We approached 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down – a barrier that existed from 1961 to November 9, 1989, constructed by German Democratic Republic (East Germany ) and completely cut off West Berlin.
Berlin Wall wasn’t built all at once. It started as a barbed wire fence and later it changed into 12-15 foot high walls surrounded by guard towers with guns. The Wall was made in sections of concrete reinforced with steel mesh. There were steel tubes at top of the Wall to make it even more difficult to go over the Wall. Tank traps – angular steel chunks were placed in some of the key areas to prevent vehicles from driving through the Wall. Although it looked almost impossible to climb over the Wall but there were few people who found great and smart ways of doing that.
On a tightrope
East German acrobat Horst Klein thanks to his acrobatic skills, turned an unused high-tension cable that stretched over the wall in his route. He was moving hand by hand and when he was exhausted he just swung his body up over the cable. He fell off the cable but he landed in West Berlin.
With Munich’s Playboy Club cards
Some border crossers approached the guards and flashed their membership cards for Munich Playboy Club. These cards resembled diplomatic passports and guards often waved them through.
In a hot air balloon
Hans Strelczyk and Gunter Wetzel used their mechanical know-how to build a hot air balloon engine out of old propane cylinders. Their wives helped them as well, they used old bed sheets and scraps of canvas for making a balloon. Then two families, couples with kids, floated up to 8,000 feet freedom.
In a well-aged tunnel
81-year-old man had spent 16 days digging a 160-foot-long and 6-foot-tall tunnel from an East German chicken coop all the way to the other side of the Wall. Tunnel was that tall because this man wanted to walk to freedom with his wife and friends comfortably.
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Silvia M.//SMC Editor
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Credits: history.howstuffworks.com, ibtimes.com, mentalfloss.com, dailysoft.com, googleimages
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