Themes · When
Night, fog and ice
Escapes made under cover of darkness or fog, or across ice and snow.
26 events: 20 successful escapes, 1 partly successful escape and 5 fatal attempts. At least 45 people reached the West in these events. The records span 1961–1989. Most used methods: over the wall 9, swimming 7, guards who fled 3.
Often together with: Shots fired (6), Border houses (3), Alarms, dogs and searchlights (2), Children and families (2), Cover-ups (2), Drowned (2)
23 August 1961
Two men of about 18 climb the wall to the goods yard at Eberswalder Straße
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.
30 August 1961
Two escapes in one night from Bernauer Straße 2
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.
8 September 1961
A Barkas van breaks through at the Brandenburg Gate
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.
10 September 1961
A lorry feints a turn, then ploughs through the Wall at Adalbertstraße
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.
20 September 1961
Five fire engines for two jumpers at Bernauer Straße 10
Just after midnight guards watched five fire engines take up position with jumping sheets; shortly afterwards two people jumped.
22 November 1961
Bernd Sp. leaves only his briefcase behind
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.
March 1962
Annemarie Salzmann crawls through the wire at the Heidekrautbahn embankment
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.
26 October 1962
Two young men swing over the Sophien cemetery wall under fire
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.
5 December 1962 – 6 December 1962
Günter Wiedenhöft – through the ice of the Griebnitzsee
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.
27 December 1962
Circus artiste Horst Klein on the high-voltage line
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.
1 January 1963
Hans Räwel – New Year's morning in the icy Spree
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.
24 January 1963
Peter Kreitlow – shot by Soviet soldiers near Nieder Neuendorf
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.
31 January 1963
Two trainees swim through the ice floes of the Nieder Neuendorfer See
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.
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.
5 November 1965
Two young conscripts vanish in the fog at Bergmann-Borsig
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.
20 October 1968
110 bottles of hydrogen and a plastic balloon – then two families climb the fence at Groß Glienicke
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.
27 October 1968
The guards couldn't open their window: folding-ladder escape at Schönholzer Straße
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.
December 1980 – 9 February 1981
Peter Grohganz drowns in the winter Spree
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.
23 December 1983
Two border guards meant to watch each other swim the Teltow Canal together
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.
August 1986
A teenage couple climbs the Wall with fence boards and swims the Spree
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.
July 1987
Jens Bernhardt waits until his partner falls asleep and climbs the fence into Spandau
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.
3 December 1987
An 18-year-old climbs into Neukölln with a ladder and swims a canal
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.
2 September 1988
Two men swim the Havel with a patrol boat behind them
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.
5 September 1988
Two young metalworkers set off the alarm lights and still get through at Buckow
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.
29 September 1988
A man and a woman swim the Havel to Heiligensee in the dark
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.
8 March 1989
Winfried Freudenberg's fatal gas balloon flight
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.
