guards shot him in the head and he drowned.
- [Klaus Schulze killed, Dieter Krause escapes at Falkenhöh](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-schulze-falkenhoeh-1972/): 7 March 1972. Two young friends from Falkensee crossed the border strip at Falkenhöh with a ladder from a garden shed. Dieter Krause got over the last fence under fire; Klaus Schulze, who had tripped, was shot in the chest.
- [A 15-year-old crosses the Wall into Neukölln](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/boy-15-over-wall-neukoelln-1972/): 9 June 1972 – 10 June 1972. In the night of 9 to 10 June 1972 a 15-year-old East German boy crossed the Wall into Neukölln, apparently unseen by the guards, and was reunited with relatives in the West.
- [An 18-year-old flees through automatic fire unhurt](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/eighteen-year-old-through-gunfire-1972/): 11 June 1972. On 11 June 1972 an 18-year-old East German fled through automatic-weapon fire from the border guards and reached West Berlin unhurt.
- [A West Berlin police sergeant with a woman under his back seat](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/west-berlin-policeman-sonnenallee-1972/): 5 October 1972. Shortly after midnight a West Berliner tried to drive a mother of four from Oberschöneweide out under the back seat of his car. Only when he was identified did the Stasi realise he was a serving West Berlin police officer.
- [Over the waterworks wall and onto the Schillingbrücke – 46 shots](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/schillingbruecke-circus-stoker-shot-1972/): 6 October 1972. A circus worker climbed the wall of the waterworks on Holzmarktstraße and the fence at the Schillingbrücke, and tried to cross the bridge. Guards fired 46 rounds; he collapsed about 30 metres past the bridge with life-threatening internal injuries.
- [Two cars stopped in one night at Heinrich-Heine-Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/heinrich-heine-strasse-two-cars-1972/): 8 October 1972 – 9 October 1972. Within three hours GDR controllers at the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing stopped two cars. In one was a schoolgirl from Lichtenberg, born in 1956, with four West German helpers; the other carried a lathe operator born in 1949 and a couple from Hamburg.
- [A head waiter hidden in a car trailer at Drewitz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bieber-car-trailer-drewitz-1972/): 14 October 1972. Two West German helpers, one a Free University student, tried to bring a head waiter from Friedrichshagen, born in 1927, into West Berlin hidden in a single-axle car trailer. The Stasi says the pair had already smuggled out several people over the transit routes.
- [Ellen Thiemann's escape car stopped at the border](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ellen-thiemann-hidden-car-1972/): 29 December 1972. The journalist Ellen Thiemann planned to leave the GDR with her eleven-year-old son Carsten in a specially prepared car. On 29 December 1972 she and her husband were arrested and she was later sentenced to three years and five months; after the Wall fell she learned from her Stasi files that her husband had been an informer.

## 1973
- [15-month-old Holger H. suffocates during his parents' escape](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/holger-h-drewitz-1973/): 22 January 1973. A young couple hid with their baby son in crates on a West Berlin acquaintance's truck. They passed the Drewitz checkpoint undetected, but when the crates were opened in the West, 15-month-old Holger was no longer breathing.
- [Volker Frommann jumps from a moving S-Bahn near the border](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/volker-frommann-s-bahn-pankow-1973/): 1 March 1973 – 5 March 1973. Shortly after midnight on 1 March 1973 Volker Frommann, born in 1944 in Thuringia, jumped out of a moving S-Bahn train about 50 metres from the border strip in Pankow, probably meaning to get through to West Berlin there. He died of his injuries four days later.
- [Horst Einsiedel shot on a ladder at Pankow cemetery](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/einsiedel-pankow-cemetery-1973/): 15 March 1973. Engineer Horst Einsiedel used two ladders from a cemetery tool shed to cross the fences at Pankow and was shot from a watchtower as he climbed the last wall. The Stasi hid his death from his wife for months.
- [Manfred Gertzki's armoured escape attempt at the Reichstag](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gertzki-reichstag-1973/): 27 April 1973. Wearing a home-made bulletproof vest and a steel-masked helmet, engineer Manfred Gertzki crept along the Spree bank by the Reichstag. He was shot two metres from the demarcation line and pushed into the river, where the armour dragged him down.
- [Three East Germans stopped by machine-pistol fire opposite the Märkisches Viertel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/maerkisches-viertel-three-fired-on-1973/): 8 July 1973. Just after détente had been celebrated in Helsinki, border guards stopped three East Germans at the Wall facing the Märkisches Viertel with several machine-pistol bursts and arrested them; angry West Berlin residents tore out a fence patching a hole in the Wall and set tyres on fire.
- [Klaus Gomert at the Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark – shot at, arrested, then expelled to the West](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-gomert-ludwig-jahn-sportpark-1973/): 20 July 1973 – 21 July 1973. In the night of 19–20 July 1973 East Berlin border guards fired bursts at a person presumably trying to escape by the Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark. On 21 July East Berlin police released 18-year-old Klaus Gomert to West Berlin, and ADN claimed he was the would-be escaper – Gomert contradicted parts of the East German account.
- [The Klein Glienicke Family Tunnel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klein-glienicke-tunnel-1973/): 26 July 1973. Two brothers, their wives and five children escaped from the GDR exclave of Klein Glienicke through a 19-metre tunnel dug with a child's spade during a heatwave.
- [Guards fire on two men at the Wall a day after another arrest](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/two-men-fired-on-wall-1973/): 16 September 1973. Early on 16 September 1973 East German guards foiled an attempt by two men to cross the Wall, firing at least four shots; the day before, guards had arrested another man trying to escape.
- [Thirty rounds at four escapers opposite Kohlhasenbrück](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kohlhasenbrueck-four-escapees-fired-on-1973/): 25 September 1973. On the evening of 25 September 1973 East German border guards fired about thirty rounds at four people apparently trying to cross into the American sector opposite Kohlhasenbrück. The four were led away; several bullets hit apartments on the West Berlin side.
- [Juergen Vicari tries to walk through Checkpoint Charlie in a US Army uniform](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/juergen-vicari-us-uniform-checkpoint-charlie-1973/): 31 October 1973. On 31 October 1973 East German guards at Checkpoint Charlie detained a man seen in US uniform with sergeant's stripes. According to his fiancée he was Juergen Vicari, an East Berlin actor who had planned to walk out through the checkpoint that day.
- [Klaus-Peter K. is caught on the patrol road](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klaus-peter-k-brunnenstrasse-1973/): 14 December 1973. Klaus-Peter K. got over the inner wall and the signal fence at Brunnenstraße but was arrested at the patrol road.
- [Four East Berliners in the cabinets of a US soldiers' VW bus](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/us-forces-vw-bus-four-east-berliners-1973/): 15 December 1973. On 15 December 1973 a doctor, his wife, their small child and another woman crossed Checkpoint Charlie hidden in cabinets inside a Volkswagen bus with US Army number plates. The East German guards missed them; US military police found them on the western side.

