Publications

In the 3rd edition, photos of a modified Cadillac are shown for the first time: pictures of the hiding place under the dashboard with a person in the compartment, etc.; also 3 newly examined tunnels under Heidelberger Straße between Neukölln and Treptow (one of which in exactly the same condition as left behind 50 years ago).

I was able to add some details concerning Heinz Jercha's death. This edition is 64 pages longer than originally planned, because many new facts accured that should be included. You will discover many new facts, even if you know the existing edition.

In the 4th edition the tunnel in Kleinmachnow will be explained and informers will be named.

Addenda for the book „Wege durch die Mauer“

It took the Schulzes and the Liedtkes, two couples, 15 attempts to escape finally. This story is told here in detail, as in the book it is given only in short for reasons of space. This amplification fits into page 131 of the 3rd and 4th editions. I admire these couples' energy and persistence, who did everything to flee their homeland and its regime.

Exactly on the weekend of this sailing trip, the border was "sealed!" All plans for the future were endangered. Hans and Gerda sent the brother home and began their search for an escape route on August 13th on the border in the north of Berlin; specifically near Lübars (1). They knew the area well, owing to many walks they had taken there. However, they found no way through; solely barbed wire bales everywhere, heavily armed guards and dogs.

As many other refugees did they rode up and down on the metro-train from Schönhauser Allee to Pankow – a long stretch along the border – thinking they might be able to jump from the car at one of the curves facing the West, where the trains had to slow down (2); but the train travelled too fast to risk that. Aside from this, nobody knew the exact position of the border. Did the railway embankment and the second track belong to the East, or would one at least be in the West after lying on the ground, injured from the jump?

The entire embankment, which had played a role in escapes through the Esplanade-channel was in East territory and was strewn with bales of barbed wire. The very next day this train route was discontinued – perhaps because somebody had jumped off there.

The next idea they had was to flee through the Panke River (3) in Bürgerpark, which flowed under a  metro rail bridge into the West. That would have been quite simple. However, because of the easy access, Vopos (abr. "Volkspolizei" = "People's Police") with their dogs patrolled through the park along the border day and night; so there was no way out either.

Finally, they rode to S-Bahn station Friedrichstraße. East-Berliners were not allowed entrance to the platform heading to West Berlin. They could only step onto the other platform, the starting point for eastern directions. Standing on the aisle inside their train there, they were directly opposite the West-train. Somebody could open the "wrong" doors and they'd be able to hop over onto the West-train; or so they thought (4); but without a helper to open the opposite door, this was not possible.

A few such escapes had actually been successful, which is why a wall was erected between both platforms on August 14, 1961.

After the frustrating experiences of this day, they rode home – exhausted and depressed. They did accomplish one thing, however: they sent a telegram to Gerda's cousin in West Berlin, asking him to visit her. Being with him the next evening, she wanted to give him passport photos to take to the West. Perhaps somebody there would be able to mount them onto a West Berliner ID-card. They thought, If her cousin could come across without problems, he could next time smuggle the false legitimation into the East and they could leave the DDR just as he did (5). But the cousin, a city councilman in West Berlin, wanted to inquire first whether that was permissible. He could not be dissuaded from the premise that one could only forge an ID if it had belonged to a recently deceased person; so they had to discard this idea as well.

On Monday, August 14th, the Liedtkes went to work as usual. In the evening, after the righteous cousin had left, they noticed that the window in the apartment of the Schulz family was open. They had broken off their vacation and returned to East Berlin as soon as they had learned that the border had been closed. The Schulzes, for their part, were surprised to see the Liedtkes there, assuming them to be already in the West after their security overnight stay in West Berlin.

Now the four of them began to plan together how and when they might flee. September 17th, 1961 was the local Election Day. Whoever did not go to the polls voluntarily would usually be picked up at home by members of the FDJ or the Communist Party. Gerda's mother, however, had gone to West Berlin on September 11th. If anyone had come looking for her in order to escort her to the polls – or in a month, at the very latest – they would have noticed that she had left; and that the Liedtkes had not reported it. Therefore they had to act quickly.

