Re, the East Germans receiving the DMK100. Begruessungs geld (Welcome money). I found this a kind gesture.
I travelled many times to the GDR in the 80's and didn't find the people poor and comparing what the Ostmark could buy in the GDR. (Not a car of course) they certainly could afford what they needed. Food was generally good. rent was cheap, cars were a disgrace, and not being able to travel to the West was unacceptable. My last visit ended the day after President Reagan's speech "Mr Gorbachev tear down this Wall" on June 12th 1987. I had been staying at the Palast Hotel in East Berlin the night before, and had dinner at the Palast der Republik restaurant with two East German friends, and two American friends. soon enough two chaps joined a table next to ours, and were interested in our conversation. My East German friends were going to attempt to escape, (Separately) I had discussed my departure from East Berlin to Check point Charlie then TXL-MAN. After the dinner, I was feeling a little uneasy about my plans, so when visiting West Berlin on the day of the Reagan Speech, I went to Finnair, and changed my flight SXF/HEL/LHR/MAN before returning the the Palast Hotel in East Berlin.. My friends did attempt to escape, and both were caught. I was able to have one of them put on the "Freikauf" list, and his case referred to the Wolfgang Vogel lawyers office. He got 26 years in jail, and was released on the fall of the wall. The other friend was released after serving several months in the Hohenschoenhausen prison. I have written at length about the GDR under: ww2f.com Wolfgang Vogel East German Spy Swapper dies at 82. Lance Shippey |
Dramatic story. Thanks for sharing.
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Originally Posted by Lance Shippey
(Post 10946662)
I went to Finnair, and changed my flight SXF/HEL/LHR/MAN
Lance Shippey |
All actual border checkpoints were guarded by staff of the "Pass- und Kontrolleinheiten (PKE)" belonging to Stasi (just wearing border guard uniforms). Whether Schönefeld airport or Checkpoint Charlie. So leaving East Germany one way or the other they would know in any case it's you who is leaving. There was no quiet way out. Maybe the quietest was via Czechoslovakia. As a pedestrian you could even walk over the border at remote places like at Erzgebirge mountainside.
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Originally Posted by Less Hair
(Post 10946851)
All actual border checkpoints were guarded by staff of the "Pass- und Kontrolleinheiten (PKE)" belonging to Stasi (just wearing border guard uniforms). Whether Schönefeld airport or Checkpoint Charlie. So leaving East Germany one way or the other they would know in any case it's you who is leaving. There was no quiet way out. Maybe the quietest was via Czechoslovakia. As a pedestrian you could even walk over the border at remote places like at Erzgebirge mountainside.
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Originally Posted by Lance Shippey
(Post 10946662)
. My friends did attempt to escape, and both were caught.
I was able to have one of them put on the "Freikauf" list, and his case referred to the Wolfgang Vogel lawyers office. He got 26 years in jail, and was released on the fall of the wall. The other friend was released after serving several months in the Hohenschoenhausen prison. Lance Shippey |
That depended. Anybody knowing "secrets", and that would start with minor local farmers association officials, could get in hot water just for meeting westeners. People had to change shared tables in restaurants for this very reason. If you were any member of the armed forces in the east they had some entire new set of much stricter penal laws for you. Including capital punishment for many reasons!
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Originally Posted by Tartiflette Fan
(Post 10946992)
I'm rather puzzled here. If your friends were "enemies of the state " then why go to such a high-profle restaurant ? If they weren't, then I don't understand why any prison sentence at all: yes, there might well be some degree of detention for interrogation ( depending on who you were and what was known ), but ordinary citizens did not get locked up just for consorting with Westerners.
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Dear Beamr and Less Hair,
I was part of a Special Tour Group of Americans including an American retired General. We had started the tour in Helsinki, and travelled by Finnish coach to Leningrad and Moscow. We arrived LED hotel the day Mathias Rust landed his Cessna 172 on the bridge next to Red Square. I was told by a Finnish guide friend of the Rust landing. Our Intourist KGB guide got very very annoyed that I had the information, and she didn't. As the tour progressed, I and two Americans (I knew well from previous tours} got "Done over" by the KGB on the Brest border crossing into Poland. Leaving Poland for the DDR I was addressed by the Stasi border guard in German, saying he knew I spoke German. I chose SXF/HEL/LHR/MAN with AY because the group were leaving on AY SXF/HEL/JFK and I wanted the two Americans I knew well to board after I had boarded, to make sure I had not been detained. The Stasi tried, and when I told them I would be the third last to board, my passport was thrown at me, hitting the floor, and sliding onto the air bridge. In 1992 I returned to West Berlin, and met on of my East German friends who had spent time in Hohenschoenhausen prison before an amnesty, and being thrown out of the DDR. He told me that his Stasi interrogators had told him that I was to be "Gekidnapped" . This would have likely happened on leaving via Checkpoint Charlie. (had I kept my original booking TXL/MAN). I have great trust in AY, and having used them on many flights from HEL to LED and MOS, I knew the Finnish staff in LED and MOS, they allowed me to use their photocopier (they were banned in the USSR} and read Western press, which was also banned. I therefore knew they would help me in Berlin, rewriting by BA tkt. Lance Shippey |
Originally Posted by Beamr
(Post 10946998)
sentenced for trying to defect? Not for being "enemy of the state" prior to escape?
