Berlin Wall Escapes1961–1989

Methods

Ziplines and cables

Sliding or climbing hand over hand along a line stretched above the border strip.

Black-and-white photo: street signs for Niederkirchnerstraße and Wilhelmstraße in front of a graffiti-covered wall; behind it an empty strip, a second wall and large stone buildings.
The Berlin Wall at the corner of Niederkirchnerstraße and Wilhelmstraße, 1988, looking east from West Berlin. Here the Wall ran past the GDR's Haus der Ministerien, from whose roof the Holzapfel family escaped along a cable in 1965. Photo: Fortepan / Urbán Tamás. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Related methods: window jumps, over the wall, aircraft and balloons

  1. 27 December 1962

    Circus artiste Horst Klein on the high-voltage line

    A circus artiste tried to cross the Teltow Canal hand over hand 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.

    Reached the West · Treptow-Köpenick / Neukölln

  2. 28 July 1965 – 29 July 1965

    The Holzapfel family's cable slide from the Haus der Ministerien

    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.

    Reached the West · Mitte

  3. 31 March 1983

    Holger Bethke and Michael Becker slide over the Wall on a steel cable

    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.

    Reached the West · Treptow-Köpenick