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At least 136 people died trying to cross the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989. One of the most spectacular escapes involved an Austrian engineer who rushed with his sports car underneath the cross-beam at Checkpoint Charlie.
On May 5 1963, Heinz Meixner raced to the west in a rented sports car with his bride Margarete Thurau and mother-in-law by driving under the Berlin Wall’s most famous and heavily guarded spot – Checkpoint Charlie.
Meixner was working as an electrical engineer in West Berlin and scouted the exact height of the metre-high border bar by crossing with a scooter. He then rented a British-made sports car, an Austin Healey Sprite, which was just low enough to fit under the iron bar if its windshield was removed and a little air let out of the tyres.
He hid his fiancé in the back seat under the tarpaulin and his mother-in-law squeezed into the trunk. He slowly rolled to the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing where the East German border guards asked him wondering why he drove without hood despite the morning cold. The guard then waved him onwards to the border-station for closer inspection, but Meixner did not stop there and slowly drove on to the slalom track in front of the turnpike.
“Until then, I acted like a tourist who just did not know you had to stop again,” Meixner told later. “It was not until I heard whistles that I stepped on the gas, pulled my head in and raced under the cross-beam.”
The surprised East German soldiers did not have time to shoot at the car.
Meixner’s daredevil escape route was immediately barricaded on the East Berlin side. A day later, all East German border bars were equipped with vertical bracing.
Meixner became a hero in the Western media and he later settled in Linz with his East German wife. Sadly, he died not long after in a home accident when he dropped an electric shaver into a sink and tried to remove it with his hands.
On May 5 1963, Heinz Meixner raced to the west in a rented sports car with his bride Margarete Thurau and mother-in-law by driving under the Berlin Wall’s most famous and heavily guarded spot – Checkpoint Charlie.
Meixner was working as an electrical engineer in West Berlin and scouted the exact height of the metre-high border bar by crossing with a scooter. He then rented a British-made sports car, an Austin Healey Sprite, which was just low enough to fit under the iron bar if its windshield was removed and a little air let out of the tyres.
He hid his fiancé in the back seat under the tarpaulin and his mother-in-law squeezed into the trunk. He slowly rolled to the Checkpoint Charlie border crossing where the East German border guards asked him wondering why he drove without hood despite the morning cold. The guard then waved him onwards to the border-station for closer inspection, but Meixner did not stop there and slowly drove on to the slalom track in front of the turnpike.
“Until then, I acted like a tourist who just did not know you had to stop again,” Meixner told later. “It was not until I heard whistles that I stepped on the gas, pulled my head in and raced under the cross-beam.”
The surprised East German soldiers did not have time to shoot at the car.
Meixner’s daredevil escape route was immediately barricaded on the East Berlin side. A day later, all East German border bars were equipped with vertical bracing.
Meixner became a hero in the Western media and he later settled in Linz with his East German wife. Sadly, he died not long after in a home accident when he dropped an electric shaver into a sink and tried to remove it with his hands.