The Wall You Cannot See

Bernauer Straße to Checkpoint Charlie — not the concrete, but the people

Berlin · 8 stops · 2.3 km · ~1.0 h · Generated

  1. 1. The Leap Into Freedom

    Bernauer Straße / Ruppiner Straße, Berlin

    You are standing at the corner of Bernauer Straße and Ruppiner Straße. Right here, on this very pavement, one of the most iconic photographs of the twentieth century was born.

    It was August fifteenth, nineteen sixty-one. The Berlin Wall was just three days old... and it was nothing more than a low coil of barbed wire. A young man named Hans Conrad Schumann, born in a tiny Saxon village called Zschochau, had originally trained as a Shepherder. But he realized he could earn more money as a police officer and enlisted in the East German Volkspolizei. He was just nineteen years old.

    That morning, Schumann and his unit arrived at four thirty a.m., ordered to "take control and protect the border from the enemies of socialism." But what he witnessed shook him. A young woman on the East side passed a bouquet of flowers over the wire to her mother in the West... then turned to Schumann and said: "Those people over there, they won't let me cross anymore." In that moment, he realized he would spend the rest of his life keeping his own people imprisoned... and he would be a prisoner himself.

    Here's what most people don't know about the escape. Before his leap, Schumann quietly swapped his loaded submachine gun for one Without bullets... just in case. Then, realizing his window was closing as construction trucks rolled in, he began stamping down a section of the barbed wire with his boot. A West Berliner noticed and approached him. Schumann shouted "Get back at once!"... then whispered, "I'm going to jump."

    On the Western side, a twenty year old photographer named Peter Leibing was watching. Leibing had experience photographing Horses, and he captured Schumann in exactly the same way... mid-leap. At four p.m., Schumann flicked away his cigarette, sprinted for the wire, flung his gun aside, and Flew over the barricade into a waiting police van. The whole thing lasted barely thirty seconds.

    The photograph won the Overseas Press Club Best Photograph award for nineteen sixty-one, and in two thousand eleven, it was inducted into Unesco's Memory of the World programme.

    But freedom... freedom was complicated. Schumann was haunted by the fear that the Stasi, the East German secret police, would come and find him. His letters home were intercepted. The Stasi even tried to use his own family to lure him back. He settled in Bavaria and worked at the Audi factory in Ingolstadt for nearly thirty years... yet he never felt at peace. He later declared: "Only since nine November nineteen eighty-nine have I felt truly free."

    Can one photograph carry the weight of a whole life? The picture of his jump became an icon... but it haunted him his entire life. Stand here for a moment. Feel the ground beneath your feet. This is where a shepherd's son chose freedom in a single heartbeat... and spent the rest of his days trying to understand what freedom truly meant.

  2. 2. The Windows That Faced West

    Bernauer Straße 44, Berlin

  3. 3. The Bakery of Tunnel 57

    Bernauer Straße 97, Berlin

  4. 4. Chapel of Reconciliation

    Bernauer Straße 4, Berlin

  5. 5. Window of Remembrance

    Berliner Mauer Gedenkstätte, Bernauer Straße, Berlin

  6. 6. Berlin Wall Visitor Center

    Bernauer Straße 119, Berlin

  7. 7. Nordbahnhof — The Ghost Station

    Nordbahnhof, Invalidenstraße 131, Berlin

  8. 8. Sophienfriedhof — The Cemetery Cut in Two

    Sophienfriedhof, Bergstraße, Berlin