Winfried Freudenberg Fatally Injured on March 8
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Winfried Freudenberg fatally injured He was the last on March 8, person to die 1989 in Berlin as a in a hot-air consequence of balloon crash the Berlin Wall, in Berlin- which fell exactly Zehlendorf eight months and after flying for one day after his many hours tragic accident. over the ground. The empty balloon landed in the branches of a tree on Potsdamer sector border Chaussee at the corner of Spanische Allee. Winfried Freudenberg crashed between East down into the garden of a villa just a few hundred meters away. Almost and West. every bone in his body was broken and no internal organ was left unin- jured. He died immediately. It was just past 2 a.m. when a po- flight route concluded that he flew cowered over a wooden post above Two men from the East German lice car slowed down in front of the over the border to West Berlin Berlin, first traveling westward, then secret police were waiting for grounds of the control station. unnoticed at 20 kilometers an hour southward. At daybreak a pedestrian Sabine Freudenberg when she arrived Fearing that the balloon did not yet and arrived at the Tegel air field saw him floating over the Teufels- at their apartment in Prenzlauer Berg have enough gas to carry two people, where he probably tried to land. But berg hill and thought it was a weather in the early morning. Personal docu- they decided that Winfried Freuden- the release cord that was supposed to balloon. ments had flown out of the balloon at berg should take off by himself. He allow the balloon to open and sink take-off revealing the couple’s iden- Text (extracts): Hans-Hermann Hertle/Maria Nooke u.a. cut the tether cables and rose up into appeared initially not to have func- At approximately 7:30 in the morning, tity and address. She was arrested Die Todesopfer an der Berliner Mauer 1961-1989. the night sky. Shortly after launching, tioned. He either lost ballast or he Winfried Freudenberg flew over the and interrogated. She was char- Ein biographisches Handbuch,a 2. durchgesehene Auflage, Ch. eLinks Verlag: Berlin 2009 M u r the ballast bags rubbed against a threw it down to the airport to draw West Berlin district of Zehlendorf. ged with «attempting to breach the http://www.chronik-der-mauer.de high-voltage cable striking sparks attention to his emergency situation. Just another few hundred meters and border.» She was sentenced to «only» 1 2 Pictures: Perrine Lacroix / except 1 and 2, archive footage and causing a blackout in the neigh- But this loss of weight caused him he would have reached Kleinmach- three years probation. She received boring garden settlement. Because to rise even higher. Over Tegel he now and been back in East German amnesty on October 27, 1989. gas was leaking, the East German got caught in a northern current, and territory. The exact cause of the crash Winfried Freudenberg was born East Germany, but not without The Freudenbergs packed the policemen decided against shooting evidence suggests that he had reached is not known, but the West Berlin Winfried Freudenberg’s body was on August 29, 1956 in Osterwieck his wife. Right after the wedding balloon, ballast and everything at the fugitive. They feared that the an altitude of at least 2000 meters police surmised that he had in the delivered from West Berlin to East in the Harz mountains and grew the couple began planning their else that they wanted to take with gas might cause an explosion. since that was the height at which end managed to let out enough gas Berlin on April 7, 1989. He was bu- up in the Saxony-Anhalt commu- escape with a gas balloon. them into a Trabant and drove to this other wind direction was noti- to cause the balloon to descend rapi- ried on April 24, 1989 in Lüttgenrode nity of Lüttgenrode, which was To obtain the necessary natural a Berlin gas supply control station The hasty take-off had unexpected ceable. Winfried Freudenberg had dly. Wind currents gave him another amidst immense public sympathy and located close to the inner-German gas needed for the balloon, Win- near the Blankenburg S-Bahn consequences. Without the weight calculated that the flight would take a boost upward making the balloon under the conspiratorial surveillance border. After completing an elec- fried Freudenberg took a job at an station in the north of Berlin. of his wife, Winfried Freudenberg good half hour -- instead he was aloft brake suddenly. This, in turn, spun of the East German secret police. trician apprenticeship, he took energy combine in the gas supply Winfried Freudenberg had a key rose much faster and higher than he for many hours. Floating at great hei- Winfried Freudenberg out of his evening classes at the Halberstadt department and moved with his to the facility that he needed for had intended. A reconstruction of his ghts and in freezing temperatures, he position and caused him to fall to the adult education center to acquire wife to an apartment in the East his job. Just before midnight he his high school degree. He then Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg. began tapping gas from the station studied information technology The couple bought small, incons- and filling the balloon with natu- in Ilmenau and graduated with an picuous amounts of polyethylene ral gas. The balloon slowly began electrical engineering degree. He sheets, a material commonly used to fill up, and a good hour later met the chemistry student Sabine for cold-frame windows and for was clearly visible in the dark. W. in a student club. The young tents. By taping 13-meter-long couple married in the fall of 1988 and two-and-a-half-meter-wide The flight with the balloon but soon recognized that few strips of the material with a spe- probably would have succeeded career prospects awaited them in cial adhesive foil, the Freuden- if it had not been for a young East Germany. The two young bergs began assembling a balloon, worker who was working as a part- adults were no longer willing to 13 meters high and 11 meters in time waiter. He had just gotten off accept that the state denied them diameter, in their apartment in work at 1:30 in the morning and the opportunity to «travel, attend January 1989. They wrapped the was on his way home when he conferences, conduct research balloon in a net made of packa- saw the balloon from a distance and have contact with people in ging string. of about 500 to 600 meters. He the western countries,» Sabine knew that «East German citizens Freudenberg explained later. By February the couple had had managed to get away using a completed all the preparations balloon» in the past and he later During a visit to relatives in West and began waiting for favo- testified that this is what led him Germany two weeks before his rable wind conditions. Mode- to notify the East German wedding, Winfried Freudenberg rate northeast wind was blowing police. expressed a determination to leave on the evening of March 7. Mauer. © Perrine Lacroix, 2013. www.perrinelacroix.com.