That very night the Liedtkes went to scout the area north of Charité Hospital (6). They crept behind the Naturkundemuseum (Museum of Natural Science) and crawled by the light coming from the policlinic (today known as the Bundeswehrkrankenhaus [Military Hospital]) past a sports field (today the Bundesnachrichtentdienst Zentrale [Federal Intelligence Service Headquarters] stands here) to a large and partly overgrown canal with a small brook which had been branched off from the Panke in the West. Maybe it was possible to crawl through to the West along the bottom of the canal ditch.

Gerda hid in the bushes, while Hans progressed slowly towards the West in the direction of the urban district Wedding. After he had arrived approximately halfway between the sports field and the illuminated border, he reached a conduit that carried water of the brook. As he didn't want to crawl any further without a flashlight, he turned. But he slipped and cut his hand severely with a fragment. Reaching his wife, they decided to give up for that moment, return home as quickly as possible, change clothes, and go to an emergency clinic that same night.

The wound was heavily soiled and became infected, so that his hand became seriously swollen. The doctor in charge certified him unfit for work. The heavy bandage and the pain hindered him, but having been reported as ill, he had the entire next day to look for another way to escape. By daylight, the spot he had reached the night before turned out to be still too far away from the border. He doubted that the four of them could make it safely through such a long tube, what meant, no further attempt from that spot.

That was a good decision, because the conduit did not cross the border completely, but rather ended just a bit further than he had gone before and led into another ditch – 40 meters long – which in turn led to a different conduit reaching the West. If a refugee were to come this far, he would no doubt be spotted at the open ditch by border guards. No refugee was able to reach the long conduit leading across the border.

When Hans went to his workplace to show his bandaged hand, a colleague commented, "Did you grab some barbed wire?" without drawing any further conclusions. When Hans returned home and related this to his wife and their friends, they decided it would be best not to do anything which might arouse suspicions for a few days.

The next idea was to climb the wall at Charité Hospital and swim through the Humboldt-harbor (7). They had already made rope ladders in order to scale the wall. But then they heard on the Western news broadcast that a refugee had been shot to death at the Humboldt-harbor. They didn't want to risk being killed by gunfire, or to drown in the harbor after being wounded, so they abandoned any plans for this route.

That following Sunday, August 27th, 1961, the two men went to the North of Berlin once again, this time to Glienicke Nordbahn. Hans knew the way to Lübars and Hermdorf in the West from earlier days. He also knew that no posts could be erected – and therefore no fences built – on the swamp like grounds there (8). During daytime they were able to see from a distance that there seemed to be no fence, no designated border, nor a control point. As they crawled closer at dusk, they spotted with their binoculars quite a number of patrolling Vopos, some even with dogs. The thought of being pursued together with their wives by dogs, even though there was no fence, frightened them, so they decided to look for a better possibility.

This is the area where Joachim Rudolph ("der Kleene" = "The Shorty") and Manfred Krebs ("der Lange" = "The Tall") fled from Schildow to Lübars in spite of the later constructed watchtower, border guards and dogs. Thereafter they became escape helpers, first Joachim, then Manfred, both specializing in tunnel digging.

At their next meeting they conjectured whether they would be able to flee across one of the sewage canals between the East and the West of Berlin. But how could they determine which conduits were large enough to permit movement through them? And which ones ran from East to West? Which one could they enter undetected? They were not familiar with the Berlin sewage system, but the line of manhole covers north of Pankow public swimming pool on the street "Am Schlosspark" led to the border. So they decided to enter the sewage canal there – although the entrance was still a long distance away from the border. But at least they could enter there without being seen. Then they would have to crawl through the sewage conduit for several hours before reaching the 'West.

After having orientated themselves in general by daylight, all four of them set off in early September with flashlights, city map and compass (9). They had taken their subtenant, Klaus Müller, a dentistry student, into their confidence about the plan and asked him to close the manhole cover after they would have entered. The canal was so small, that they were forced to crawl. So they turned in order to acquire knee protectors for the next night. Hans also wanted to get some plastic bags to be able to keep the bandage on his hand dry.