## 1974
- [Burkhard Niering's hostage escape attempt at Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/niering-checkpoint-charlie-1974/): 5 January 1974. Burkhard Niering, a conscript in the Volkspolizei alert units, left his guard post with his submachine gun, took a Stasi passport controller hostage at Checkpoint Charlie and tried to push through to the West. He was shot at the last barrier.
- [Karl-Heinz M. is caught past the inner wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/karl-heinz-m-sophienfriedhof-1974/): 18 January 1974. Karl-Heinz M. had climbed the inner wall and probably the signal fence before border soldiers arrested him in the strip.
- [A stranger in US uniform is held back at Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/us-uniform-checkpoint-charlie-1974/): 16 February 1974. At midday on 16 February 1974 two men in US Army uniform walked towards Checkpoint Charlie from the East. One was a US military policeman; the other, who had fallen in beside him, could show no ID and speak no English, and East German guards took him away.
- [Czesław Kukuczka: an exit visa, then a shot in the back at Friedrichstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/czeslaw-kukuczka-friedrichstrasse-1974/): 29 March 1974. A Polish fireman threatened to blow up the Polish embassy in East Berlin unless he was let through to West Berlin. He was given an exit visa and taken to the Friedrichstraße crossing by a Stasi officer, then shot in the back during the clearance procedure and bled to death in the Stasi prison hospital.
- [A jump from a moving S-Bahn at Bornholmer Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bornholmer-strasse-s-bahn-jump-1974/): 30 June 1974. An East Berlin lorry driver tried to jump from a moving S-Bahn where the tracks ran through the border strip at Bornholmer Straße; he fractured the base of his skull and was arrested by border troops.
- [A US soldier is stopped at Checkpoint Charlie with two East Germans](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/medley-us-soldier-checkpoint-charlie-1974/): 10 September 1974 – 17 September 1974. On the night of 10 September 1974 East Berlin guards stopped a US Army specialist's private car at Checkpoint Charlie and led a woman away from it. The Soviets held the soldier for a week and said he had tried to smuggle two GDR citizens into West Berlin.
- [Felled by a single aimed shot opposite Neukölln](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/neukoelln-sector-border-aimed-shot-1974/): 13 October 1974. On a Sunday afternoon in October 1974 West Berlin police watched a young man approach the Wall opposite Neukölln. An East German guard knelt and brought him down with one aimed shot; he was carried away, apparently wounded.

## 1975
- [Peuker's brother hidden in the tank of a converted car at Drewitz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/peuker-brother-car-tank-drewitz-1975/): 1975. In the mid-1970s Detlef Hubert Peuker, who had himself escaped in 1969, helped smuggle his brother out of the GDR through the Drewitz–Dreilinden crossing, hidden in the tank of a converted car.
- [The Swiss embassy cook's Mini: caught at Bornholmer Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gross-feurich-mini-bornholmer-strasse-1975/): 1 February 1975. A young Swiss cook at the Swiss embassy in East Berlin had already taken his East Berlin girlfriend to the Kurfürstendamm and back in the boot of his Mini. On 1 February 1975, after two Stasi informers had reported on him, the boot was opened at Bornholmer Straße.
- [Escape helper Hartmut Richter caught at Drewitz with his sister in the boot](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hartmut-richter-drewitz-arrest-1975/): 4 March 1975. After smuggling 33 people out in the boot of his car, escape helper Hartmut Richter was stopped at the Drewitz crossing with his own sister and her fiancé hidden inside, and sentenced to 15 years.
- [A family of three in the boot of a West Berlin car at Drewitz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/drewitz-family-car-boot-1975/): 9 March 1975. Three members of one family lay hidden in the boot of a car with West Berlin plates. At the Drewitz crossing the Stasi found them, arrested them and then made them climb back in so the scene could be photographed.
- [Herbert Halli shot while turning back at Zimmerstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/halli-zimmerstrasse-1975/): 3 April 1975. After a drinking session on the Palast der Republik building site, 21-year-old Herbert Halli climbed into the border strip at Zimmerstraße. He had already turned back when a guard shot him in the back.
- [A doctor's family in the boot of a US sergeant's Cadillac](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/peak-cadillac-trunk-checkpoint-charlie-1975/): 30 May 1975. On the evening of 30 May 1975 a US Army staff sergeant drove an East German doctor, his wife and son through Checkpoint Charlie in the boot of his 1969 Cadillac. The East German guards apparently noticed nothing; US military police found the family and took the sergeant into custody on the western side.
- [Herbert Kiebler shot near Mahlow; death disguised as suicide](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kiebler-mahlow-1975/): 27 June 1975. Shortly after midnight on 27 June 1975 Herbert Kiebler crossed the signal fence near Mahlow and was shot from about 100 metres as he left the vehicle trench. The Stasi told his family he had killed himself in a forest near Potsdam.
- [A pregnant woman and her husband behind the back seat of a US sergeant's Chevrolet](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/blue-chevrolet-hidden-compartment-checkpoint-charlie-1975/): 15 August 1975. Late on 15 August 1975 a US Army sergeant brought an East German couple, the wife pregnant, through Checkpoint Charlie in a hollowed-out space between the back seat and the boot of his Chevrolet. The East German guards looked closely but let him pass; US military police found the couple.
- [Thirty rounds near the Waßmannsdorfer Chaussee](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wassmannsdorfer-chaussee-automatic-fire-1975/): 21 November 1975. On the evening of 21 November 1975 two Kreuzberg residents saw an East German guard fire about 30 rounds from an automatic weapon at an unarmed man apparently trying to cross from the Schönefeld area into the American sector. He lay still for ten minutes before a military vehicle took him away.

