{"id":76216,"date":"2023-10-11T19:08:33","date_gmt":"2023-10-11T17:08:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/?post_type=magazin&p=76216"},"modified":"2026-09-28T12:39:33","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T10:39:33","slug":"fleeing-the-gdr-in-a-car-boot","status":"publish","type":"magazin","link":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/en\/magazine\/on-the-margins\/fleeing-the-gdr-in-a-car-boot\/","title":{"rendered":"Fleeing the GDR in a car boot: \u2018Inside, I was still on the run\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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\n\tOn the margins<\/a><\/div>\r\n

\r\n Fleeing the GDR in a car boot: \u2018Inside, I was still on the run\u2019 <\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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Veronika Schneider fled the GDR as a young woman \u2013 and only realised decades later how long the fear had kept its grip on her.
\nBy Jule Merx<\/a> (text), Michael Hinz<\/a> (photos)<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n

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\r\n\r\n \r\n \r\n \"\"\r\n\r\n\r\n <\/a>\r\n \r\n <\/figure>\r\n\r\n \r\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n <\/div>\r\n\r\n \r\n
\r\n \"\"\r\n\r\n <\/figure>\r\n\r\n \r\n B\u00fcro eines Grenzbeamten, Grenze Marienborn \/ H\u00f6tensleben <\/span>\r\n \r\n \r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\n\n\n

A divided Germany \u2013 <\/strong>what for younger generations is at most a dull episode from school lessons or a story told by parents and grandparents is a vivid memory for others. Veronika Schneider is one of the people who can tell such a story: a story of an oppressive state and of an escape that did not end for a long time even after she arrived in the West.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Everything was still as if the war had only just ended. I more or less grew up in the rubble and played in the rubble,\u2019 Veronika Schneider recalls of her childhood. She was born in East Berlin in 1952, in a street very close to Rosenthaler Platz. As a child she knew the city almost without borders \u2013 \u2018and then there was the Wall,\u2019 she remembers. In August 1961, when Veronika is nine, the GDR government has the Wall built \u2013 the Wall that would separate families for 28 years and seal off the East from the West for good. \u2018I saw them build the Wall stone by stone. The police always stood there with their rifles, and my grandmother stood behind it. When the Wall wasn\u2019t very high yet, we always waved to each other,\u2019 she says. Waving from the East to Grandma in the West \u2013 just a few weeks later that is no longer possible. A death strip between five and several hundred metres wide separates the East German population from the Wall, the \u2018anti-fascist protection rampart\u2019, as it was called in the GDR.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n \"Black-and-white\n \n <\/div>\n\n

After her former fianc\u00e9 <\/strong>is interrogated and tortured by the Ministry for State Security, the Stasi arrests her too. She is accused of burglaries she never committed.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n

Today anyone can approach the former inner-German border without a second thought and cross it<\/strong> \u2013 without panic about being caught and ending up in prison, without panic about setting off a spring gun, without panic about attracting the attention of a border guard with orders to shoot, and without panic about stepping on a mine and losing an arm, a leg or their life. Most of the time, crossing the border no longer even registers. In many places along the former dividing line between East and West, little remains to remind you that a deadly swathe once cut through Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in some places, parts of the inner-German border have been preserved. Concrete blocks, remnants of barbed wire, old patrol tracks and overgrown watchtowers recall a time barely more than three decades ago. Remembering, or trying to understand what you read in history books, is possible in Marienborn, for example, right on the Berlin\u2013Hannover motorway in Saxony-Anhalt. The Marienborn Memorial to the Division of Germany is a place of remembrance for German and European contemporary history. \u2018Here we remember the largest German border crossing there ever was \u2013 in its day also the largest border crossing in Europe.

This monumental size is, of course, also a symbol of what the GDR actually wanted with this border<\/strong>: to stop its citizens leaving the country,\u2019 explains Felix Ludwig, a historian with a doctorate and acting director of the Marienborn Memorial to the Division of Germany. On the site, which once covered 30 hectares \u2013 about 42 football pitches \u2013 old huts still stretch out today under yellowed PVC roofs that bathe everything in a yellowish light. Until the collapse of the GDR, people entering and leaving were processed here, customs duties collected, and individual pieces of luggage and entire cars searched.

