5,000 Ways to Freedom- Crossing the Berlin Wall

On the morning of August 13, 1961, the residents of the German capital of Berlin awoke to find their city divided. At midnight, thousands of East German troops had fanned out across the city tearing up roads, erecting guard posts, and stringing barbed-wire barriers. The 43-kilometre border dividing communist East Berlin from the capitalist West had been sealed shut. Over the following decades, this temporary barricade would evolve into a formidable fortification of concrete, barbed wire, and armed guards. For 28 years, the Berlin Wall stood as a potent symbol of the Cold War, dividing families, shattering lives, and trapping millions in the oppressive German Democratic Republic. But many East German citizens refused to accept their fate. Between 1961 and 1989, some 5,000 people escaped over the border into the West, with 140 losing their lives in the attempt. Their methods were varied and frequently ingenious, reflecting the escapees’ unshakable will to find freedom and opportunity for themselves and their families. These are the most creative ways people escaped across the Berlin Wall.

The struggle for the fate of Berlin is as old as the Cold War itself. Following the surrender of Nazi Germany on May 9, 1945, the newly-conquered country was divided into four Zones of Occupation, each administered by a different Allied Power: Great Britain, the United States, France, and the Soviet Union. The capital city of Berlin, which lay deep within the Soviet zone, was similarly divided. However, tensions quickly flared between the Western Allies and the Soviets as the former allies began vying for control of the newly-liberated continent. In an attempt to starve West Berlin into submission and fold the capital into the newly-formed communist German Democratic Republic or GDR, on June 24, 1948 the Soviets blockaded all roads into the city. In response, the Western Allies launched what became known as the Berlin Airlift, flying over 2.3 million tons of food, coal, and other supplies into the city over the course of 11 months. Finally, on May 12, 1949, the Soviets capitulated and lifted their blockade. For the next 42 years, Berlin remained a flashpoint for Cold War tensions, an infamous hotbed of espionage and intrigue. It was also one of the few places along the 7,000-kilometre Iron Curtain where people could freely cross from East to West. And cross they did – in droves. Between 1946 and 1961, some 3.5 million citizens of the GDR and other Communist Bloc countries fled the East via Berlin for a better life in the West. This practice, known as Republikflucht or “Republic Flight,” led to a major shortage of skilled labour in the GDR, threatening to collapse the country’s already rickety economy. By 1961 the crisis had reached critical levels, prompting East German leader Walter Ulbricht to order Berlin’s 43-kilometre internal border sealed once and for all. The barrier, officially dubbed the “anti-fascist defensive rampart,” was, according to Ulbricht, meant to keep western spies and saboteurs from crossing the border into the GDR. In reality, its sole purpose was to keep East German citizens in.

But almost as soon as the barbed wire started going up, the escapes began. Many East Berliners lived right on the border, with the street right outside their houses belonging to West Berlin. Thus, as soon as East German troops began sealing the border, several quick-thinking citizens simply walked out their front doors and into West Berlin to freedom. But those who waited too long faced a more difficult task. Among these was 58-year-old nurse Ida Siekmann, who for nine days watched as the front entrances of her apartment building on Bernauer Strasse were sealed and barbed wire strung along the street below. On August 22, one day before her 59th birthday, Siekmann threw a quilt and other bedding out of her window to cushion her fall and jumped from her fourth-storey apartment. Tragically, she was fatally injured by the impact and died on the way to hospital, becoming the first known casualty of the Berlin Wall.