## 1976
- [Look-alikes for hire: the Dawid organisation's couriers arrested in Potsdam](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dawid-lookalike-documents-invalidenstrasse-1976/): 4 February 1976. Three West Berliners went into the GDR as tourists. They were to hand their own identity papers, clothes and handbags to two East Germans, who would then leave through the Invalidenstraße crossing as their look-alikes. The Stasi arrested them in Potsdam.
- [Refugees in the boot of an embassy car: the Zaire attaché and the ARAMCO network](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/zaire-embassy-attache-diplomatic-car-1976/): 10 April 1976. An administrative attaché of Zaire's embassy in East Berlin used his diplomatic car to drive at least eight East Germans to West Berlin in the boot. The operation ended when his courier was arrested at the Friedrichstraße crossing.
- [Marina Prüfer and her son in a car boot](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/marina-pruefer-car-boot-1976/): July 1976. In July 1976 Marina Prüfer, a building draughtswoman from Neuenhagen whose exit application had put her under Stasi surveillance, reached West Berlin with her four-year-old son in the boot of a West German car.
- [Sealed van of the Mierendorff escape organisation stopped at Staaken](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/precht-sealed-van-staaken-1976/): 16 July 1976. An escape helper from near Hamburg picked up a man, his wife and a drugged child on the transit motorway and hid them in a customs-sealed van with a manipulated seal fitting; followed by two Wartburgs, he was stopped at the Staaken crossing and the van was opened.
- [A home-made ladder from the garden at Am Böttcherberg](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klein-glienicke-family-ladder-1976/): 27 August 1976. A painter, his wife and their four-year-old child cut through the rear fence opposite their garden in the Klein Glienicke enclave and climbed the 3.5 m Wall with a ladder they had built themselves.

## 1977
- [Dietmar Schwietzer killed near Schönwalde](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dietmar-schwietzer-1977/): 16 February 1977. An 18-year-old from Magdeburg got through several border fences at Schönwalde but was killed by gunfire a few metres from the Wall; four guards fired 91 rounds.
- [A former border officer helps Rainer P. over the Wall and is caught](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rainer-p-uwe-w-kremmener-strasse-1977/): May 1977. Having reconnoitred the border, the pair crossed every barrier from a back yard on Kremmener Straße; Uwe W. boosted Rainer P. over the Wall and was then arrested at its foot.
- [Henri Weise found drowned in the Spree at the Marschallbrücke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/henri-weise-spree-marschallbruecke-1977/): May 1977 – 27 July 1977. A 22-year-old from Thuringia whose applications to leave the GDR had been refused left his father's East Berlin flat on 17 May 1977 and never came back. Two months later his body was found in the Spree water barrier at the Marschallbrücke; he had probably tried to swim to West Berlin.
- [Emergency brake by the Wall at Bornholmer Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/emergency-brake-bornholmer-strasse-1977/): May 1977. An East Berlin youth pulled the emergency brake of a train passing near the Bornholmer Straße crossing point, jumped to the Wall and scrambled over it into West Berlin.
- [Two brothers in the luggage hold of a French army tour bus](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/french-military-tour-bus-brothers-treptow-1977/): 21 September 1977. On 21 September 1977 two young East German brothers crawled into the unlocked luggage hold of a French military tour bus parked at the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park, and rode in it to West Berlin.
- [Two young women in a car boot at Staaken](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/staaken-two-women-car-boot-1977/): 2 October 1977. A West Berliner working for an escape-helper group tried to take two women in their early twenties out in his boot through the Staaken crossing – one of them the daughter of an SED factory director, who wanted to marry her Turkish boyfriend in West Berlin.
- [In a US Air Force uniform at Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/eggebrecht-us-air-force-uniform-1977/): 15 November 1977. An East Berlin electrician who wanted to work as a musician in the West tried to leave through Checkpoint Charlie dressed as a US Air Force NCO, driven there by the American sergeant who had supplied the uniform, but was recognised and arrested by the Stasi.

## 1978
- [A 19-year-old reaches Staaken with a bullet wound in his hand](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/staaken-s-bahn-wounded-hand-1978/): 22 April 1978. In the early hours of 22 April 1978 a 19-year-old East German turned up at the S-Bahn station in Staaken with a gunshot wound in his hand. He told police he had been fired on as he crossed the border.
- [Two East Germans escape in a Belgian diplomat's car](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/belgian-diplomat-car-escape-1978/): June 1978. In June 1978 two East Germans who had befriended a Belgian diplomat in East Berlin knocked him out, altered his identity papers and drove his diplomatic car into West Berlin.
- [Two guards in one week dart through the Fichtewiese gate](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/fichtewiese-exclave-gate-guards-1978/): 11 June 1978 – 17 June 1978. West Berlin allotment holders reached their gardens in the Fichtewiese exclave through a gate in the Wall, with GDR guards checking their passes. On 11 and 17 June 1978 two of those guards simply ran through the door into the British sector.
- [Three students disguised as a border patrol climb the Wall on folding ladders](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/students-border-guard-disguise-ladders-1978/): July 1978. Three East German students got into the death strip in a car with military markings; the two men, disguised as border guards, climbed the Wall on folding ladders they had brought, and the woman had come in hidden in the back of the car.
- [LOT Flight 165: East Germans divert a Polish airliner to Tempelhof](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lot-165-hijack-tempelhof-1978/): 30 August 1978. When a plan to leave via Poland with forged papers fell through, two East Germans hijacked the LOT airliner flying from Gdańsk to East Berlin-Schönefeld and forced it down at Tempelhof in West Berlin.
- [Eva Röser in the petrol-tank space of a Lotus Seven](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/eva-roeser-lotus-seven-heinrich-heine-strasse-1978/): 7 October 1978. A pregnant 27-year-old East Berliner was driven through the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing by her West German boyfriend, hidden in the cavity left by the removed petrol tank of his Lotus Seven.