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Regarding the high profile restaurant in Palast der Rebublik,
I have asked myself many times. The restaurant was chosen by one of the East German friends Mario Roellig, He had been pressured by the Stasi to work as informer for them, he refused and was moved from a lucrative waiters position at SXF to a pot washer in the bahnhof mission next to Friedrichstrasse S- bahn. Mario also had a close friendship with a West Berlin politician, so was of great interest to the Stasi. I think that Mario may have been pressured into arranging the restaurant I and my American friends dine at. There us a lot of info on the web about Mario, He also made a film "Der Ost Komplex" which was released a couple of years ago. Lance Shippey |
Originally Posted by Lance Shippey
(Post 10947013)
I was part of a Special Tour Group of Americans including an
American retired General. We had started the tour in Helsinki, and travelled by Finnish coach to Leningrad and Moscow. Lance Shippey |
Dear Tartiflette Fan,
26 years makes sense if you were in Soldiers uniform and trying to swim part of the Baltic to reach the BRD. My friend (not Mario) was doing his National service nr. the Baltic sea, and with another soldier, tried to swim to the BRD. He was caught, along with his comrade, who had been shot, The injured boy died by "Drowning at the scene" My friend was arrested for trying to cross a border, but more seriously for desertion from the DDR army. I put him on the Freikauf (ransom} through the Ministry for Intra German Affairs in Bonn and West Berlin. They agreed to pay the $19000. for his eventual release. He was represented by Dieter Starkulla, one of the Lawyers in the Wolfgang Vogel, Starkulla , and Hartmann East German lawyers office. I had access by phone to the Lawyers office, and was told we had to stay in jail for some time, before they would allow to deal to go through. He was locked up in the Prison in Neubrandenburg, and forced to work producing electronics for Olivetti electric typewriters to be sold in the West. He was eventually released in 1990., and sent to Duesseldorf, where he was accommodated on a Rhine Ship. He still lives in Duesseldorf. The $19000. was not paid by the West German Government due to the wall falling. The second to last fatality at the wall, just before it fell was Chris Guefroy, He worked with Mario as waiter at the restaurant at SXF. Lance Shippey. |
Slight correction, should read
"and was told he had to stay in jail" rather than "we had to stay" sorry for the typo Lance |
All interesting stuff. I had been to both sides of Berlin a couple of times and like many was fascinated by the TV news reports coming, and nearly went to see it all happen for myself. I actually found return availability on the Dan-Air schedule from Gatwick to Tegel but was defeated by not finding hotel accommodation, phoned where I had been before but they were full, it looked a bit chaotic to turn up on spec.
There were a range of travel nuances. Allies (ie UK/USA/France) could quite readily get into East Berlin, but not beyond into the DDR. Schonefeld was actually just beyond the East Berlin boundary, in GDR proper, so all the panoply of crossing the line applied, though there was a certain acceptance if holding air tickets it seemed. There was also a GDR special coach to Schonefeld that left quite regularly from Zoo station, in West Berlin and which I suspect did not need visas, I photographed it a couple of times, which drove directly to the airport, air tickets seemed checked on boarding and doubtless were all checked again at the border. Whenever I went to East Berlin I found it mostly normal, not a third-world experience at all as invented by writers who never went there. I always spent my compulsory-converted DM 25 per day and then some, principally in pleasant restaurants and bars, where most were locals. They were quite used to Allied visitors with halting O-level German. At the wall collapse moment there were all sorts of impromptu arrangements, plenty of film of Trabants (not the only GDR cars, there were Wartburgs and even Skodas) being driven over, the U-Bahn in West Berlin took much of the load and was overwhelmed at times. Announced that those with GDR passports did not need to have tickets but in practice it was totally free access and no tickets were being checked at all. Absence of maps was an issue apparently for a couple of days until the East Berlin main daily newspapers actually printed them in their morning editions. All the ticket checking and information staff were on crowd control, and I read the information booths, equally under pressure, were manned by the railway enthusiast groups. Pre-reunification the non-Allied Western flights to Schonefeld were low frequency, just a few times a week, for example Finnair to Helsinki was just a DC9 twice a week, one via Warsaw; KLM was the same frequency on a small F28 to Amsterdam. Aside from the Eastern Bloc there were a few third world operators as well. Just in passing, the last Caravelle I ever saw airborne was by chance some months after reunification, a Syrian Arab Airlines one operating Copenhagen-Berlin-Athens-Damascus once a week, descending into Schonefeld one Saturday afternoon. Non-Allied operators were not allowed to use the corridors, and nobody could cross the GDR/West German border separately, so had to route up over the Baltic or down over Czechoslovakia, for example a bizarre Tarom One-Eleven operated weekly Bucharest-Berlin-Luxembourg-Lisbon. Yes, I have my quite chunky piece(s) of Berlin Wall as well, picked from the rubble where it had been broken through. |
LOT was permitted to use the center corridor.