Other East Germans followed suit, keeping the West German fire department busy with rescue blankets catching escapees jumping out of their border apartment blocks. At least four suffered the same fate as Ida Siekmann. Soon, however, the East German Volkspolizei and Combat Troops of the Working Class finished bricking up the windows and doors of the buildings that lay along the border, cutting off this means of escape. But ordinary citizens were not the only ones drawn to a life of freedom in the West. Many of the troops and policemen assigned to guard the newly-sealed border also recognized the inhumanity of the barrier and sympathized with their fellow citizens trapped behind it. Former shepherd Hans Konrad Schumann was 18 when he was drafted into the East German Grenzpolizei or Border Police; and only 19 when a year later he was assigned to guard a section of the Berlin border near Bernauer Strasse. As he later recalled:

“We stood around looking pretty stupid at first. Nobody had told us how that’s done: taking control of a border.”

Day after day, Schumann endured angry cries of “You pigs!” and “You concentration camp guards!” from West Germans across the border, and witnessed scenes such as a West German woman handing her mother a birthday bouquet over the barbed wire. Before long, Schumann began to question his role in keeping his fellow Germans imprisoned, and began plotting his escape to the West. His opportunity came on August 15, 1961, as a large crowd of protestors began to gather on Bernauer Strasse and trucks arrived with steel plates and concrete posts to fortify the border. While no-one was looking, Schumann pushed down a section of barbed wire and signalled to a man on the other side. The man alerted the West German police, who moved a van close to the border. A group of photographers then pointed their cameras at Schumann’s comrades, forcing them to turn away. It was then, at around 4PM, that Schumann made his move, vaulting over the barbed wire and dashing to the waiting police van, which whisked him away to safety. The incident shocked the East German government, who attempted to spin Schumann’s escape as a kidnapping by the West German police. However, few bought into this story, and a photograph of Schumann leaping over the barbed wire became one of the iconic images of the Cold War. Meanwhile, Schumann remained at the West Berlin refugee centre in Marienfelde until September, when he was flown to Bavaria by the West German Government to start a new life. He later married and worked at a winery and an Audi factory. However, he lived in constant fear of reprisal from the Stasi, the East German secret police, stating:

 “Only since 9 November 1989 [the date the wall fell] have I felt truly free.”

Tragically, Schumann continued to struggle with depression, and on June 20, 1998, he took his own life.

Within months of the border closing, escapes like Schumann’s became all but impossible, as East German construction crews knocked down all the buildings around the border, relocated their inhabitants, and turned the temporary barbed-wire barrier into a permanent and formidable concrete-and-steel fortification. In its ultimate form, completed in 1975, the Berlin Wall consisted not of one but actually three barriers. The most famous part of the wall facing West Berlin was composed of concrete slabs 4 metres tall and 1.2 metres wide, topped by a smooth piece of metal pipe to make climbing over more difficult. Immediately behind this wall were anti-vehicle trenches, while 100 metres behind this stood an electrified signal fence that automatically alerted the border guards if it was cut, and a second, shorter concrete wall facing the East German side. Between these two barriers lay the so-called “Strip of Death”, an open area covered in gravel that allowed escapees’ footprints to be easily seen. The strip was well-illuminated and offered no cover, placing anyone who dared cross it in the line of fire of thousands of border guards, stationed in 116 and 20 bunkers watchtowers placed at 250 metre intervals along the wall. Other defences included guard dogs on long leashes and spike strips known as “Stalin’s Carpet” placed beneath the windows of the few buildings left standing along the wall to deter potential jumpers.