## 1979
- [Stasi officer Werner Stiller walks out through the Friedrichstraße agents' gate](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/werner-stiller-friedrichstrasse-1979/): 18 January 1979 – 19 January 1979. After breaking open safes at Stasi headquarters, First Lieutenant Werner Stiller of the foreign intelligence service used his service pass to get through the Stasi's own border gate at Friedrichstraße station and rode the U-Bahn into West Berlin.
- [Kerstin Land and her partner in a car boot](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kerstin-land-car-boot-1979/): July 1979. In July 1979 Kerstin Land, a Leipzig student watched by the Stasi after a leaflet action over Wolf Biermann's expatriation, reached West Berlin with her partner in the boot of a West German car.
- [The US ambassador's chauffeur smuggles his family out in the official car](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/habermann-us-ambassador-car-checkpoint-charlie-1979/): 25 August 1979. Joerg Habermann, an East German driver assigned to the US ambassador in East Berlin, hid his wife and six-year-old daughter in the boot of the ambassador's car, drove them through Checkpoint Charlie, went back to work – and walked across to the West himself that evening.
- [Mario E. gets away from the guards, then is caught by the police](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/mario-e-wolliner-strasse-1979/): 30 November 1979. Spotted by border troops at Wolliner Straße at 2 a.m., Mario E. got away, but the People's Police arrested him half an hour later in Eberswalder Straße.
- [Two young men climb the Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/two-young-men-climb-wall-1979/): 19 December 1979 – 20 December 1979. In the night of 19 to 20 December 1979 two young men climbed over the Berlin Wall from the East, West Berlin police reported.

## 1980
- [Two printers saw through a window and scale the Wall with grappling hooks](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/two-printers-grappling-hooks-1980/): February 1980. Two East German printers sawed through an iron-barred window in their newspaper building and climbed the Berlin Wall with grappling hooks and a rope, police said in February 1980.
- [Hitch-hiking on the U8](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wendt-u8-waisentunnel-1980/): 8 March 1980. An East Berlin U-Bahn signal mechanic led three relatives through a disused connecting tunnel to the West Berlin U8 line, stopped a western train with his signal lamp and asked for a lift.
- [Martin M. reaches the watchtower at Ackerstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/martin-m-ackerstrasse-1980/): 25 April 1980. A day after quitting his job, Martin M. climbed the inner wall at Ackerstraße and got as far as the watchtower before he was arrested.
- [Two East Germans escape over the Wall under fire, 7 September 1980](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/two-men-over-wall-under-fire-1980/): 7 September 1980. On 7 September 1980 two East Germans escaped over the Berlin Wall under fire from an East German border guard, the West Berlin police said.
- [Egon B.'s desertion and the death of Ulrich Steinhauer](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/egon-b-ulrich-steinhauer-eiskeller-1980/): 4 November 1980. Border soldier Egon B. disconnected the border communication system, shot his patrol leader Ulrich Steinhauer and climbed the Wall from the saddle of his service bicycle into Spandau; a West Berlin court later convicted him of manslaughter.
- [Marienetta Jirkowsky shot from a ladder at Hohen Neuendorf](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/marienetta-jirkowsky-1980/): 22 November 1980. 18-year-old Marienetta Jirkowsky and two friends climbed the border barriers with a ladder; the two young men reached West Berlin, but she was shot as her hands reached the top of the Wall.
- [Peter Grohganz drowns in the winter Spree](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/peter-grohganz-spree-oberbaumbruecke-1981/): December 1980 – 9 February 1981. On 9 February 1981 a GDR border boat found a body caught in a water barrier in the Spree east of the Oberbaumbrücke. It was Peter Grohganz, 32, from Premnitz, who had disappeared in December 1980; earlier that year he had asked to leave the GDR and then withdrawn the request.

## 1981
- [Hans-Jürgen Starrost shot during capture at Sigridshorst](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/starrost-sigridshorst-1981/): 14 April 1981. Facing a return to prison, 25-year-old Hans-Jürgen Starrost tried to climb into the border area at Teltow with a ladder. Caught and held, he was shot in the abdomen at close range and died a month later.
- [A Costa Rican diplomat's Ford Escort at Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/costa-rican-diplomat-checkpoint-charlie-1981/): 26 May 1981. A urologist from San José who had studied medicine in Halle tried to use his diplomatic passport to drive an East German woman out in his boot – for a promised 10,000 Deutschmarks.
- [An Erfurt dentist family in a US Army Ford – the six-hour stand-off at Drewitz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/erfurt-dentists-us-ford-drewitz-1981/): 28 June 1981 – 29 June 1981. Two US soldiers picked up two dentists from Erfurt and their ten-year-old son on the transit motorway. At Drewitz the Soviet commander refused to let the car through; after more than four hours of negotiation the American commander agreed to a joint check of the car.
- [A walkie-talkie from West Berlin: the planned break-out at Stolpe-Süd](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/stolpe-sued-walkie-talkie-plan-1981/): 1 August 1981. A 22-year-old East Berlin window cleaner was to cross at Stolpe-Süd on a radio command from West Berlin, through barriers that West Berliners had already damaged – and the crossing was to be filmed. The Stasi arrested him first.
- [Thomas Taubmann jumps from a freight train under the Bösebrücke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/taubmann-boesebruecke-1981/): 12 December 1981. On the evening of 12 December 1981 Thomas Taubmann climbed onto a freight train leaving Pankow and jumped off beneath the Bösebrücke, right at the border. He was found dead on the tracks.

## 1982
- [A bucket, the S-Bahn tracks and the bridge over the Gartenstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/woehlertstrasse-bucket-s-bahn-bridge-1982/): 19 January 1982. An unknown person stood a bucket against the rear wall in a Mitte back yard, climbed onto the tracks of the North-South S-Bahn and walked across the railway bridge into Wedding.
- [Emergency brake and ladder south of the Bösebrücke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bornholmer-strasse-emergency-brake-ladder-1982/): 3 March 1982. Two men pulled the emergency brake of an S-Bahn train on the curve at Bornholmer Straße, got out and climbed the border barriers into Wedding with a ladder.
- [The Abandoned Sigridshorst Tunnel](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/sigridshorst-tunnel-1982/): 22 April 1982. A train driver and his wife dug 17 metres of tunnel from their cellar but gave up with the border still several hundred metres away; a later balloon plan was betrayed and both were imprisoned.
- [Two dentists and their son in the boot of a US Army Volvo](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/may-family-us-volvo-drewitz-1982/): 25 April 1982. Two American soldiers picked up a dentist couple from Cottbus and their four-year-old son at a transit car park and hid them in the boot. The GDR had noticed – and the Soviets held the car at Drewitz until the US military police opened the boot.