Inside the huts are the old offices of border officials, complete with typewriter, a portrait of Erich Honecker and an old border troops uniform \u2013 relics of a bygone era preserved in a few square metres. Outside the huts, countless tall concrete pillars rise into the air, topped with more than a dozen loudspeakers. On the ground, old road markings hint at how the traffic flowed and how the procedures ran. Everything here seems well structured and organised; as little as possible was left to chance.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n \"Black-and-white\n \n <\/div>\n\n

A viewing window<\/strong> shows the former Marienborn\/Helmstedt border crossing<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n \n\n

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\n\n \"Black-and-white\n\n \n

\u2018The GDR didn\u2019t want<\/strong> its citizens to know everything that was available in the West \u2013 and above all at what low prices.\u2019 If in doubt, luggage was X-rayed.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n <\/div> \n\n\n \n\n \n \n\n

\n\n
\n\n \"Black-and-white\n\n Zimmer eines Grenzbeamten, Schreibmaschine, Portrait Erich Honecker, Marienborn \/ Helmstedt<\/span>\n \n

A portrait<\/strong> of Erich Honecker hangs in a border official\u2019s former office.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n <\/div> \n\n\n \n\n \n<\/div>\n\n \n\n

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\n\n \"Black-and-white\n\n \n

Archive photos<\/strong> of former border officials at Marienborn\/Helmstedt.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n <\/div> \n\n\n \n\n \n \n\n

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\n\n \"Black-and-white\n\n \n \n <\/figure>\n\n <\/div> \n\n\n \n\n \n<\/div>\n\n\n

Veronika Schneider grew up toeing the party line, as she puts it herself.<\/strong> \u2018I was very good at school, was sent to the Pioneer Republic, and when I came back \u2013 I\u2019d say today \u2013 it was like brainwashing. Until I was 17 or 18, I was a total fan of the GDR,\u2019 she says. But that begins to crumble. Veronika takes her Abitur and goes to university, until she is barred from continuing her studies because she will not join the SED. She is accused of offences she never committed \u2013 theft and handling stolen goods. She is interrogated by the police and the Stasi. The problems pile up. \u2018Today I\u2019d say it was completely normal that I got into trouble. As a young person, I lived in a state that did not allow independent thought and wanted to severely restrict personal development. A state that divided everything into good and bad \u2013 there was nothing else. Good meant being for the state. If you were against it \u2013 even if you just had a different opinion \u2013 you were bad.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veronika decides to escape \u2013 in the boot of an Audi 100 Deluxe, a car from West Germany<\/a>, via the Marienborn border crossing. The 21-year-old and her boyfriend at the time, Joachim*, who flees with her, meet the escape helpers at an agreed point on the transit route. \u2018Frank*, our escape helper, had prepared the car so that we could release the backrest from the back seats.\u2019 The two first sit on the back seat of their helpers\u2019 car, set off and watch whether anyone is following them. \u2018Then, while we were driving, we crawled from the back seat into the boot,\u2019 she recalls. The two lie on top of each other on the shock absorbers, barely able to move \u2013 for an agonisingly long time, with the fear of being caught breathing down their necks. \u2018If they had been discovered, under GDR law they would have been guilty of so-called attempted flight from the Republic, which carried a prison sentence of up to three years,\u2019 explains the historian Ludwig. \u2018If people trying to escape were discovered, they were arrested and put in the relevant Stasi remand prison. Here we have to speak plainly of physical and psychological torture.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n \n\n

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\n\n \"Black-and-white\n\n \n

The \u2018agent sluice\u2019 \u2013 or \u2018Stasi tube\u2019 \u2013<\/strong> was an underground link between the GDR and West Germany. The Stasi used it to smuggle agents between East and West beneath the border without being seen.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n <\/div> \n\n\n \n\n \n \n\n

\n\n
\n\n \"Black-and-white\n\n \n

A patrol track<\/strong> runs along the former inner-German border on the Uhlenkopf.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n <\/div> \n\n\n \n\n \n<\/div>\n\n \n\n

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\n\n \"Black-and-white\n\n Grenzdenkmal H\u00f6tensleben, Mauer, Panzersperren, Minenstreifen, MiStrf, Todesstreifen, Wachturm, Kolonnenweg<\/span>\n \n

\u2018If people trying to escape were discovered,<\/strong> they were arrested and put in the relevant Stasi remand prison. Here we have to speak plainly of physical and psychological torture.\u2019 \u2013 Felix Ludwig, historian<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n <\/div> \n\n\n \n\n \n \n\n

\n\n
\n\n \"Black-and-white\n\n Verbogener Grenzzaun, Grenzdenkmal H\u00f6tensleben, Denkmal, Innerdeutsche Grenze<\/span>\n \n

A bent border fence<\/strong> at the H\u00f6tensleben border memorial<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n <\/div> \n\n\n \n\n \n<\/div>\n\n\n