Yet despite these formidable defences, thousands still braved the crossing to the West, going over, under, around, and even through the wall to freedom. One popular escape method was by tunneling, with ten escape tunnels being dug near Bernauer Strasse alone between 1962 and 1971. One of the first was dug by West Berlin students in 1962, running 40 metres from a ruined factory at 78 Bernauer Strasse in the West to a basement at 7 Schönholzer Strasse in the East. Completed on September 14, 1962, the effort was partially funded by American broadcast network NBC, who filmed the escapees as they emerged from the tunnel. Over two nights, 29 people escaped through the tunnel before a section on the East Berlin side collapsed and the operation was discovered. NBC planned to broadcast a documentary titled The Tunnel on October 31, but the airing was postponed so as not to escalate Cold War tensions in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Starting in July 1963, a further two tunnels were dug from the basement of a bakery on Bernauer Strasse on the East German side. Completed in five months, due to a calculation error the tunnels emerged in a coal storage area right next to the wall, in clear view of the border guards. Only three people managed to escape before the tunnel was discovered and shut down. Undaunted, the escapees tried again, digging from the same bakery basement all the way to Strelitzer Strasse on the West German side. An incredible 57 people managed to escape through this tunnel before the operation was betrayed by a Stasi informant – the most successful such escape in the Wall’s history. However, when the tunnel was discovered, an exchange of gunfire broke out between the border guards and tunnel builders, resulting in Sergeant Egon Schultz being accidentally shot and killed by one of his own comrades. East German propaganda blamed the incident on the tunnel builders and painted Schultz as a hero, naming schools and streets after him. It was not until 1989 that Schultz’s relatives learned the truth about his death.

Following the discovery of “Tunnel 57”, tunnelling escapes tapered off dramatically as the Stasi and Grenpolizei buried microphones along the Wall and began monitoring for sounds of tunnelling 24/7. Consequently, many chose to go over the wall instead. Some of these escapes were brutally simple if not downright suicidal. On December 9, 1961, 20-year-old student organizer Dieter Wohlfahrt, who had helped dozens of people flee across the wall, cut through two layers of fences near Staaken and began crossing the strip of death. Unfortunately, his plan was betrayed, and the border guards were waiting for him. They opened fire, striking Wohlfahrt in the chest, and left him lying in no-man’s land to bleed to death. Four years later on November 10, 1965, 29-year-old dairy farmer Heinz Cyrus approached the border fortifications near Nordbanhof railway station in the Mitte district with the intention of scaling the fences and sprinting to freedom. Angered by the intensifying collectivization of agriculture by the East German state, in 1959 Cyrus had gotten into a drunken fight with an agricultural ministry bureaucrat, during which he shouted “You communist pigs, the day will come when you will hang from trees!” He was arrested and subjected to a show trial, accused of everything from inadequately feeding his cows, stealing food, and sexually assaulting his female coworkers. Convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison, he served four years before being released on amnesty. He continued to be harassed by the authorities for his alleged anti-socialist activities, finally driving him to make his escape. Unfortunately, a guard dog caught Cyrus’ scent and attacked, and he quickly found himself surrounded by armed border guards. After Cyrus refused to surrender the guards opened fire, but Cyrus managed to escape the hail of bullets by ducking into a nearby building at 85 Garten Strasse. It was a mistake, for the guards quickly surrounded the building, trapping Cyrus inside. His pursuers close behind, Cyrus climbed from floor to floor, his situation growing increasingly hopeless. Then, in a final act of desperation, Cyrus threw himself out of a fourth-floor window into the courtyard below. He was rushed to the hospital with a fractured skull and received multiple emergency surgeries, but died of his injuries early the next morning. A stone slab marking the site of his death now forms part of the Berlin Wall Memorial.

A similarly brazen – but more successful – flight over the wall took place more than two decades later. On November 19, 1986, toolmaker Dieter H approached the inner wall with a homemade extension ladder. Dieter had applied to the East German authorities for an exit visa, but he was denied, and later served a two-year prison sentence for political reasons. Upon his release he decided to escape to the West. Once over the wall, he used bolt cutters to cut through the signal fence. Though the alarm was triggered, the border guards did not spot Dieter until he had already reached the outer wall and placed the ladder against it. As he scrambled over one of the guard towers opened fire, firing a total of 12 shots but missing. Dieter successfully managed to jump over the wall, though he broke both his heels on landing and had to be carried away in an ambulance.