## 1983
- [Holger Bethke and Michael Becker slide over the Wall on a steel cable](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bethke-becker-zipline-1983/): 31 March 1983. Using a bow and arrow to shoot a line over the border strip, Holger Bethke and his friend Michael Becker rigged a steel cable and rode home-made pulleys over the Wall from Treptow.
- [The S-Bahn hijacking at Friedrichstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/s-bahn-hijack-friedrichstrasse-1983/): 27 May 1983. 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.
- [Stolen tipper truck at Heinrich-Heine-Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/katte-tipper-truck-heinrich-heine-strasse-1983/): 28 July 1983. A 21-year-old postal driver stole a KrAZ tipper truck and smashed through the gates of the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing, but was stopped by the roll barrier.
- [Two young men from Prenzlauer Berg cross the Wall with a window-cleaner's ladder](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/klein-klotzer-police-hospital-ladder-1983/): 2 September 1983. After an evening in a Prenzlauer Berg pub, two young men went onto the grounds of the Volkspolizei hospital, where one of them worked as a cleaner, and climbed the border barriers with his cleaning ladder while guards opened fire.
- [Ronni S. and the painter's ladder](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ronni-s-stepladder-1983/): 10 November 1983. Ronni S. tried to get over the Wall with a painter's stepladder and was arrested in the border strip.
- [Two border guards meant to watch each other swim the Teltow Canal together](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/teltowkanal-two-guards-us-sector-1983/): 23 December 1983. At about 1 a.m. on 23 December 1983 two East German border guards, paired so that each could watch the other, swam the Teltow Canal in uniform to a suburb in the American sector. They flagged down a car and were driven to a café, from where they called the police.
- [Silvio Proksch shot on Christmas Day at Pankow cemetery](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/silvio-proksch-1983/): 25 December 1983. On Christmas evening 1983 the 21-year-old bricklayer climbed the cemetery fence into the border strip without any plan and was shot; he bled to death before he received treatment.

## 1984
- [Watchtower fire at Neukölln: one of two climbers gets over](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/neukoelln-two-men-fired-on-1984/): 8 April 1984. Late on Sunday 8 April 1984 East German guards fired on two men scrambling over the Wall at Neukölln; a 20-year-old reached the West, but his companion, caught with him on top of the Wall, did not.
- [Trabant against the Staaken barrier](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/trabant-staaken-1984/): 2 June 1984. A 38-year-old driver tried to force his Trabant through the Staaken crossing but crashed into a heavy barrier at the passport control line.
- [Ladder escape at Brunnenstraße despite an aimed shot](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/brunnenstrasse-ladder-escape-1984/): 24 July 1984. An unknown man climbed the inner wall with a ladder, set off the alarm cutting the signal fence, and got over the Wall after the Schönholzer Straße tower fired a warning shot and a missed aimed shot.
- [Two hang gliders on a tower-block roof in the Leipziger Straße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/leipziger-strasse-twin-hang-gliders-1984/): 24 October 1984. Two men carried two home-built hang gliders up to the roof of a Leipziger Straße tower block, changed the lock on the roof door and tried to launch towards West Berlin. The wind was wrong, they gave up and left, leaving the gliders behind.
- [A window cleaner's hang glider, carried to night practice by public transport](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/leipziger-strasse-motor-glider-plan-1984/): 27 October 1984. A 26-year-old glass and building cleaner built two hang gliders, practised at night on the edge of Berlin and scouted the Leipziger Straße tower blocks as a launch site. A tip from the public about glider parts stored in an attic led to his arrest.
- [Michael Schmidt shot at Schulzestraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/michael-schmidt-1984/): 1 December 1984. A 20-year-old carpenter used ladders from his worksite to climb into the border strip at Schulzestraße; shot in the back and knee, he waited almost an hour for an ambulance and died in hospital.

## 1985
- [Ladder escape from Kleinmachnow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kleinmachnow-ladder-1985/): 14 July 1985. An 18-year-old used a ladder at Erlenweg in Kleinmachnow to get into the death strip and crossed every barrier under fire; a Stasi report blamed a lamp that kept going dark for 30 seconds.
- [A water police officer sails his patrol boat to the West](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/water-police-officer-patrol-boat-1985/): 19 September 1985. In September 1985 a GDR water police officer slipped away from his colleagues, boarded his service boat, faked a routine patrol and motored across the water border to West Berlin.

