On this day in 1979 – Eight people escaped from East Germany to West Germany in a home-made hot air balloon.
September 16, 2024
On this day in 1979 – Eight people escaped from East Germany to West Germany in a home-made hot air balloon.
https://i.redd.it/mbnu3qn1s3pd1.jpeg
by tllon
5 comments
On 16 September 1979, eight people from two families escaped from East Germany by crossing the border into West Germany at night in a homemade hot air balloon.
The unique feat was the result of over a year and a half of preparations involving three different balloons, various modifications, and a first, unsuccessful attempt.
The failed attempt alerted the East German authorities to the plot, but the police were unable to identify the escapees before their second, successful flight two months later.
East Germany, then part of the Eastern Bloc, was separated from West Germany in the Western Bloc by the inner German border and the Berlin Wall, which were heavily fortified with watchtowers, land mines, armed soldiers, and various other measures to prevent illegal crossings. East German border troops were instructed to prevent defection to West Germany by all means, including lethal force (Schießbefehl; “order to fire”).
Peter Strelzyk (1942–2017), an electrician and former East German Air Force mechanic, and Günter Wetzel (born 1955), a bricklayer by trade, were colleagues at a local plastics factory.
Friends for four years, they shared a desire to flee the country and began discussing ways to get across the border. On 7 March 1978, they agreed to plan an escape.
They considered building a helicopter but quickly realized they would be unable to acquire an engine capable of powering such a craft. They then decided to explore the idea of constructing a hot air balloon, having been inspired by a television program about ballooning.
East Germany was such a “good” country, that people were running away from this “good” country to the “bad” West via home-made hot air balloon!
Is there anything about this thing documented? I mean surely we won’t get media from the East Germans but for westerners it must’ve been a sensation worth being covered on all TV’s / newspapers. Just curious about the whole story as someone from the former soviet country.
There’s a song, 99 Luftballoons by Nena, is this the historical background of the song?
Tankies and Western communist teenagers, these cringey revolution “fighters”, should talk more to people from Eastern Germany or Eastern Bloc.
In their mind they somehow think USSR was some liberal LGBT supportive equal society that valued lives of workers over ruling elite, I’m confident that at least 70% of modern western communists would be executed by Stalin (the rest will go to Gulag).
5 comments
On 16 September 1979, eight people from two families escaped from East Germany by crossing the border into West Germany at night in a homemade hot air balloon.
The unique feat was the result of over a year and a half of preparations involving three different balloons, various modifications, and a first, unsuccessful attempt.
The failed attempt alerted the East German authorities to the plot, but the police were unable to identify the escapees before their second, successful flight two months later.
East Germany, then part of the Eastern Bloc, was separated from West Germany in the Western Bloc by the inner German border and the Berlin Wall, which were heavily fortified with watchtowers, land mines, armed soldiers, and various other measures to prevent illegal crossings. East German border troops were instructed to prevent defection to West Germany by all means, including lethal force (Schießbefehl; “order to fire”).
Peter Strelzyk (1942–2017), an electrician and former East German Air Force mechanic, and Günter Wetzel (born 1955), a bricklayer by trade, were colleagues at a local plastics factory.
Friends for four years, they shared a desire to flee the country and began discussing ways to get across the border. On 7 March 1978, they agreed to plan an escape.
They considered building a helicopter but quickly realized they would be unable to acquire an engine capable of powering such a craft. They then decided to explore the idea of constructing a hot air balloon, having been inspired by a television program about ballooning.
East Germany was such a “good” country, that people were running away from this “good” country to the “bad” West via home-made hot air balloon!
Is there anything about this thing documented? I mean surely we won’t get media from the East Germans but for westerners it must’ve been a sensation worth being covered on all TV’s / newspapers. Just curious about the whole story as someone from the former soviet country.
There’s a song, 99 Luftballoons by Nena, is this the historical background of the song?
Tankies and Western communist teenagers, these cringey revolution “fighters”, should talk more to people from Eastern Germany or Eastern Bloc.
In their mind they somehow think USSR was some liberal LGBT supportive equal society that valued lives of workers over ruling elite, I’m confident that at least 70% of modern western communists would be executed by Stalin (the rest will go to Gulag).