Escaping of the 5,000 from East Berlin The Local Germany - [email protected] Published: 5 Nov, 2014 CET.

Between 1961 and 1984 there were approximately 70 tunnels dug, 19 of which led to the successful escape of about 300 people from East Berlin. Picture: Carsten Koall/Getty Images.

Erika Schallert fled East Berlin on August 15, 1961, with nothing but the clothes she was wearing and her half-finished wedding dress, determined that nothing was going to stop her getting married ...

When the East German government built the Berlin Wall in 1961 to prevent its citizens from leaving, the regime failed to account for the ingenuity and creativity of those willing to risk anything ...

Balloons, tunnels, secret compartments—even homemade aircraft. From 1961 to 1989, desperate East Germans tried everything to break through the Berlin Wall. Some made it. Many didn’t.

People look at historic photos as they wait to see an escape tunnel underneath the Berlin Wall. The tunnel was built by a group of people who had escaped from communist East Germany to West Berlin.

They swam, crawled through sewers, flew in balloons, dug tunnels and rammed through the Berlin Wall. The courage and ingenuity of the 5,000 East German escapees later inspired novels, movies and ...

Erika Schallert fled East Berlin on August 15, 1961, with nothing but the clothes she was wearing and her half-finished wedding dress, determined that nothing was going to stop her getting married ...