Other escapes were even more audacious. Take, for instance, the case of Horst Klein, a circus trapeze artist who had run afoul of the East German authorities for his staunch anti-communist views. Banned from performing in the GDR, in December 1962 Klein decided to escape in the only way he knew how: by scaling an electrical pylon and shimmying along a high-tension cable passing over the Berlin Wall. This absolute mad lad managed to make the crossing without being shot at, but was so tired by the time he reached the West that he fell off the cable and broke both his arms. Any landing you can walk away from…

Another daring high-wire escape was made by engineer and economist Heinz Holzapfel and his family on January 29, 1965. On that day Holzapfel, who had grown disillusioned with the socialist system, was called to a meeting at the GDR’s House of Ministries, which bordered the Berlin Wall. Excusing himself from the meeting, Holzapfel, his wife, and his son hid themselves in a toilet cubicle, hanging an “Out of Order” sign on the door. There they waited until nightfall, whereupon they emerged, climbed up onto the roof, and set their plan in motion. Heinz tied a rope to a hammer coated in glow-in-the-dark phosphorus and hurled it across the wall into West Berlin, where co-conspirators tied it to a stronger metal cable that Heinz reeled back and anchored to the Ministry Building roof. Then, using makeshift rollers and harnesses made of bicycle wheels, the Holzapfels proceeded to zipline over the wall to freedom. Incredibly, the whole escape was witnessed by GDR border guards, who, assumed it was the Stasi smuggling agents into West Berlin, did not open fire. One can only imagine the reprimand they received that day…

But if a homemade zipline isn’t baller enough for you, then how about a hot air balloon? Anticipating this mode of escape, the GDR had banned balloon sports shortly after the Wall went up. However, this did not stop Peter Strelzyk and his family from building their own balloon out of bedsheets and making a bid for freedom. Their first attempt failed when they landed just short of the border, but their second flight on September 16, 1979 was more successful – if somewhat hair-raising. Halfway through the flight the hot-air burner began running out of gas, causing the balloon to start descending at an alarming rate. Convinced that they were going to die, Strelzyk and his wife sang songs to their children to keep them calm. But though they managed to make a safe – if rough – landing, they were initially unsure whether they had actually made it across the border. It was not until Peter came upon a passing policeman that he confirmed that they had arrived safely West.

Ten years later, an even more audaciously high-flying scheme allowed the three Bethke Brothers – Ingo, Holger, and Egbert – to safely reach the freedom of the West. The first across the border was Ingo, a border guard stationed along the Elbe river north of Berlin. Here there was no concrete wall, but the electrified barbed-wire fence, guard towers, land mines, and tripwire-activated floodlights still presented a formidable obstacle. However, in May 1975, Ingo, who had become intimately familiar with the defences, managed to slip across and reach the banks of the Elbe, where he inflated a blow-up mattress and used it to swim across 150 metres of icy water to West Germany. There he found a West German border policeman, who, upon seeing the soaking-wet Ingo, commented: “It’s a cold night for swimming.” Ingo replied:“Not when you’re swimming out of the East.” Many other East Germans also attempted to swim to safety, but not all were successful. On December 11, 1961, 21-year-old Ingo Ingo Krüger, separated from his fiancée by the building of the Wall, attempted to swim across the River Spree to West Berlin, only to drown in the attempt.

Ingo Bethke’s escape caused endless trouble for his family back in the East, who mere mercilessly hounded by the Stasi. His parents – both high-ranking police officers and staunch communists – were even fired from their jobs. The pressure became so intense that in 1983 Ingo’s younger brother Holger also decided to escape. Having spotted a spot near Berlin’s Treptow Park where the strip of death was narrow, Holger climbed to the roof of a tall building and fired an arrow tied to a nylon line across the Wall. On the other side, Ingo tied the line to a steel cable, which Holger reeled in and anchored to a chimney. Ingo tied the other end to his car bumper and drove forward to pull the cable taut, whereupon Holger, using a homemade pulley system carved from wood, zip lined down the cable and past sleeping border guards to freedom. Two brothers down, one to go.

