False papers and disguises
Borrowed passports, forged papers and uniforms used to walk out through the official crossings.
Related methods: hidden in vehicles, guards who fled
18 August 1961
Two 'postal workers' cycle to the West
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.
6 October 1961
Sewer escape helper Carl-August von Halle walks into a Stasi trap
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.
21 October 1961
Hasso Herschel leaves on a Swiss passport
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.
21 December 1961
Joachim Neumann's Swiss passport
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.
16 August 1965
In the shadow of a tourist bus at Checkpoint Charlie
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.
15 November 1977
In a US Air Force uniform at Checkpoint Charlie
An East Berlin musician 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 the Stasi was waiting.