Who wanted to flee over the inner German border, needed to plan carefully and be creative.
Through a lack economy and total surveillance by the security police, building balloons and aviation objects was extremely difficult.
Chronic of an escape trial
The two Families G. and A. are planning with customized aviation objects to flee into West Germany. In autumn 1982 they start building two aviation objects in Weimar.
In the early morning hours, June the 19th, 1983 they are ready to assemble and try out the objects on a hidden field, surrounded by a forest close to the town Teichel. Accidentally, Sunday hikers saw the families.
Although Mr. A and Mr. G were dressed with uniforms of a paramilitary organization for sport and technique (GST) they got reported to the security police by the hikers suspicion.
Three days later both couples got arrested by the security police and brought into the investigation prison Andreasstrasse, Erfurt. Because of a preparation of an unlawful escape trial in the heaviest case (§ 213, criminal law of GDR) the culprits got judged with a prison sentence between two and a half and seven years in February 1984.
Both Husbands were brought into the penitentiary camp Brandenburg; the women were brought into the infamous women penitentiary camp Hoheneck. The children’s of the couple A. got divided and accommodated by relatives in Weimar.
In January 1985 the rest of the prison sentence got changed into a probation sentence and finally both couples got released into West Germany. The children got migrated in relation of a family reuniting in April 1985. Mrs. A. received a daily visa and was allowed to pick up their children’s on the train station in Eisenach. Together they migrated into the West by train over the train border Gerstungen on the 10th of April 1985.
The work is a personal reflection on the event, which had taken place 23 years ago. It’s a try to track down the past out of the child perspective in the present. |
