When the Berlin Wall went up, splitting east and west Germany, it felt as if the country would never come back together. Border police like the man stationed here were tasked with taking out anyone who attempted to escape to the west, but that just made the border police themselves want to escape.
On August 15, 1961, 19 year old Conrad Schumann put a plan worthy of the cinema into action. After contacting the police in West Germany he arranged for a car to wait for him on the other side of the barbed wire fence he was guarding. At 4 p.m. he jumped the fence and barreled into the car, by the time the other guards turned around he was already gone.
Schumann spent the rest of 1961 in a refugee center before moving to Bavaria. His story inspired so many of those in East Berlin to seek their own freedom.
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