Winfried Freudenberg

Winfried Freudenberg (29 August 1956 – 8 March 1989) was the last person to die in an attempt to escape from East Germany to West Berlin across the Berlin Wall as he fell from an improvised gas balloon at high altitude over West Berlin.

Biography Freudenberg was born in Osterwieck and grew up in the Saxony-Anhalt town of Lüttgenrode, near what was then the border between West Germany and his native East Germany, a part of the communist Eastern Bloc, as a satellite state of the Soviet Union. After completing an apprenticeship as an electrician, he obtained his secondary education diploma at night school, then trained in information technology (computer science) and received a diploma as an electronics engineer. In the autumn of 1988, he married his wife Sabine, a chemist he had met while both were students at Ilmenau University.

With the erection of The Wall, East Germany cut them off from the professional opportunities that existed in the West, and the couple, especially Winfried, had become increasingly disappointed about being unable to cross the border. He occupied the beam and cut the tethers. With only one person aboard, the balloon had a very high buoyancy and rose fast. Ballast bags hanging down on ropes severed a power line shortly after launching, and caused it to short-cut and spark. Although East German security had often shot and killed citizens attempting to escape, they decided against shooting because of the possibility of triggering an explosion of the natural gas now leaking. Also, they believed Freudenberg had been killed by the current (which was not the case). 23-year-old Sabine was able to get back home, where the Stasi were already waiting for her. Nearly every bone in his body had been broken, and virtually every internal organ had been damaged.

The direct cause of the crash is unclear. West Berlin police supposed that Freudenberg climbed the net to cut the envelope, evidently succeeded, and in the ensuing events lost his hold.

After the incident, East German police investigated Freudenberg's friends, family, acquaintances, colleagues, and wife, to determine whether any had participated in the escape attempt. Because of international attention and pressure over the recent shooting of Chris Gueffroy, the last refugee to be shot by East German border guards, Sabine was given the relatively lenient sentence of three years probation and then granted amnesty in October 1989. The next month, East Germany began allowing its citizens to travel to the West, and several months later, the Berlin Wall fell and the two countries reunified.