## 1986
- [Telecom fitter runs through Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/telecom-fitter-checkpoint-charlie-1986/): 17 January 1986. A 21-year-old East Berlin telecommunications fitter, installing surveillance cameras at Checkpoint Charlie, used an unguarded moment to run through the control area to West Berlin.
- ["Ladder of success" at Glienicke/Nordbahn](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/glienicke-nordbahn-ladder-1986/): 20 January 1986. Shortly after midnight a man used a two-metre ladder to climb the rear wall at Glienicke/Nordbahn, set off the signal fence, ran the last 17 metres and used the same ladder to get over the final wall — the guards never saw him.
- [Frank K. is caught at the signal fence](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/frank-k-brunnenstrasse-1986/): 27 January 1986. An applicant for an exit visa who worked near the border prepared tools and a change of trousers, got over the inner wall, and was arrested climbing the signal fence.
- [A teenage couple climbs the Wall with fence boards and swims the Spree](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/spree-teenage-couple-wooden-fence-1986/): August 1986. In August 1986 an East Berlin apprentice bricklayer and his 17-year-old girlfriend used parts of a wooden fence to climb the Wall on the eastern bank of the Spree and swam the short distance to West Berlin. The escape was kept secret until September so the route could stay open.
- [Two border guards climb the Wall at Groß Ziethen and celebrate in a West Berlin tavern](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gross-ziethen-two-guards-tavern-1986/): 17 August 1986. Days after the Wall's 25th anniversary, two East German border guards left their watchtower, helped each other up the Wall between Groß Ziethen and Neukölln, threw their guns back into the East and went to a West Berlin tavern.
- [Gravel truck through Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gravel-truck-checkpoint-charlie-1986/): 29 August 1986. Truck driver Hans-Joachim Pofahl, his partner and their eight-month-old baby smashed through Checkpoint Charlie in a truck loaded with five tonnes of gravel.
- [Over the rear wall and across the Bösebrücke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bornholmer-strasse-checkpoint-ladder-1986/): 2 September 1986. A janitor and an assistant bricklayer climbed into the Bornholmer Straße checkpoint area with a ladder, got into the diplomats' lane and simply walked across the Bösebrücke — guards who saw them assumed they had been cleared.
- [Sacrower See – one friend makes it, Rainer Liebeke drowns](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/rainer-liebeke-sacrower-see/): 3 September 1986. Rainer Liebeke and his friend Dirk K. tried to swim about 500 metres across the Sacrower See; the friend reached West Berlin, but Liebeke, still recovering from a broken collarbone, drowned.
- [A car rams the closed gate at Drewitz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/drewitz-car-ramming-1986/): 10 September 1986. At about 2.20 a.m. two people drove a car into a closed gate at the Drewitz crossing. Guards fired warning shots and arrested both, as lorry drivers arriving in West Berlin reported.
- [Three young people swim the Teltow Canal](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/three-youths-teltowkanal-1986/): 24 September 1986. Shortly after 2 a.m. three young people used a wooden ladder to scale the barriers in Teltow and swam the 40-metre-wide Teltow Canal to Zehlendorf, helped by a guard's lost magazine.
- [A tower guard climbs the fence at the Spree behind the Reichstag](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/guard-spree-reichstag-1986/): 27 September 1986. At midday on a Saturday a 22-year-old East German soldier on watch near the Brandenburg Gate slipped away while his partner was briefly gone and climbed a metal fence on the Spree behind the Reichstag into West Berlin.
- [Lada crash at Chausseestraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lada-chausseestrasse-1986/): 27 September 1986. Two young East Berliners drove a Lada through the gate at Chausseestraße at 80 km/h but crashed into a barrier and were jailed for over four years.
- [A landscape architect dives through the Jungfernsee barrier](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/diver-jungfernsee-1986/): 8 October 1986. A 29-year-old landscape architect in a diving suit slipped through a corroded gap in the underwater barrier at Nedlitz and swam to West Berlin north of the Glienicker Brücke.
- [Two East Germans climb the barriers at Checkpoint Charlie and are caught](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/checkpoint-charlie-barrier-climbers-caught-1986/): 30 October 1986. On Thursday 30 October 1986 two East Germans tried to reach West Berlin by climbing over the barriers at Checkpoint Charlie. East German border guards took them away after a brief struggle.
- [Dieter H.'s folding-ladder escape under fire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/dieter-h-brunnenstrasse-ladder-1986/): 19 November 1986. A toolmaker who had been refused permission to emigrate and jailed for two years built a small collapsible ladder, cut through the signal fence at Brunnenstraße and got over the 3.6-metre Wall while twelve shots were fired at him.
- [Volkmar Kienöl and Klaus Kuschmierz try to glide to the Springer building](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kienoel-kuschmierz-hang-gliders-1986/): 19 November 1986. Two young men spent a night on the roof of a Leipziger Straße tower block beside two home-made hang gliders, planning to land in front of the Axel Springer building in West Berlin just 200 metres away. They came down short of the Wall.
- [Manfred Mäder and René Gross – lifting-platform truck at Karpfenteichstraße](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/maeder-gross-karpfenteichstrasse-1986/): 21 November 1986. Two East Berliners who had applied to leave the GDR drove a stolen truck with a lifting platform through a gate in the rear border wall in Treptow. Border guards opened continuous fire and both men were killed.
- [Michael Bittner shot at Glienicke/Nordbahn](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/michael-bittner-1986/): 24 November 1986. The 25-year-old climbed the inner wall with a wooden ladder and was shot in the back as he reached the final wall; the Stasi then erased almost every trace of his death.
- [One gets over, one is caught: Mahlow to Lichtenrade](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/mahlow-lichtenrade-1986/): 2 December 1986. Two workmates from Beelitz helped each other over the barriers at Mahlow-Waldblick; the 22-year-old made it over the three-metre Wall into Lichtenrade while his 18-year-old companion was arrested.
- [A 22-year-old climbs the border fence into Kreuzberg](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kreuzberg-border-fence-22-year-old-1986/): 10 December 1986. Late on Wednesday 10 December 1986 a 22-year-old East German climbed over the fortified border fence into West Berlin's Kreuzberg district and escaped unharmed.
- [Failed motorised hang-glider escape near Potsdam](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/hang-glider-fahrland-1986/): 20 December 1986. A 37-year-old toolmaker took off in a home-built motorised hang glider towards West Berlin, but poor visibility, disorientation and the cold forced him down in the GDR.

