1972
On 3 June 1972 the Four Power final protocol was signed and the Transit Agreement and the visiting rules of December 1971 could come into force.1 West Berliners could now spend up to 30 days a year in the East, and the searches on the transit routes were to stop.2 The Chronik der Mauer notes that the agreement gave escape help a temporary new lease of life, and that travel to Poland and Czechoslovakia without passport or visa from January was followed by a sudden rise in attempts to flee to the Federal Republic through Czechoslovakia.34 From 16 October anyone who had fled before 1972 lost GDR citizenship and could use the transit routes without risk of arrest.5
Several 1972 records here are cars with hidden passengers, stopped at Sonnenallee, Heinrich-Heine-Straße and Drewitz in October, and Ellen Thiemann's prepared car in December. At the Wall three men dug a short tunnel under Zimmerstraße in January, and Manfred Weylandt was shot in the Spree in February.
Sources for this text
- Chronik 1972: JuniChronik der Mauer
- Transitabkommen (LeMO)Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland
- Flucht, Fluchthilfe, WiderstandChronik der Mauer
- Chronik 1972: JanuarChronik der Mauer
- Chronik 1972: OktoberChronik der Mauer
Checked October 2026. Facts taken from an escape record on this site link to that record, which lists its own sources.
11 events: 4 successful escapes, 1 partly successful escape, 5 failed attempts and 1 fatal attempt. At least 7 people reached the West in these events.
1972
Hidden in a freighter's ballast room from Magdeburg to West Berlin
In 1972 a person got aboard a cargo ship in Magdeburg and was hidden by the crew in the ballast room until the ship reached West Berlin; the ZZF counts it among the escapes known despite the checks at the Nedlitz water crossing.
9 January 1972
The heaters' tunnel under the Zimmerstraße
Two brothers and a friend dug a short tunnel from the sealed border cellars of an East Berlin electricity-company building near Checkpoint Charlie and came up just beyond the Wall.
14 February 1972
Manfred Weylandt – shot in the Spree
Stoker Manfred Weylandt crossed the border installations and entered the Spree near the Schillingbrücke late at night; two guards shot him in the head and he drowned.
7 March 1972
Klaus Schulze killed, Dieter Krause escapes at Falkenhöh
Two young friends from Falkensee crossed the border strip at Falkenhöh with a ladder from a garden shed. Dieter Krause got over the last fence under fire; Klaus Schulze, who had tripped, was shot in the chest.
9 June 1972 – 10 June 1972
A 15-year-old crosses the Wall into Neukölln
In the night of 9 to 10 June 1972 a 15-year-old East German boy crossed the Wall into Neukölln, apparently unseen by the guards, and was reunited with relatives in the West.
11 June 1972
An 18-year-old flees through automatic fire unhurt
On 11 June 1972 an 18-year-old East German fled through automatic-weapon fire from the border guards and reached West Berlin unhurt.
5 October 1972
A West Berlin police sergeant with a woman under his back seat
Shortly after midnight a West Berliner tried to drive a mother of four from Oberschöneweide out under the back seat of his car. Only when he was identified did the Stasi realise he was a serving West Berlin police officer.
6 October 1972
Over the waterworks wall and onto the Schillingbrücke – 46 shots
A circus worker climbed the wall of the waterworks on Holzmarktstraße and the fence at the Schillingbrücke, and tried to cross the bridge. Guards fired 46 rounds; he collapsed about 30 metres past the bridge with life-threatening internal injuries.
8 October 1972 – 9 October 1972
Two cars stopped in one night at Heinrich-Heine-Straße
Within three hours GDR controllers at the Heinrich-Heine-Straße crossing stopped two cars. In one was a schoolgirl from Lichtenberg, born in 1956, with four West German helpers; the other carried a lathe operator born in 1949 and a couple from Hamburg.
14 October 1972
A head waiter hidden in a car trailer at Drewitz
Two West German helpers, one a Free University student, tried to bring a head waiter from Friedrichshagen, born in 1927, into West Berlin hidden in a single-axle car trailer. The Stasi says the pair had already smuggled out several people over the transit routes.
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.