Joachim, Veronika\u2019s boyfriend and fellow escapee, gets drunk with a friend in the East as a farewell; Veronika takes two sedatives. <\/strong>\u2018When I was lying on top of Joachim, he started singing because he was so drunk. Probably, I think today, he was scared. But of course it was terrible \u2013 I couldn\u2019t get him to calm down. I was in total panic when Frank yelled from the front that we should damn well keep quiet now, he could already see the checkpoint. And then \u2013 this is dreadful, and I hope I would never have done it \u2013 I told Joachim that if he didn\u2019t shut up now, I would smother him. Then he kept quiet.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Veronika remembers the Audi 100 stopping and starting again a few times \u2013 and each time sheer panic wells up in her. She thinks the boot will be flung open any moment and it will all be over. \u2018For many years after the escape I still had nightmares in which I was lying in the boot at night, it was opened and five submachine guns were pointed at me. It was a terrible situation of fear.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dividing wall and bottleneck between East and West at the same time \u2013 at the Marienborn border crossing, everyone was checked, whether they wanted to go West or East. No one got past handing over and the thorough checking of passports. On entering the GDR, the customs area was searched for weapons, drugs and political literature, but also for other forbidden things brought from the West, such as mail-order catalogues. \u2018The GDR didn\u2019t want its citizens to know everything that was available in the West \u2013 and above all at what low prices,\u2019 Ludwig explains. If in doubt, luggage was X-rayed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Especially when people were leaving, though, we are above all talking about refugees they might be hiding. That is mainly what they were searching for. The sniffer dogs used here were of course trained to sniff out not only drugs and explosives but also people who might be hidden in vehicles.\u2019 The transit agreement signed in 1971 made travel between East and West easier. \u2018The transit agreement prohibited searches without cause. But \u201cwithout cause\u201d is an elastic term. The people who worked there were of course trained to create causes. That could be things like luggage on the back seat that you would normally expect in the boot, or openings at the rear that could be breathing slits,\u2019 Ludwig explains.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n \"Black-and-white\n \n <\/div>\n\n

A former watchtower<\/strong> in the woods at P\u00f6tenitzer Wiek.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n

But Veronika and Joachim make it across the border undetected.<\/strong> \u2018You\u2019re free,\u2019 she hears Frank say, and then the boot opens. But she does not throw her arms around her escape helper, happy and relieved; instead a very different feeling creeps over her. \u2018I got out, above me was the open sky, it was a very clear night, I saw the stars, and very, very far away, from the western side, I saw the border checkpoint. It was a feeling of complete lostness. My heart almost pulled me back to the checkpoint; I couldn\u2019t be happy at all. The first sentence I said in the West was the one that really outed me as a GDR person. I said to Frank: \u201cNow I know what existential fear is.\u201d That\u2019s what we were always told at school: in the West, everyone lives in existential fear.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The West as a place of longing, the hope of a life in freedom<\/a> \u2013 whatever may have driven other GDR refugees to flee, it does not apply to Veronika. \u2018The crazy thing was that I still believed in the GDR. I was still convinced of socialism, that the GDR was the better German state. But I believed I wasn\u2019t good enough. So I cleared off,\u2019 she explains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even when Veronika arrives in the West undetected, her escape is not over. \u2018There followed a very long time when \u2013 I know today \u2013 I was still on the run inside.\u2019 West Berlin, Swabia, Crete \u2013 \u2018only ten years later, in 1983, when I came back from Greece to West Berlin for good, did I begin to develop a sense of home again.\u2019 The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 also stirs up what she went through. The images of that evening go round the world \u2013 crowds on the once insurmountable Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate, complete strangers hugging each other with joy, German flags waving as a sign of newly won unity. \u2018The opening of the border is one of the few moments in contemporary German history of which you can say it is an unreservedly positive story. That day, that evening, that night,\u2019 Ludwig explains. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Veronika, though, it is not an evening of happiness \u2013 quite the opposite. \u2018When the Wall came down in 1989 and everyone was in a frenzy of joy, I had panic attacks and almost went mad. I developed real psychological problems.\u2019 She seeks help and undergoes psychoanalysis. \u2018Only then, in the early to mid-1990s \u2013 which was ages after the escape \u2013 did I start to reflect that it wasn\u2019t me who was wrong, or a traitor, but that the state was wrong, with all its repression, indoctrination and paternalism. It took decades for me to understand that at 21 I wanted something completely normal. I wanted to go where I wanted to go, and above all I wanted to say what I think. I wanted to live; I wanted to feel free.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Names changed<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n \"Black-and-white\n \n Ehemalige Innerdeutsche Grenze H\u00f6tensleben, Mauer, Fluchtleiter, Leiter, Lichttrasse, Signalzaun<\/span>\n <\/div>\n\n

The former inner-German border<\/strong> near H\u00f6tensleben<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n

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\n TO THE MAGAZINE HOMEPAGE<\/a>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":19060,"template":"","tags":[391,425,331,374],"magazinkategorie":[419],"class_list":["post-76216","magazin","type-magazin","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-ddr-ostdeutschland-en","tag-on-the-edge-en","tag-photo-series-en","tag-erinnerungskultur-en","magazinkategorie-on-the-margins"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFleeing the GDR in a car boot: Veronika\u2019s way to the West<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Smuggled across the border hidden in a car boot \u2013 and yet inwardly on the run for decades. 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