The next day, the four friends wanted to progress further into the conduit. It hadn't rained, so the canal was as dry as it had been the previous night. They bade the dental student farewell, promised to carry his greetings to his family in West Berlin - and crawled off. But the canal grew smaller and smaller and they soon noticed that it didn't lead straight toward Wollankstraße and freedom as they had thought, but rather turned to the south beneath Kavalierstraße. When the sounds they heard from above led them to believe that they must now be near the Pankow train station, they gave up. However, even turning around in the narrow canal proved to be nearly impossible, particularly for Waltraud Schulze, beeing somewhat heavy. Finally, when they arrived at the street drain where they had entered, they found that they couldn't get out without help from outside.

To be trapped in a tight tube 2 meters under ground was the ultimate low of all their optimistic attempts to flee! Should they knock on the manhole cover to attract attention? That would have been the most certain way to land in prison. They were close to panicking.

They crawled further toward the next drainage entrances and tried to remove the covers at each one, but failed. The conduit now led north. This gave them hope, for the Panke River had to be somewhere along there. Perhaps they could exit there without having to remove any cover at all. The tube did, in fact, open on to the Panke River next to a small bridge for pedestrians..

But even there they couldn't simply climb out. The entrance and the entire area were brightly illuminated. They immediately understood why: Having reached Schlosspark Niederschönhausen, the fugitives had crawled almost under the palace in which the State President resided. So they slid directly into the Panke and crawled slowly – so as not to make any noise – toward the East. Only after another 300 meters they climbed out onto the street.

The following nights they entered the canalization system three times via Panke River near Grabbealle in Bürgerpark (citizens' park) (10). Finding that this canal also did not lead to the West, they decided to try their luck in the south of East Berlin. To make manhole cover lifting easier, they forged an iron jack in their burner (!) at home (They had to avoid any smoke, as nobody uses his heater in the middle of summer!). Gerda Liedtke had to go to work every morning, so the men wanted to make the next trial runs by themselves.

Waltraud and Ulrich Schulze had no jobs and Hans Liedtke was on sick leave.

In Treptow, on Baumschulenweg, they had to give up because there was no ventilation in the canalization system there and the sewage gas made breathing impossible (11). On Kiefholzstraße they had to turn back without entering the canal due to the complexity of the area (12), and on Heidelberger Straße (13) they had a very unpleasant encounter:

Here, the houses were built so close to each other, that there was no chance of entering without being seen. When – in spite of that fact – they opened a drain cover in the middle of the night to at least see if the canal was spacious enough, a man crossed the street and went directly past them. He simply walked on expressionlessly. Either he didn't want to see anything, or perhaps thought that work was being done on the system during the night. Ulrich and Hans were paralyzed. They whispered to each other: "If he had tried to challenge us, would you have …?" "Yes, I would have hit him, in order to get away." "And if he got killed?" "Well …" Luckily nothing happened!

Caused by the long and nerve-wracking search for an escape route, after so many failed attempts, the four friends became less and less choosy concerning their method of escape, and at the same time more and more aggressive toward this State and its representative authorities who held them captive.

They also failed with their attempts to get into one of the three different conduits off the Spree River, from the southern bend (14), because – to let the subway cross above – every one of them was equipped with an inverted drainage siphon in which the water reached the ceiling. Each time Ulrich Schulze dived in, he had to turn after only a short stretch, due to the fact that he found no air ducts leading to the surface.

On occasion of their forays in the Spittelmarkt area they had seen the large rubble fields south of the subway tracks, remnants of WW II. If they could find a sewage canal here, at least they could enter in this godforsaken place without being seen. Furthermore, a sewage canal from here would surely lead into the West – in connection with either the Spree River in the East or the Landwehr Canal in the West. Those possibilities seemed to be good prospects and their hopes of escaping rose again on the night of September 11th, 1961. For that reason, their wives came along this time (15).