## 1987
- [Lutz Schmidt shot helping his friend over the Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/lutz-schmidt-1987/): 12 February 1987. Truck drivers Lutz Schmidt and Peter Schulze drove to the border with ladders; Schmidt helped his colleague onto the Wall and was shot dead as he tried to follow.
- [Thomas Mahler gives his passport to an East Berlin youth](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/thomas-mahler-passport-east-berlin-1987/): May 1987. In May 1987 Thomas Mahler, a law student from Wiesbaden visiting East Berlin with his scout group, gave his passport to a young East Berliner who looked like him. The youth got out; Mahler was arrested at the border when he tried to report his passport missing.
- [Two men flee over the Wall into Lübars a day before their army call-up](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/luebars-conscripts-shots-1987/): 4 May 1987. On 4 May 1987 two East Germans aged 23 and 26, due to be inducted into the army the next day, climbed over the Wall into the rural Lübars area of West Berlin while shots were fired. Both arrived unhurt.
- [Jens Bernhardt waits until his partner falls asleep and climbs the fence into Spandau](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/jens-bernhardt-spandau-fence-1987/): July 1987. In July 1987 a young conscript border guard hid his sleeping tower partner's ammunition at 3 a.m., climbed down and pulled himself over the steel-mesh fence into Spandau with metal hooks. He later spoke publicly about how the shoot-to-kill order was applied.
- [A border guard in camouflage runs through the Spandau forest under fire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/spandau-forest-guard-camouflage-1987/): 6 July 1987. On Monday 6 July 1987 an East German border guard in a camouflage suit ran through the Spandau forest in north-west Berlin and reached West Berlin, dodging about 30 rounds of gunfire.
- [18-year-old flies a light aircraft from Potsdam to RAF Gatow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/thomas-k-plane-to-gatow-1987/): 15 July 1987. On only his second solo flight, 18-year-old Thomas K. took off in a single-engine plane south of Potsdam and landed at the British airfield in Gatow.
- [Dogs, three shots and an arrest at the Sonnenallee crossing](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/sonnenallee-crossing-shots-arrest-1987/): 18 August 1987. Early on 18 August 1987 West Berlin police and customs officers at the Sonnenallee crossing heard dogs barking and three shots on the East Berlin side, then saw border guards lead away a man who had tried to escape. The three Western commandants protested the use of force.
- [A couple's dump truck sticks in the barriers opposite Zehlendorf – and a friend films it](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/zehlendorf-dump-truck-couple-filmed-1987/): 25 September 1987. On the evening of 25 September 1987 a young woman and a man tried to break through the border opposite Zehlendorf with a truck. The attempt failed and East German border guards arrested them. A friend in West Berlin filmed it.
- [Two men scale the Wall into Kreuzberg](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kreuzberg-two-men-scale-wall-1987/): 26 September 1987. On Saturday 26 September 1987 two East German men evaded the guards, scaled the Berlin Wall and entered West Berlin's Kreuzberg district.
- [An 18-year-old climbs into Neukölln with a ladder and swims a canal](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/treptow-neukoelln-ladder-canal-1987/): 3 December 1987. On the night of 3 December 1987 an 18-year-old East German dodged border patrols in the Treptow area, climbed the Wall with a ladder and swam a canal into Neukölln. He telephoned West Berlin police to report his escape.
- [Wolga car on the Glienicke Bridge](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/wolga-glienicker-bruecke-1987/): 9 December 1987. Two men from Potsdam tried to ram a Wolga M 21 through the barriers on the Glienicke Bridge but were stopped at the very first gate.

## 1988
- [Truck full of gas cylinders over the Glienicke Bridge](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gas-cylinder-truck-glienicker-bruecke-1988/): 10 March 1988. Three men drove a truck disguised as a hazardous-goods transport and loaded with 92 empty gas cylinders through four barriers on the Glienicke Bridge. It was the first successful escape over the bridge.
- [Building cleaner's window-ladder escape](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/treptow-window-cleaners-ladder-1988/): 19 April 1988. A 31-year-old building cleaner used a window-cleaning ladder to cross every barrier from Treptow into Neukölln while two guards fired 18 shots at him without a hit.
- [Over the gate and into the control area at Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/checkpoint-charlie-gate-drunk-driver-1988/): 16 July 1988. A 23-year-old lorry driver working on Berlin building sites climbed a gate and a wire fence and tried to get through the control area at Checkpoint Charlie. People on the western viewing platform watched his arrest, and Western media published photos taken from there.
- [Four swim the Spree by the Reichstag as West Berliners watch](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/four-swimmers-spree-reichstag-1988/): 21 August 1988. Four East Germans fled through the Spree near the Reichstag in front of many West Berlin onlookers; the crew of the pursuing border patrol boat did not open fire and all four reached the West unhurt.
- [Guards shoot at a tipper truck approaching the Chausseestraße crossing](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/chausseestrasse-tipper-truck-1988/): 31 August 1988. Two young men and a woman drove a tipper truck towards the Chausseestraße crossing; East German guards fired three to six shots and the three were led away, apparently unhurt.
- [Two men swim the Havel with a patrol boat behind them](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/havel-swimmers-tegel-1988/): 2 September 1988. In the early hours of 2 September 1988 two men swam across the Havel in the north of Berlin and reached West Berlin unhurt, although a GDR border patrol boat chased them.
- [Two border guards cross from the Potsdam district to Kladow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/border-guards-kladow-1988/): 3 September 1988. On 3 September 1988 two members of the GDR border troops on duty in the Potsdam district crossed into Kladow, in the south-west of West Berlin.
- [Two young metalworkers set off the alarm lights and still get through at Buckow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/buckow-gross-ziethen-metalworkers-1988/): 5 September 1988. At 3.20 a.m. on 5 September 1988 two metalworkers aged 18 and 21 climbed the barriers between the Groß Ziethen allotment colony and Buckow; they triggered the alarm lights but the guards did not stop them.
- [Two young men run through the Brandenburg Gate and stop at a warning shot](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/brandenburg-gate-warning-shot-1988/): 25 September 1988. On the evening of 25 September 1988 two young East Berliners ran through the Brandenburg Gate towards the West; they stopped when a guard fired a warning shot and were led away.
- [Two get over the Wall at Bethaniendamm under fire; their companion is caught](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bethaniendamm-shots-1988/): 28 September 1988. At about 12.30 p.m. on 28 September 1988 two East Berliners aged 20 and 21 climbed the Wall at Bethaniendamm into Kreuzberg despite shots; a 20-year-old woman who wanted to go with them was arrested.
- [A man and a woman swim the Havel to Heiligensee in the dark](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/havel-heiligensee-couple-1988/): 29 September 1988. Before dawn on 29 September 1988 a 34-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman swam about 450 yards across the Havel from near Nieder Neuendorf to Heiligensee, eluding a GDR patrol boat; a passer-by took them to the nearest police station.
- [A border guard disables his partner's gun and crosses at Ostpreußendamm](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ostpreussendamm-armed-guard-1988/): 28 November 1988. On 28 November 1988 a member of the GDR border troops fled to West Berlin with his weapon at the Ostpreußendamm in Steglitz, after removing the bolt from his patrol partner's submachine gun.