The brothers’ original plan to rescue their middle brother Egbert was to buy a compact helicopter they had seen in an issue of Playboy magazine and fly him to safety. However, upon speaking to the aircraft’s inventor at a fair in Hanover they discovered it was only a prototype and not for sale. By chance, however, they ran into two French pilots who introduced them to a tiny aircraft called an ultralight – little more than a hang glider with a seat and an engine. The brothers bought two ultralights and began plotting their daring rescue. To confuse the East German border guards, Ingo and Holger painted red Soviet stars on the aircraft’s wings and wore East German army greatcoats and helmets. Finally, on May 25, 1989, all was ready, and the brothers sent a coded message to Egbert that the rescue was on. At 4:15 AM, the two ultralights took to the air and crossed the border, landing five minutes later in Treptow Park where Egbert was hiding in the bushes. The third brother dashed across the field to the waiting aircraft, which whisked him away to the West, landing on the lawn in front of the Reichstag. Upon landing, the reunited brothers went to a nearby tavern for a celebratory beer. As Egbert later recalled:

“It was the best drink of my life. I thought I’d never see my brothers again, but they came out of the sky like angels and took me to paradise.”

Ingo Bethke was hardly the first East German to swim to freedom, with dozens of escapees using this route over the decades. Among them was horse jockey Michael Meyer, who on September 13, 1964, attempted to swim across the River Spree. Though he successfully made the crossing in 30 minutes, the current had carried him to a point on the riverbank that was still inside East Germany. Undaunted, Meyer made his way to the barbed wire fence near the infamous Checkpoint Charlie and at 5:20 AM, ducked underneath and sprinted towards the West. He was immediately spotted and fired upon by East German Border guards, who struck him eight times in the arm, legs, and back. US Army Sergeant Hans-Werner Pool heard the shots and ran to Meyer’s aid, throwing a tear gas grenade to fend off the two border guards who tried to pull him back into the East. He then threw a rope over the wall and pulled Meyer to safety. Meyer was rushed to hospital where, despite having lost two litres of blood, he made a full recovery.

Moving on from there, since going under, through, or over the Berlin Wall was a risky proposition, several East Germans cut the proverbial Gordian knot and opted to simply go around it. While the 7,000-kilometre internal border that separated East and West Germany was unbroken and heavily defended, even the East Germans couldn’t build a wall across the ocean, leaving northern Germany’s Baltic shore ripe for escape attempts. So it was that on November 24, 1986, lifelong friends Dirk Deckert and Karsten Kluender carried out one of the strangest escapes in history by windsurfing from Germany to Denmark. While windsurfing gear was available in East Germany, it was too bulky and heavy for long-distance travel, so Deckert and Kluender made their own boards using plans in a sailing magazine. Equipped with their new lightweight boards, compasses, and wetsuits, they snuck across the border at Hiddensee and sailed North into the Baltic. After a short distance, however, Deckert damaged his wetsuit and, knowing it would be suicide to carry on without it, returned to shore to effect repairs. Meanwhile, after six hours of sailing, Kluender spotted the coast of the Danish island of Møn and safely made landfall. But when Deckert failed to appear, Kleunder began to worry that his friend had been caught by the border guards. Thankfully, however, Deckert had successfully repaired his wetsuit and set off the next morning. Six hours later he ran into a Danish fishing boat, whose captain asked him “are you Deckert?” and ferried him ashore.

Another escapee took a considerably more roundabout route out of East Germany. In 1984, 24-year-old Kerstin Beck, a student at East Berlin’s Humboldt University, travelled to Soviet-occupied Afghanistan to receive intensive language training. But while her visit was only supposed to last six months, Beck had no intention of returning to East Germany, stating:

“I couldn’t live the way I wanted; I couldn’t study what I wanted. I only knew one corner of the world, but I wanted to see all of it.”

