Friedrichstraße station
The East Berlin station where trains, S-Bahn and U-Bahn lines from the West met the border controls.
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.
10 December 1961 – 11 December 1961
Ingo Krüger – a diver's attempt to reach his fiancée
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.
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.
January 1964
Jumping onto the Moscow–Paris Express behind Friedrichstraße
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 slipped, was badly hurt and was arrested.
14 March 1964
The wheelchair on the S-Bahn to Zoo
Two young men, one of them posing as a frail wheelchair user, broke open the lift to the westbound platform at Friedrichstraße and let the S-Bahn staff help them onto a train to Bahnhof Zoo.
16 May 1964
The borrowed identity card: a wife crosses on a stranger's papers
A man who had fled the GDR in 1963 took a young woman from Holstein on a trip to East Berlin, kept her papers 'for safety' – and his wife, who resembled her, left through Friedrichstraße on them.
19 May 1964
A 'lost' Danish passport at Friedrichstraße
Fifteen minutes after someone had left East Berlin on her passport, a young Danish woman turned up at the Friedrichstraße crossing to report her handbag stolen.
January 1965
Through a cut grille between the S-Bahn platforms
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.
10 January 1969
A kick through the glass wall at Friedrichstraße
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.
24 July 1971
A Danish tour guide, a doctored passport and a 16-year-old from Rostock
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.
10 April 1976
Refugees in the boot of an embassy car: the Zaire attaché and the ARAMCO network
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.
18 January 1979 – 19 January 1979
Stasi officer Werner Stiller walks out through the Friedrichstraße agents' gate
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.
27 May 1983
The S-Bahn hijacking at Friedrichstraße
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.
