Conversations with Eyewitnesses – Escape helper Klaus-M. von Keussler
Helping People Escape and Stories from the Berlin Wall
Please note that this talk takes place in German!
“Freedom knows no walls,” wrote the 24-year-old Klaus-M. von Keussler passionately in his “Tunnel Diary” on 8 January 1964, after East German border guards and/or members of the East German State Security had blown up the 4th tunnel (the ‘Kohlenplatz Tunnel’), which von Keussler had helped to dig. Von Keussler, who in 1944 fled the burning city of Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad) holding his mother and sister’s hands, making his way to Berlin via a circuitous route, later grew up in the Rhineland. After completing his military service, he began studying law in Hamburg and continued his studies at the Free University (FU) in Berlin. Von Keussler experienced the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 at first hand. The driving force behind his subsequent efforts to help people escape was not only the pleas for help from fellow students in East Berlin and others wishing to flee, but also – and above all – political resistance and protest against the unjust regime of the GDR. Together with his friend Wolfgang Fuchs (1939–2001), who had fled from Jena to the West in the 1950s, von Keussler and other friends carried out spectacular escape operations (scaling the Wall with ladders, group escapes across the death strip, tunnelling). The escape aiders, based in West Berlin – the capital of spies – were constantly under surveillance by the secret services from both East and West (Stasi, Verfassungsschutz, CIA, Mossad, BND). The arrest warrant issued by the Ministry for State Security against von Keussler in 1966 was not (partially) quashed until 1984, at the instigation of the well-known East Berlin solicitor Wolfgang Vogel.
In a talk followed by a discussion, von Keussler recounts his experiences as someone who helped people escape. In his work as an eyewitness, it is very important to him to emphasise that, during the legendary ‘Tunnel 57’ operation, 21-year-old Corporal Egon Schultz, a teacher in Rostock, was killed in a shootout between escape helpers and East German border guards on 5 October 1964.
Von Keussler has written numerous essays on the subject of helping people escape, as well as the following book: Klaus-M. von Keussler/Peter Schulenburg: Fluchthelfer – Die Gruppe um Wolfgang Fuchs. Berlin Story Verlag, 4th edition, 2019.
Duration: approx. 1.5 hours
Price: 7 euros
Tickets are available up to 30 days in advance.
Location:
Berliner Unterwelten e.V.
Brunnenstraße 142, 10115 Berlin
Not accessible to wheelchair users.