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Originally Posted by Less Hair
(Post 10947539)
LOT was permitted to use the center corridor.
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WHBM. Great reading your story. Interfug was not a member of IATA, so started to attract
West Berlin travel agents by offering very low fares to Western destinations in the Med. The fares had to be paid in Western currencies. The SED set up a shuttle bus in 1980 from Central West Berlin to SXF via the Waltersdorfer Chaussee border crossing. The shuttle bus was allowed to carry West Berliners, West Germans, and Foreign nationals.The fare had to be paid in DMK, bringing more hard currency to the SED. From 1985 SXF opened a passport control in the transit hall and it was possible to pay the tkt for the shuttle bus, show your airline tkt, and drive directly to SXF Transit hall without having to stop at the Walterdorfer chaussee border. The situation with Interflug offering such cheap flights caused Pan Am financial problems operating from TXL to the Med. It was said that Pan Am pilots were offering to fly to the Med without being paid. I also used a Dan Air Flight LGW/TXL B737. I think it was a regular scheduled charter through Benz Travel in Kensington. I used DA flights quite often LHR/MAN when they were competing with BA on the route. I could use a BA tkt endorsed over to DA, if I had missed my connection at LHR with BA. On one late night LHR/MAN DA flt. There was no pilot announcement, and after take off the girls started with the complimentary drinks trolley. after a few minutes all the cabin lights went out. The stewardess went into the cockpit, and the lights came on again. As they got to me, behind the wing, lights out again. The stewardess said in a low voice "Bloody Flight crew" I asked what was going on, was there a technical problem ? She replied, "No, the captain keeps hitting the cabin lights switch in the cockpit, The problem is the Captain and F/O are Romanian, and have very little English. On a flt LHR/MAN last week we were making our descent into MAN when the captain realised he was descending into Liverpool". " "It's a mess" she said. The aircraft was a ROMBAC 1-11 leased with flight deck crew. |
Re. Interflug. I heard from my East German friends that they had good service.
Friend Mario would use them SXF/BUD often. On his last flight, it was a different type of service. He had been caught trying to escape from the Hungarian border into Yugoslavia, shot at, and arrested, His interrogation was a prison near the Hilton hotel in Budapest for 10 days before being flown back to SXF with two other chaps who had been caught trying to escape on a train. This flight was not the regular IF TU134, but Erich Honecker's personal aircraft. Honecker had started with an !L14, then a IL18, TU134, and IL62. and eventually an A310. The a/c flew in Interflug markings. When Honecker was on board, he had his "Butler", Lothar Herzog wear an Interflug uniform. Herr Herzog was tall, good looking, and armed with a pistol. He flew with Honecker to 30 countries, and finally was fired by Honecker as he could get on with Honecker's dog at the Honecker house in the Waldlitz ghetto. Herr Herzog wrote his memoirs in a book "Honecker privat", which was both funny, and enlightening. I gave my copy along with the Mario Roellig's dvd "Der Ost Komplex" to German born Channel 4 Europe editor Matt Frei., as he had expressed an interest in the subject. I am still waiting for a "Thank you" email or letter from him. now over two years ago. I frequently visit the Netherlands, and love to visit Tuege Airport, near Apeldoorn, where Honecker's personal IL18 DDR-SEY has been converted into a very luxurious hotel suite. Each Honnie flight would carry a case with several thousand US$ cash to pay for fuel if required. Apart from AY, KL,LO, RB, operating from SXF, I think SQ also flew SXF-SIN Lance Shippey |
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