Shortly before her scheduled return home, Beck met a member of the Mujaheddin, the rebel movement resisting Soviet occupation, and convinced him to take her to Pakistan. Dressed in traditional clothes and pretending to be his cousin, Beck followed the man and his comrades into the mountains. It was a treacherous journey. Shortly after leaving, her fellow students told the East German embassy in Kabul that Beck was missing, leading the authorities to set up checkpoints throughout Afghanistan and search all aircraft leaving the country. Meanwhile, some of the Mujaheddin tasked with accompanying Beck across the border believed she was a KGB spy and wanted to kill her or ransom her back to the Soviets, while others wanted to marry her. Eventually, however, Beck made it safely across the border and was taken in by an exiled Afghan family in Peshawar. On April 14, 1984, one month after leaving Kabul, Kerstin Beck boarded a flight to Frankfurt in West Germany – and freedom.

For those East Germans who for whatever reason couldn’t tunnel under, zipline over, or windsurf around the Wall, there was only one option remaining: go through it. Some of these attempts were more literal than others. On December 5, 1961, railroad engineer Harry Deterling and his fireman Hartmut Lichy shocked the border guards by stealing a steam train and ramming it through Albrechtshof station into West Berlin, carrying themselves and 25 passengers to freedom. The next day the East German authorities  cut off the track and re-routed cross-border rail traffic to more well-defended stations.

Then there was Wolfgang Engels, an East German soldier who had helped erect the first temporary barriers across the border. On April 17, 1963, Engels stole an army BTR-152 armoured personnel carrier and drove to the border, offering rides to the West to several passers-by on the way. When they declined, he proceeded to the border checkpoint alone. The guards, used to seeing military vehicles in the border zone, waved Engels through, whereupon Engels stepped on the accelerator and drove at full-speed into the concrete inner Wall, bursting through the barrier like an East German Koolaid Man. Unfortunately, the vehicle did not penetrate fully and got stuck halfway, forcing Engels to climb out and struggle through razor-sharp barbed wire and the strip of death as border guards opened fire on him. He was struck twice with bullets but pulled to safety by West Berliners as a West German police officer returned fire on the border guards. He immediately underwent emergency surgery for his bullet wounds and made a full recovery, later settling down in the town of Soltau and becoming a biology and history teacher.

A similarly dramatic escape was made on April 29, 1982 when three East Germans used a bulldozer to smash their way through the border defences near Helmstadt, 176 kilometres west of Berlin. The bulldozer was one of hundreds of pieces of earth-moving equipment used by the East German border guards to keep the strip of death free of weeds and other obstructions. Despite setting off several booby traps including tripwire-activated automatic guns and being fired upon by the border guards, the escapees did not hit any land mines and arrived in the West unscathed save for a few bullet grazes.

But such badass antics aside, the majority of escapes through the wall were considerably more subtle, and involved escapees bluffing their way through official border checkpoints. In the first few months following the Wall’s construction, dozens of East Germans were smuggled across the border hidden in car trunks. However, the border guards soon caught wise and began thoroughly inspecting any vehicle crossing the border, forcing escapees to get creative. Take Austrian lathe operator Heinz Meixner, who pulled up to Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie on May 5, 1963 in his red Austin-Healey Sprite convertible. The border guards that day must have done a double take, for Meixner’s car was curiously missing an important feature: its windshield. But before they could question him, Meixner ducked down and slammed on the accelerator, the tiny windshield-less car easily slipping under the barricade and carrying him and his Mother – hidden in the trunk – to freedom.

But even Meixner’s audacious effort pales in comparison to the most bizarre implement ever used to defeat the Berlin Wall: the Trojan Cow. In the late 1960s, a group of West German escape helpers got their hands on a life-sized replica with enough room in its hollow body to conceal a person. Charging escapees 5,000 Deutsch Marks per trip, the group drove the cow and its hidden cargo back and forth across the border in a truck, claiming the replica was intended for display in West Germany. Amazingly, two people successfully escaped in this manner until July 7, 1969 when the plot was betrayed and the helpers and their cargo – 18-year-old Agelika B. Of Karl-Marx-Stadt were arrested. Angelika was sentenced to 2 years, 10 months in prison, but later ransomed by the West German government.