## 1989
- [A farmer climbs the Wall into Lichtenrade with a ladder under fire](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/tutzinger-strasse-ladder-1989/): January 1989. In an escape reported on 6 January 1989, a 34-year-old farmer from the GDR used a ladder to get over the border installations at Tutzinger Straße in Lichtenrade; by his own account he was shot at three times.
- [Ingolf Diederichs dies jumping from an S-Bahn at Bösebrücke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/ingolf-diederichs-1989/): 13 January 1989. The 24-year-old climbed out of a moving S-Bahn train with a home-made folding ladder near the Bornholmer Straße crossing, got caught on the train and was killed.
- [Thomas Drescher and his friend caught at the Wall in Glienicke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/thomas-drescher-glienicke-ladder-1989/): 24 January 1989. On the night of 24 January 1989 the carpenter Thomas Drescher and his friend Dirk set a ladder against the Wall at Glienicke/Nordbahn and climbed, but a dog barked, a searchlight caught them and three armed border guards surrounded them. He was sentenced to 15 months and ransomed by West Germany in October 1989.
- [A bricklayer scrambles over the Wall from Pankow to Wedding – seen, but not shot at](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/pankow-wedding-bricklayer-1989/): 26 January 1989. Early on 26 January 1989 a 23-year-old East German bricklayer scrambled over the Wall from Pankow into Wedding. Border guards saw him but did not open fire.
- [Chris Gueffroy, the last escaper shot dead at the Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/chris-gueffroy-1989/): 5 February 1989. Chris Gueffroy, 20, and his friend Christian Gaudian tried to climb the border fences at the Britzer Zweigkanal, believing the order to shoot had been lifted; Gueffroy was shot through the heart and Gaudian was wounded and arrested.
- [Martin Notev is dragged back out of the Spree at the West Berlin bank](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/martin-notev-spree-1989/): 14 February 1989. Martin Notev and two young neighbours smashed through the barriers with a truck and jumped into the Spree near the Reichstag. The neighbours escaped; Notev was pulled back by the hair from the West Berlin quay wall by a GDR patrol boat crew.
- [Winfried Freudenberg's fatal gas balloon flight](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/winfried-freudenberg-balloon/): 8 March 1989. The last refugee to die at the Berlin Wall, as the Chronik der Mauer counts it: Winfried Freudenberg crossed into West Berlin in a home-made natural-gas balloon but was killed when it came down in Zehlendorf.
- [Tipper truck and ladder in Staaken](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/tipper-truck-staaken-1989/): 10 March 1989. Three men tried to flatten the border fences in Staaken with a tipper truck and climb the Wall with a ladder, but the truck stuck in the second fence and one of them was shot.
- [Three men break through the first control point at Drewitz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/drewitz-car-three-men-1989/): 31 March 1989. Late on 31 March 1989 a car with GDR plates and three men aboard broke through the first control point at Drewitz and hit a barrier; the three were led away. Travellers reported shots, which the GDR denied.
- [Jan-Michael G.'s truck is caught in a cable barrier](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/jan-michael-g-truck-ruppiner-strasse-1989/): 8 April 1989. On 8 April 1989 a heavy truck broke through both service gates at Ruppiner Straße but was stopped by a cable barrier designed to catch lorries.
- [Over the barrier at Chausseestraße in front of western cameras](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/chausseestrasse-barrier-jump-1989/): 8 April 1989. Two young East Berliners jumped over the barrier at the Chausseestraße crossing; a passport controller fired a shot (a warning shot, according to the Stasi files) and both were arrested, while western journalists who had been tipped off recorded the attempt.
- [Stolen truck stuck in the death strip at Glienicke](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/kras-truck-glienicke-nordbahn-1989/): 26 April 1989. A 21-year-old steelworker broke through the inner wall with a stolen truck but got stuck in the sand of the death strip after hitting a lamp post.
- [Citroën at the Stolpe crossing](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/citroen-stolpe-1989/): 9 May 1989. A 27-year-old fitter drove a Citroën through the first barrier at Stolpe at 80 km/h, losing the car's roof, before crashing into the base of a second barrier.
- [Ultralight flight from Treptower Park to the Reichstag](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/bethke-brothers-microlights-1989/): 26 May 1989. Two brothers who had already fled flew ultralight aircraft from West Berlin to Treptower Park at dawn; one landed to pick up their brother Egbert, and both aircraft came down in front of the Reichstag.
- [Škoda through three barriers at Mahlow](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/skoda-mahlow-1989/): 29 June 1989. A 27-year-old electrician approached the Mahlow crossing at walking pace, then accelerated through three barriers before crashing into a heavy crash barrier.
- [Guards order a 24-year-old to halt but hold their fire as he scales the Wall](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/guards-hold-fire-24-year-old-scales-wall-1989/): 5 July 1989. On Wednesday 5 July 1989 East German border guards ordered a 24-year-old man to halt as he scaled the Berlin Wall, but did not fire when he defied them; he reached the West.
- [Trabant caught by a steel cable at Drewitz](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/trabant-drewitz-1989/): 8 August 1989. On 8 August 1989 a 33-year-old man from Belzig drove his Trabant into the Drewitz crossing, where a steel cable barrier stopped him.
- [ZIL truck overturned at Stolpe](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/zil-truck-stolpe-1989/): 15 August 1989. A 28-year-old man drove a ZIL-131 truck through several gates at the Stolpe crossing until it overturned against another barrier.
- [Hans-Peter and Peggy Spitzner in an American's car boot through Checkpoint Charlie](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/spitzner-father-daughter-us-car-checkpoint-charlie-1989/): 18 August 1989. In August 1989 a teacher from Chemnitz and his seven-year-old daughter crossed Checkpoint Charlie hidden in the car boot of a young American, Eric Yaw. A Saxon memorial foundation calls them the last known Wall refugees.
- [Gabriela M. tries to escape while East Berlin demonstrates](https://berlinwallescapes.com/escapes/gabriela-m-brunnenstrasse-1989/): 7 October 1989. While thousands demonstrated in East Berlin on 7 October 1989, a young woman from Eberswalde tried to escape at Brunnenstraße and was arrested just before midnight.