Themes · Where the record comes from
Witness accounts
Records that draw on the testimony of eyewitnesses or of the escapees themselves, in interviews and memoirs.
23 events: 21 successful escapes and 2 failed attempts. At least 34 people reached the West in these events. The records span 1961–1989. Most used methods: over the wall 9, hidden in vehicles 5, false papers and disguises 3.
Often together with: Escape helpers (13), Children and families (7), Barbed wire and fences (4), Borrowed and forged passports (3), Ladders (3), Prison, ransom and expulsion (3)
August 1961
A hairdresser cuts the wire at the Kiefholzstraße allotments for his daughter
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.
13 August 1961
Manfred Wenzel swims the Teltow Canal on the first evening
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.
13 August 1961
Manfred Roseneit leaves his scooter at the Kiefholzstraße fence
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.
14 August 1961
Peter Hohmann sprints past the guards at Brunnenstraße
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.
15 August 1961
Renate Reich crosses at Harzer Straße on a forged identity card
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.
10 September 1961
Policeman Gerd Sommerlatte flees at the Brandenburg Gate and is kidnapped back
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.
28 September 1961
Joachim Rudolph through the Tegeler Fließ
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.
October 1961
Peter Hertel's forged BEWAG order and a gas worker's ladder
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.
October 1961
Michael Synowzik through the sewer under Checkpoint Charlie
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.
2 October 1961 – 3 October 1961
Helgard Bromberger and four others through a rainwater sewer from Spittelmarkt
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.
25 December 1961
Michael Mara and a fellow patrol leader climb the wire at Kohlhasenbrück on Christmas morning
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.
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.
May 1962
Reinhard Spiller drives his parents out on a forged diplomatic pass
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.
March 1965
A bookshop assistant leaves in the boot of two French officers' car
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.
November 1966
Michael Schwerk pulls the S-Bahn emergency brake
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.
November 1969
Detlef Hubert Peuker over the Wall from a Bernauer Straße yard
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.
29 December 1972
Ellen Thiemann's escape car stopped at the border
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.
1975
Peuker's brother hidden in the tank of a converted car at Drewitz
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.
July 1976
Marina Prüfer and her son in a car boot
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.
July 1979
Kerstin Land and her partner in a car boot
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.
2 September 1983
Two young men from Prenzlauer Berg cross the Wall with a window-cleaner's ladder
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.
May 1987
Thomas Mahler gives his passport to an East Berlin youth
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.
24 January 1989
Thomas Drescher and his friend caught at the Wall in Glienicke
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.