Other escapes were considerably simpler – if somewhat absurd. According to a 1986 article in the Los Angeles Times, members of Munich’s Playboy Club discovered that their membership cards so closely resembled diplomatic passports that border guards often just waved them through. Thanks, Hef!

But the prize for the most ingenious escape across the Berlin Wall has to go to Hans-Günter Jacobi, who pulled off what can only be described as an automotive vanishing act. In November 1962, Jacobi’s friend Manfred Koster was drafted into the National People’s Army. A pacifist and staunch anti-communist, Koster began looking for ways of escaping to the west. It was then that he remembered Jacobi, who was by then living in the West. Thankfully, Jacobi had a cunning plan: he would smuggle Koster across the border in his car. But not just any car; a car so absurdly tiny that no-one could possibly believe a person could hide in it: the BMW Isetta, better known as the “Bubble Car”. A German-built version of an Italian design, the Isetta was powered by a 9.5 horsepower single-cylinder motorcycle engine and was so small that the two occupants entered and exited by hinging open the front of the vehicle. It was the first mass-produced car to achieve a fuel economy of 3 litres per 100 kilometres and was highly popular with cash-strapped West German commuters. In its unmodified form, the Isetta had no extra space in which a person could be smuggled, so Jacobi, working night after night in a rented garage, set about making some modifications. By removing the seat, spare tire, and air filters, bending the exhaust pipe, and replacing the full-sized gas tank with a much smaller one holding just enough gas to get across the border, Jacobi managed to carve out enough space to hide Koster, curled up in the fetal position.

Finally, by May 1963, the vehicle was ready. However, Jacobi could not participate in the daring rescue, for at that time most West Germans were forbidden to cross into the East. Instead, a group of East German students volunteered to pick up the modified Isetta, take it to the East, and drive Manfred Koster across the border. The first attempt failed when the student driving the car lost her nerve and turned back. But on May 23, a week before Koster was due to report for military duty, the plan finally came together. The crossing was a nerve-wracking one, with Koster, curled up against the engine, growing ever hotter and uncomfortable as the line of cars crawled through the border checkpoint. Even worse, the border guards, who normally waved small cars like Isetta through, opened the engine compartment and shone a flashlight inside. Miraculously, Koster was not spotted and the car made it through, carrying its sore but overjoyed stowaway to freedom. Over the following years, the modified Isetta would carry a further eight people across the Berlin Wall, a testament to Hans-Günter Jacobi’s inventive genius and the East German students’ nerves of steel.

The last East Berliners to escape to the West were Hans-Peter Spitnzer and his family, who were smuggled across the border in a car trunk in August 1989. Ironically, the Spitnzers might as well have stayed put, for three months later on November 9 the Berlin Wall finally came down. A year later the two Germanies were reunited, while a year after that, the Soviet Union collapsed, bringing an end to the Cold War. In the Berlin Wall’s 28 years of existence, an estimated 5,000 East Germans and other Soviet Bloc citizens escaped across the border to the West. Around 140 are known to have died in the attempt, with some estimates placing the number as high as 1000, while thousands more were arrested and detained by the Stasi. The sheer audacity and ingenuity of many of the escape attempts stands as a testament to the unshakable will of the German people and the universal human desire for freedom and opportunity.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes, Spotify, Google Play Music, Feed), as well as:

• berlin-wall
• John F. Kennedy’s Statement “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” was Not Interpreted as “I am a Jelly-Filled Doughnut”
• Origin of the Olympic Flame Tradition and the Nazi Origin of the Olympic Torch Relay
• When People Started Burning Books

Expand for References